Yiddish Writing in South Africa: Leibl Feldman's Radical History of Johannesburg Jewry

Abstract

Leibl Feldman's Yiddish history of the Jews in Johannesburg to 1910, Yidn in Yohanesburg biz Yunyen, 31 May 1910, published in 1956 by the South African Yiddish Cultural Federation in Johannesburg, is part of the body of Yiddish literature produced in South Africa after the Second World War. It is a Marxist Yiddishist polemic that describes the establishment of Johannesburg and its Jewish community from the point of view of the
thousands of eastern European Jewish immigrants, who were streaming into Johannesburg in the 1890s. Drawing heavily on the early Yiddish press, it describes the immigrant neighbourhood in Ferreirastown: its personalities, social, cultural, and workers' organisations, and its social and political concerns. Unfortunately owing to its polemical nature, it fails to present the “complete picture” of the community that it claims, but nonetheless it brings much new material to light.

Journal for the Study of Religion Vol. 19 (2) 2006: pp. 63-75