HERBER HOUSE: "A HOSTEL FOR JEWISH CHILDREN" (Part III)

The "Cane Mutiny", a "Feral Culture", rawfers and shluppers, Boarding School Syndrome and liedjies on the school bus - All this and more in the concluding part of Stuart Buxbaum's history of Herber House hostel for country kids attending King David School in Johannesburg.

Stuart Buxbaum holds an honours degree in Sociology from Wits University (1970) and an honours 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.

This is the third and final part of my paper looking at the establishment, running and final closure of Herber House, a hostel for Jewish schoolchildren in Johannesburg established under the auspices of the SA Board of Jewish Education (SABJE) in 1943.

At this point, we will interrupt here the narrative of how the SAJBE lay leadership and staff of Herber House grappled with the short and longer-term challenges of running the hostel to dwell a little on what everyday life was like for those youngsters (including myself) living at the institution.

“Feral Culture”

By the late 1950s, HH was drifting into a benign dystopia. Only the regularity of the school day provided structure to the pervasive laissez-faire spirit, as did the remarkable group cohesiveness of the boarders. From the group we drew our strength, a closeness that persists via shared memories almost sixty years later. How was this culture expressed? Thus: having already davened shacharit and breakfasted hurriedly by 7am, we would clamber aboard the buses that would ferry us to school, still isolated from the day scholars. In the song’s refrain, “You could meet us at the back of the bus”, is where we sat bunched together, expressing our otherness by often singing Afrikaans liedjies in unison. This is probably where the future Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn received his early chazanuth training! Once at the high school, we were not required to attend prayers. Instead we sprawled into a classroom together, chatting and gossiping and completing homework. Break-time would see us reassembling on a bench outside the tuck-shop. The rare purchase of a 15-cent hotdog meant the brave customer would have but a small portion of the delicacy, the rest being diminished in its passage down the line on the bench. The rule of ‘opps’ (sharing) was mandatory, to be ignored at the buyer’s peril. We were a band of brothers.

This feral culture had been long in its making. It was the alternate reaction to the state of affairs so often agonizingly mulled over by the committee in their lofty considerations. After the excitement of those early years during the establishment of the hostel, the committee was often preoccupied with the inhospitable physical nature of the property. It was in extent about four acres, rocky and somewhat forbidding. It kept the boarders cut off from the urban environment, accentuating their separateness. Time and again, the committee would bemoan the lack of extensive playing fields, but for the boarders it was a minor inconvenience. There was enough space for endless games of cricket or soccer and daily games of that hostel staple, the game of king stingers.

Then there was the sandy red landfill, always rumored to be the site of the oft discussed future swimming pool. The outcrop and steep descent formed by the landfill afforded much entertainment. Around the years 1957-8 there was a young lad of quiet charm and much energy about 11 years old, Johnny G. from Middelburg. He led a band of loyal youngsters, a gang whose main activity was building hideouts, so-called ‘forts’ on the koppie and on the slopes of the landfill. Corrugated iron, scrap planks and bricks were all greatly valued for these hideouts. The boys spent the weekends foraging for material, building and hiding. Some forts were quite elaborate, with peepholes designed as an early warning system. Then down the red, steep sandy hill, boys of the gang and others would slide the dizzying descent on cardboard boxes endlessly of a Saturday, clambering up the hill, down to slide again. Bennie L., a daredevil and brave lad, was particularly comfortable doing the slide. He reveled in the danger. It was told of him that he once sat in a tyre, rolled down the hill and ended up in Doornfontein!

One fine summer’s Sunday morning, it was thought a splendid idea to rise early and engage in a robust game of king stingers. The brisk morning’s shouting and calling awakened one of the masters from his beauty sleep. Quite expressionlessly, he herded us back into the annex where we were rewarded with some swift canings on our backsides. After a short enforced and painful break in the proceedings, we continued where we had left off. Those who had been ‘on’ were still ‘on’, and those ‘off’, still ‘off’. The master meanwhile had nodded off, presumably exhausted by the effort of raising and lowering the stick so many times.

Of all the sins that that could violate the boarders’ credo, ‘squealing’ was the gravest and would lead to severe retribution. You kept your mouth shut, took the blame yourself rather than pointing out the real offender, and met inquisitions with a stony silence. The penalty for squealing was “being sent to Coventry”. You were excommunicated, the equivalent of the rabbinical cherem. In such a verbal, tightly-knit congregation, being shunned for a number of days by one’s peers was both dismal and desperate.

From this gang-like behavior and tight group culture, resistance to rules and staff regulations could lead to minor revolts. David A. recounts how a football was confiscated by the sudden and overenthusiastic enforcement of Sabbath observance.[i] The boys would have none of it and marched around the ‘drive’, a circular road allowing access to the castle. They banged make-shift drums and shouted slogans. Revolutionaries in the making! The ball was returned.

Heilbrunn isolates a further feature of this feral culture: “Conversations often turned to past Herber House heroes who knew how to be tough and take it up to the staff. Chutzpah (rawfing) was a trait greatly to be admired.”[ii] Rawfing is a manufactured term that referred to the cheekiness with which boarders responded to the supervisors. It was a response filled with insolence. Sometimes it was mitigated by humour but some bravery was required to carry it through. It was not appreciated by the staff but enhanced the rawfer’s status amongst his or her peers.

The converse of rawfing was shlupping. This was an attempt to curry favour with/ingratiate oneself with authority. It would take the form of an unrequested voluntary passing on of information about the boarders’ misbehaviors. Often this behavior was motivated by a genuine need for intimacy, comfort or a sign of acceptance by the staff. By the boarders, shlupping was ranked on the same lowly scale as squealing.

Still, the feral culture seems to have been spared the worst excesses of ‘proper’ boarding schools. Certainly in the latter decade, there was no prefect-ship, nor its malign partner, that of being skivvies[iii] to senior boarders and prefects. There was largely an absence of the viciousness of initiation and the worst aspects of bullying.

Food was a contentious matter. Suppers were generally regulated with a balanced serving; breakfasts were rushed affairs, and lunches were sandwiches, once a week with polony. Joy indeed! In the early years, a dietician had drawn up an extensive, varied and nutritious menu.[iv] The meals were often not to the boarders liking, especially breakfasts. Gilbert Banda, a legend at the hostel for his many years of service and lilting Malawian accent, was the bell-ringer and meals provider in the dining room. At 6 a.m. every weekday, he would clangalang his way up South Street and into the annex. “What’s for breakfast, Gilly?” the boys would call. “Flying eggs, bluddy butta and mabella polish” would come Gilbert’s reply. That about summed up the morning meal.

Occasionally, a boycott would be called by dissatisfied boarders. I recall that there was once unhappiness with a particular serving of beef and vegetables at the evening meal. A boycott was called. It was my favorite dish of the week. It dripped with thick, greasy fat. The plates were set in front of us. Longingly, I looked at the roast slice, going hungry during those meals until it was removed from the menu. The kitchen supervisor had gotten the message.

The jargon at the hostel was usually direct, but some nuances did creep in. The all-seeing eyes of the housemaster and housemistress gained them the appellation of Mr Oog and Mrs Oog. Sometimes the diminutive was used as shorthand code, as in Oogie or the plural, Oogies. Invariably this would be preceded by ‘chips’. So in times of danger or the threat of imminent discovery, the call would be ‘chips!’ More definitively, it would describe the threat as “chips, the Oog!” The girls had a gentler nomenclature. “Mrs Oog” became “Mrs Poz.”

Reciprocating the compliments, Mr Saltzman would in anger refer to the boarders as menuvels. This in its exact Yiddish translation was grossly insulting. Literally, it means an evil doer, a contemptable being, a vile, base and ignoble person.[v] But the boarders, not being Yiddishists, did not take umbrage and bore the insult with much amusement. Every ex-boarder, whatever their age, would react to this appellation with a nostalgic smile.

The contestation would reach its apogee on Saturday evenings in shul, during the service at the termination of the Sabbath. Tension was heightened. Many and varied had been the transgressions of the boarders all week long. These had been seen and noted. The reproach would invariably find its way into the housemaster’s sermon between minchah and maariv. We would be reproached as a group of miscreants, called to order as offending individuals, labelled as menuvels. But there was a higher sanction: the sedrah of the week had warned about such willfulness. We were menuvels who had transgressed the Holy Law. Silently we boys sat, a nudge-nudge here, a glance there, and a wink at each other. The girls had been spared this invective. They had done their shul time for the weekend, and indeed the week.

But in this contest of wills, it would be the boarders who had the final say. The dénouement came at the conclusion of the evening service. The new week would be ushered in with song. A blessed week! A good week! Shavua tov! Shavua tov! Little could those who generations ago had ushered in the week with this hopeful message imagine it being corrupted by a bunch of lads singing “Shovel it off, shovel it off” with appropriate spade work, completing the arc with a swing over the shoulder! The housemaster’s reproaches had missed their target.

And then these same boys would burst out of the shul on those starry skied nights, hoping

that that night’s film in the high ceilinged hall of the castle would not be the umpteenth showing of “Chocolate Soldier” with Nelson Eddy, but some real war-time soldiers’ tale. The girls may have wished otherwise.

But not for all would be the Saturday night entertainment! In the tit for tat between boarders and supervisors, there was one sanction still the preserve of the latter: No bioscope for you upstairs in the hall tonight! Here again is Heilbrunn’s description: “Those punished (from seeing the film) would…gather in the dining room…with occasional supervision…the staff member usually didn’t stay long and those downstairs would create their own ‘entertainment’, dancing on the tables…There were periodic raids of the kitchen and pantry…our resourcefulness was highly developed. So it was a debatable which group, the ‘punished’ kids below or the ‘privileged’ kids above, were having a better time”.[i]

Ah, after all these happenings, how different the start of the Sabbath had been! Scrubbed clean and neatly dressed, the boys and girls had sat in shul on Friday evening with so much decorum. The entire service had been chanted, quite melodiously, I always recall. Then to the dining room, the tables all bedecked in white tablecloths. At each table, two candlesticks with candles burning bright sat about six boarders, boys and girls separately. The meal was preceded by everyone singing Shalom Aleichem. A special Sabbath meal of soup, roast chicken, potatoes and vegetables and ‘sweets’. Then Zmirot all loudly sung as was grace after meals.

But at some point in the meal, the call would start and rapidly become a chorus: “We want Paddy! (Brenda P.) We want Cookie (Tziona P.), We want Adele (Coini)”. Eventually the housemaster would relent and ask the girls to sing. They had beautiful voices. Down the years, I hear them still…..

The formal Friday evening ended with singing, dancing and hand clapping outside the castle, at the apex of the drive: Boys and girls all in a circle, singing repetitive tunes such as “coming round the mountain”. Boys chose girls, girls chose boys and “tiekie draaied”[ii] for a few brief moments. The genteel words of the songs would gradually morph into more risqué, ribald rhymes, often referring to the behavior and dress of staff members. Then a rush to the dormitories, and sometimes a wild, unrestrained feather-lying pillow fight. The girls’ evening ended quietly.

My sister Beatrice found the hostel stifling and confining. The narrow factory-purpose lockers, the regimentation, the rules were constricting. She had lived for the first two years of high school at Ulpan Harary,[iii] a small family run hostel in the suburb of Observatory where she had felt more comfortable and at ease. She would, after two years at Herber House, board with private families until she matriculated. She would then enroll at the Hebrew Teachers Seminary and qualify as a Hebrew teacher.