HERBER HOUSE: “A HOSTEL FOR JEWISH CHILDREN” (Part 1)

“The ten fateful years between 1939 and 1948 changed the Jewish people and the course of Jewish history (M E Katz)”

It was during this disruptive, destructive and chaotic decade for European Jewry that, in a historical contradiction, there was a flowering of creative and brave leadership in the South African Jewish community. To quote Katz again, “The instrument that emerged to meet the educational needs of Jewish group life in the open society of the post war western world was the Jewish day school”.

Stuart Buxbaum holds an honours degree in Sociology from Wits University (1970) and an honours degree in Judaica from UNISA (1984). After working in the social research unit of the SA Jewish Board of Deputies in the early 1970s, he farmed for many years in Mpumalanga. He and his sister Beatrice were residents of Herber House.

“The ten fateful years between 1939 and 1948 changed the Jewish people and the course of Jewish history (M E Katz)”[i]

It was during this disruptive, destructive and chaotic decade for European Jewry that, in a historical contradiction, there was a flowering of creative and brave leadership in the South African Jewish community. To quote Katz again, “The instrument that emerged to meet the educational needs of Jewish group life in the open society of the post war western world was the Jewish day school”.[ii]

This piece looks at the establishment, running and final closure of a Jewish hostel for schoolchildren in Johannesburg, formed in that historic decade. The essential source for the article are the accumulated minutes of the hostel’s executive committee, originally formed as a subcommittee of the SA Board of Jewish Education (SABJE), later becoming part of the Institutions Committee of the Board. This hostel enabled Jewish schoolchildren from the South African country communities, from farms and villages, from medium-sized towns and isolated trading stations to attend higher grade schools in the city, receive a more structured Jewish education and eventually, with the establishment of the day schools, to be the beneficiaries of an educational ethos which would otherwise have been unavailable to them.

R Misheiker outlines three well-defined periods in the history of the SABJE:

1) The first, from 1928-1937, was a period characterized by the gradual building up of experience in the education field and also one of considerable ideological differences.

2) The second, from 1938-1949, was an era of bold planning and execution which led to the establishment of the King David Schools in 1948.

3) The third, dating from 1949 until the writing of his article in 1973, Misheiker characterized as one of implementation, growth and consolidation.[iii]

Misheiker’s second period dovetails neatly with that outlined by Katz. It would prove indeed to be a decade of “bold planning and education”.

Establishment of the hostel

The earliest minutes found of the hostel sub-committee’s meetings are dated 26 January 1943. The foundational charter for the hostel was being articulated while negotiations for the purchase of a suitable property and residence for this purpose were being finalized. On 17 July 1943 the deed of sale for the property and the building housed upon it at 6, South Street, Yeoville, was signed by Mrs Raphaely, the seller, and by the purchaser, a representative of the SABJE.

The building that would become the new hostel was known as “Eastington Castle”. It was bordered by Charlton Terrace and Harrow Road and, according to information obtained from the Heritage Foundation in Johannesburg, was sold at a price of £8000. Eastington Castle was built on a rocky outcrop and gorge, the “Koppie” (Kopje) of the Yeoville ridge, in 1896.[iv] In his book Pioneer architects of Johannesburg,[v] Michael Walker records that the architect was the prolific Mr McCowat, a designer of homes for the increasing number of entrepreneurs in bustling pre-Anglo-Boer War Johannesburg. Eastington Castle, described as a ‘mansion’, was built for John Dowel Ellis and his wife Doris.

Ellis, a mechanical engineer born in Hertfordshire, England, had arrived in the Transvaal at the time of the discovery of the gold reef in Johannesburg in 1886. In relatively short succession, he would become a member of the Johannesburg Town Council and then mayor of the city in 1910, 1911 and 1912.[vi] The castle would become the mayoral residence.

There is extant a fine picture of Eastington Castle showing landaus in the foreground. The mayor was presiding over a municipality beginning its transformation into modernity. According to the transport census of 17 August 1909, a plethora of conveyances was available to the city dweller: horse buses, cabs, market trolleys, rickshaws, motor cars, motor cycles, traps and carriages, and motor taxis.[vii]

What did this future hostel look like? Prominent in the early views of the Yeoville ridge, Michael Walker describes it well: “Constructed of koppie stone on the site, the interior was full of nooks and crannies. Little light filtered through the stained glass windows in the hall. A visiting Scot remarked “Aye! The place is only fit for bats, bugs and bonfires.”[viii] Methinks most future hostel dwellers would agree with that sentiment over the coming years!