Tiny Jewish Community in Zimbabwe Perseveres Despite Economic Woes

Tiny Jewish Community in Zimbabwe Perseveres Despite Economic Woes: "Tiny Jewish Community in Zimbabwe Perseveres Despite Economic Woes

By Moira Schneider

CAPE TOWN, July 27 (JTA) -- Hylton Solomon, a Zimbabwean Jewish leader, says that he has never felt threatened by the turbulent goings-on in the country, though he did admit to feeling ?a little bit uneasy? during the government?s recent Operation Restore Order, which saw hundreds of thousands of street vendors and others being driven out of urban areas and rendered homeless in midwinter.
?It was like Kristallnacht. You can?t describe it in any other way,? says Solomon, the president of the Bulawayo Hebrew Congregation.
Zimbabwe?s mostly elderly Jewish community has dwindled through emigration to around 300 individuals from a high of 7,500 in the early 1970s. Despite its much diminished size and the rapidly deteriorating political and economic situation in the country, Jewish life, though curtailed, carries on."