South African Jewish Writings

"You must have been an elegant woman," commented the stranger at the bus stop. "I used to dress women, advise them on clothing." I do take trouble to match and complement colors, so I appreciated the compliment. I wear hats to avoid skin cancer in glaring San Diego, but I always did like hats. The speaker had an easy, casual, tasteful style herself. This was Tessa Schlesinger, a free lance writer and blogger who has ebooks and paperbacks on Amazon.com. She suggested I look her up on Google, which led to reading an article and buying her publication of articles by her father, on being a Jewish journalist in Hitler's Germany, and then South Africa. Among other publications, Mr. Schlesinger wrote for JTA, Jewish Telegraph Agency, whose website I consult at least once a week now. It's a period of perennial interest to me. As a teenager I had a dear friend who searched Europe after World War II for 200 relatives, and found none. No records. In my extended family by marriage, hurt silence prevails on the loss of relatives during those killing times. I have always known people with numbers tattooed on their forearms. In my native New York City I often worked for and with Jewish people of every range of education and economic status. Now at First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Diego, I strive for justice and spiritual development among folks of Jewish, Christian, and Buddhist background. Some of us are theists, many agnostic, humanist, Earth Centered and yet more varied and unique. We find something in a spiritual community that reflects our real lives in a pluralistic, ever rediscovering society. We seek to go beyond tolerance to compassionate living in the belief that everyone and everything is connected. Well, I hadn't given much thought to Jews in South Africa until now. So I just read a long review in Goodreads of "The Lion Seeker," by Kenneth Bonert. Inspired by his interest in his own family's roots, the novel follows a Jewish family from Lithuania to South Africa between two world wars, through the changes wrought in the second generation. Based on the way Bonert expresses himself in the interview, I'm expecting a well written story.

Mandela's Way

MANDELA’S WAY
FIFTEEN LESSONS ON LIFE, LOVE, AND COURAGE
BY RICHARD STENGEL
CROWN PUBLISHERS, RANDOM HOUSE, NEW YORK 2009
Pp 121-122

(The brutal head of the prison in which Mandela spent so many years was being transferred.)

“Badenhorst said to me something like, ‘I just want to wish you people good luck.’ He said this like a human being, and I was a bit taken aback by his moderate and even considerate tone. I must say, that was a bit of a surprise. I thanked him. I thought about this for a long time afterward. What it basically showed me is that these men were not inhuman, but their inhumanity had been put upon them. They behaved like beasts because they were rewarded for such behavior. They thought it would result in a promotion or advancement. That day, I realized that Badenhorst was not the man he seemed to be, but a better man than how he had behaved.”

This epiphany goes to the heart of Mandela’s belief about what makes us human. He was a better man than how he had behaved. His motives were not as cruel as his actions. No one is born prejudiced or racist. No man, he suggests, is evil at heart. Evil is something instilled in or taught to men by circumstances, their environment, or their upbringing. It is not innate. Apartheid made men evil; evil did not create apartheid.

While his colleagues saw their warders and jailers as monolithic, the embodiment of the heartless apartheid system, Mandela generally tried to find something decent and honorable in them. Ultimately, he came to see them as victims of the system as well as perpetrators of it.

My Comment:

These reflections show the attitudes which helped keep South Africa from plunging into national civil war on racial lines. Mandela convinced enough people that a new government had to care about all the people. This empowered Reconciliation, in which police apologized for their actions, and families at least learned what had happened to their relatives. Bishop Desmond Tutu’s role came out of his experience as a leader of a religion which teaches that confession, acknowledgment of responsibility with intent to reform, precedes forgiveness. In order to live with each other there was a psychological and spiritual necessity to grieve together. There had always been many, many people of all races who had struggled for justice, refusing to demonize each other.

We have been reflecting on evil at my church. An important thought, attributed to Martin Luther King Jr., is that there is a little good in the worst of us, and a little evil in the best of us. This insight has emerged in many traditions through the centuries. Mandela’s biographer interprets the passage above as meaning a system, a guiding structure, can bring out very different aspects of an individual’s character and behavior. Therefore, changing the system tends to change people’s behavior. It leaves hanging the question of whether the organizers of a repressive system are evil. Perhaps for Mandela that is not the point. The point is to move forward with opportunities for people to live in dignity, negotiate with each other without violence for the goods, and the good, of the world.