A Simpler Life

Today we consider electricity a necessity, not a luxury. But in Thaba N’Chu, there was no electricity. When night came, the village was dark.

To brighten our homes in the evening, we used kerosene lamps. But it was a messy and time-consuming affair. First you had to remove the outer glass of the lamp, being careful not to touch the inner gauze and the delicate, net-like mantle. After the inner brass container was filled with lighting fuel, you’d vigorously pump the small handle at the side until a hissing sound was heard. A match was struck and held close to the bottom of the mantle until, poof, there was light.

That is, if everything went well. Sometimes, the vigorous pumping had to be repeated. Other times, a slight touch would break the mantle, requiring us to find a different lamp. I’ve lived with electricity for decades now, but I still feel a sense of wonder sometimes when I flick on my light switch and illuminate an entire room in milliseconds without mess or effort.

No electricity means no refrigerator. To keep our food cold, especially in the long hot summers, our family had a fridge fueled by paraffin oil. Every now and again, there was a blockage in the system, so everything had to be removed and two strong men were called in to turn the fridge upside down, which somehow corrected the issue.

My friend Diane was convinced that her fridge was superior to mine. In her backyard, just by the kitchen door, her family had a “walk-in fridge” — it was basically a small, low room made with chicken wires enclosing a thick mass of small, gray, sharp pebbles. Suspended above the “fridge” was a canvas bag, filled with water, that slowly dripped over the whole edifice and trickled through the stones. As the water evaporated, it cooled the stones. That little structure was freezing inside.

“Fetch some butter,” Diane’s mother would call out to us as we played in the back garden. “Bring out the jug of milk.” We were happy to interrupt our game; after hours in the hot sun, the “fridge” left us shivering with delight.

There was no kosher butcher in our village, so once a month, a shochet visited. A cow was shechted, and the meat divided among the Jewish families. Since this had to last until his next visit, the meat was thinly sliced, pickled, and stored in our pantry. Every meat meal was exactly the same.

One day, my mother managed to obtain a kosher chicken. All excited, she invited friends over for supper. That evening, just as the visitors were arriving, I wandered through the kitchen. On the table was a dish with piping hot baked chicken. Though it looked delicious, it needed a finishing touch, I thought. I had seen my mother decorating a cake earlier with fresh cream, which she had delivered to a friend. So I decided to use the leftover cream to decorate the chicken. I found the bowl in the fridge and carefully adorned the whole chicken with beautiful cream swirls. What can I say? They had pickled meat for their meal.

A Home Away from Home

Of all the communities in South Africa, one remains etched in my heart: Clocolan, where my grandparents, uncles, and aunt lived. About two hours away from Thaba N’chu by car, it was both larger and more progressive than our small village. There was electricity. Streetlights. Every home had electric lighting — a marvel to me! However, there was only a limited supply of electricity, so each house could have either an electric oven or an electric fridge. My grandmother chose a fridge.

Jewish life was richer there, too. The shul had a rav, who also served as the chazzan, shochet and cheder teacher. At one point, the town had a Jewish doctor. He was an influential man, much respected and sorely missed.

By foot, you could tour the entire shopping area in around ten minutes. First, coming into the village you would pass Picks’ Jewish-owned shop, some houses, the town square with the library, followed by the town hall and a post office. Cross over the road, and you’d see the Suttners’ shop, then further down, past some houses, the Gersohns’ shop, and across the road the Kaplans’ shop. After a few more houses, the town gave way to countryside.

The road perpendicular to this was long — it went from one side of the village to the other. My grandparents’ house was nearly in the middle of it, facing the small, beautiful shul across the street. On the road was a large Jewish-owned hotel, a Greek corner café (selling everything from small gifts to bread, vegetables, chocolates, and ice cream), a Jewish-owned chemist, a Jewish-owned dress shop, yet another Greek café, and the only non-Jewish shop, which was akin to a department store. I still marvel when I think about the shalom between all the Jewish shop owners; they were rivals for the same trade, yet there was never a cross word between them.

I was three years old when I first traveled alone to Clocolan to see my grandparents. How did I get there? Simple really! One Monday morning, I walked with my mother to “Uncle Mike’s shop” with a small suitcase in hand. As the “travelers” passed through the store selling wholesale goods, which they displayed in large suitcases, my mother asked, “Are you going to the ‘Gersohn shop’ in Clocolan next?”

If the traveler answered in the affirmative, I joined him for the ride, traveling hundreds of miles over empty veld. “How could I have done such a thing?” my mother would say in her later years. “I get shivers when I think about it. In those days we didn’t know of what we now hear.”

For me, Clocolan was idyllic. My grandparents, uncles, and aunt fussed over me. My grandfather, Reuven, came to Africa as a 13-year-old fleeing conscription in the Russian Army. He first worked on a farm shop for distant relatives. Then he bought his own farm and married my grandmother, who had come from Lithuania with her parents many years earlier. As my grandparents prospered, they sold the farm and moved to nearby Clocolan, where they became shopkeepers.

They had a beautiful house and a massive, sprawling garden. At the bottom of it was a chicken coop. Every morning, I’d walk down with my grandmother to collect eggs. After she distracted the chickens — by flinging corn in the corner away from the nests — I would collect the eggs, placing them carefully in a small, flat basket.

In the late afternoon, I’d “help” my grandmother water the flowers in the front garden. The enormous side garden was my favorite place. A grapevine grew over a pergola and provided delicious fruit, as well as shade. Fruit trees and vegetables grew beyond the vines. Massive pumpkins grew under the fruit tree. Beyond were rows of corn, which were either eaten freshly picked, or boiled and smothered with butter, or dried to provide food for the chickens.

Another “job” was overseeing the little boy who milked the cow that lived in the neighboring field. Together with my Uncle Michael, I would watch as the milk bucket was thoroughly cleaned. Then we’d go across the road and watch the boy stream fresh kosher milk into the bucket. When this fresh, warm, foamy milk cooled down, my grandmother would make cheese, cream, and butter.

My grandparents had a large, black, cast-iron coal stove, which heated up the entire kitchen. In the summer, their kitchen was a stifling place to be. But in the winter, it was a warm oasis. There was no kosher bakery in Clocolan, so the Jewish women baked their own bread and cakes and pastries. They made sponge cakes as light as clouds, and the sticky gourmet delicacy teiglach.

In those days, laundry was a two-day affair. First, everything was sorted on the side porch into different piles: whites, coloreds, clothes, tablecloths, and towels. A big tub and a scrubbing contraption made of metal and wood were brought outside and placed in the shade of the willow tree. Inside the tub went water, green laundry soap, and these blue cubes that inexplicably made white garments sparkling white.

It took two women to tackle the laundry — Paulina, who worked full-time for my grandparents, and another woman who was hired to help for the day. They worked for hours. After the scrubbing came bucket after bucket of hot water. By midday, the laundry swayed high up on many metal lines. In the late afternoon, the dry laundry was brought indoors.

The following day, after the breakfast dishes were cleared, the table was covered with blankets and sheets. The heavy solid irons with their stands were brought in and placed on the stove. I was sent out of the kitchen and Paulina began to iron.

I think of this every time I place my laundry in a machine and press a button. How easy it is now!

I played with other Jewish children in the village every day. We played catch and invented games with word rhymes. There was no toy shop in town, so we created our own toys — “skipping ropes” made from the willow tree branches in the garden and “catching stones” from the pine tree’s hard, small, round fruit. We drew a hopscotch pattern in the sand and found a small flat stone to use as a “goen” that we threw from one square to another.

One year, I visited Clocolan for the chagim, and since I was older, I was allowed to join the local children each afternoon for cheder in the foyer of the shul. Before Simchas Torah, the children were overexcited and behaved badly in cheder. The rav lost his patience. “No one will walk around the bimah with flags and candles tonight,” he said sternly. Then he walked out of shul, leaving a table of astounded children.

Solemn, anguished discussion ensued. Eventually the rav’s son said, “Go home. Don’t say anything. By tonight maybe it will be fine.”

Later that evening, I watched anxiously as my grandfather prepared my flag for Simchas Torah. He secured a small potato on the top and hollowed out a small hole, just large enough to fit one Chanukah candle. “Hold it carefully so everything stays in place,” he said. I wanted to say something but remained silent.

That night, the children at shul were unusually silent and well-behaved. Suddenly the rav cried out, “Time to light the small candles.” The large candle on the bimah created our small flames. The adults beamed as we paraded around. Later, the rav’s son said to us, “Ach… but I knew it would be fine. After all, without us, it is not Simchas Torah.”

Now, so many years later, I recall his words. Do Jewish children today still feel they are an essential, integral part of Simchas Torah?

From the age of four until I was 14, I spent every Pesach with my grandparents in Clocolan. I can close my eyes right now and I am back in my grandparents’ home. There was no rushing to supermarkets like we do today. Only two items were store-bought: matzah and wine, which were delivered as part of a joint order from Bloemfontein. They arrived a little before Pesach and were carefully stacked away in a far corner of the house.

Next the whole house was cleaned. The enormous coal stove was entirely dismantled and thoroughly cleaned. They will never be able to put it together again, I would think. But somehow, they always did. In the early morning, fruit was picked from the garden, and by the afternoon, everything had been transformed into diamond-shaped, jelly-like fruit squares. As the days and hours rushed by, sponge cake and sweet, paper-thin kichels and cookies appeared.

On Erev Pesach, I took a long nap, happily dreaming while the women prepared the finishing touches on the meal. Finally, it was time for the Seder. I sat between my grandmother and my aunt. Opposite me were my two uncles. My grandfather sat at the head of the table. He read aloud at great speed, with my uncles reading in a slightly lower tone. The women read silently.

There were no toy frogs. There were no extra stories. No one paid much attention to me. Yet I felt the solemnity of the occasion. I felt the suffering of the Jews in Egypt. And I rejoiced as they left.

My role was to ask the four questions, hide the afikomen, and ask for a present when it could not be “found.” Over the years, I progressed from looking at the pictures in the Haggadah to reading the English translation.

One Pesach, as I sat quietly at the table, I thought of our maid, Paulina, living far away from her family, alone in her room attached to the garage. I thought of the heavy work she did before Pesach began — polishing floors, doing laundry. Were we guilty like the Egyptians of old? I thought. Would we, too, be punished?

Then I thought about my grandfather. We all had names given to us by the Africans who knew us. My younger sister’s name was Malitastse — it means sunshine. My name was the equivalent of thunder. Make of that what you will.

My grandfather’s name was “King of the Sotho.” During earlier years, while still on his farm, there had been two years of drought and a country-wide depression. The Africans who lived on his farm and on nearby farms had no work, money, or food. My grandfather was also struggling, but he had cows. He said to the Africans, “I have no money to help you, but I have many cows. Come each day and take as much milk as you need.”

The men who took the milk for their families never forgot how this kept them alive. They told this to their children. They called him “King of the Sotho” to honor him. I thought about the way my grandfather acted as a Jew, and not as an Egyptian, and I felt better.

Parting Ways

The hardest part of visiting Clocolan was leaving it.

My grandmother would go to the phone — a large contraption made of wood and iron that was attached to the wall in the hallway — and vigorously turn the handle to call the lady at the exchange. “Good morning, Mrs. Du Plessis. How are you? I need a trunk call to my daughter Thaba N’chu 151.”

Some moments later, I’d hear a lady’s voice through the phone’s receiver. “Oh, the exchange there says she is not home. They think she is visiting Mrs. Smith. She called their number a little while ago.” Eventually my grandmother would speak to my mother to finalize my travel arrangements.

Once again, I stood in a shop. Once again, I traveled in a car with a stranger as I returned to Thaba N’chu to be deposited in Uncle Mike’s shop. That first night home, laying in utter darkness, alone in my room, in a village that had no electricity, I’d long for the light of Clocolan and the love of my grandparents.

There are no longer Jews in Thaba N’Chu. There are no longer Jews in Clocolan. Most of the little South African villages are devoid of Jewish life. The children went away to larger towns. They went to university, married, and had children. They established businesses. The old people in the small villages retired, sold up, and joined their children.

Like other Jews, I also left. I crossed many borders of many countries until I finally came home to Eretz Yisrael. I always wanted to live here. I want to live nowhere else.

Yet still, my mind often wanders back to those small, isolated villages in the African veld. I remember how the non-Jews respected us. I remember how close the Jewish families were, in good times and bad. I remember the men on Friday nights, standing in the middle of the road, between my grandparents’ house and the shul, talking, moving first this way and then that way, loath to part.

I remember a bar mitzvah that took place one Pesach. The kiddush was adorned with homemade food from all the Jewish women. I still remember the rebbetzin’s light-as-air sponge cake, my grandmother’s teiglach, and my aunt’s chopped herring. But most of all, I remember the pride on every face as the bar mitzvah boy ascended the bimah. These were close-knit Jews, who felt secure and proud of their Yiddishkeit.

It is a world gone now, but it was a beautiful world.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 902)