Pesach in Bulawayo - 2009

April 22, 2009

Yet another Pesach has come and gone and the 2009 Bulawayo communal Seder was one more remarkable success story in the history of our shrinking but tenacious community.

Planning a communal Seder is always a daunting task no matter where you are in the world, but here in Zimbabwe it is nothing short of a tactical nightmare that requires a strategic game plan with months of advance action.

You can’t just pop down to the nearest hyper for their astonishing range of Pesadech goods, anything from toothpaste to dog food, or the kosher deli for their ready made chicken soup and kneidlach.

Indeed our supermarkets are only just tenuously managing to restock shelves, after years of government intervention into the controlling of prices, on the back of extortionate duty structures and the well publicised death of food supplies in this tragic landscape. It wasn’t long ago that Hylton Solomon, President of our community and owner of one of the oldest supermarkets in town, was arrested for charging too much on pasta!

The march towards the Seder started months ago when Rabbi Alima and his wife Efrat were determined that despite all odds they would orchestrate their swan song, their last Seder in Zimbabwe for sadly, soon after Pesach, they returned to Eretz Yisrael with a fourth child on the way, for we can no longer afford them.

Bulawayo has attracted a dynamic and diverse stream of Rabbis since the community was officially initiated way back in 1894, each one of them leaving an indelible mark on the Jewish stamp of the country’s history. When initially interviewing Rabbi Alima, President Hylton Solomon expressed the needs of the community in a nutshell, “Any Rabbi coming to join us should love his Bobba and Zeida and unfortunately be well versed in conducting a funeral”.

Indeed, our community is aged with the vast majority of her 93 souls, in the autumn of their years. I cannot remember the last time we had a wedding here, but my 15 year old son has been the pall bearer at many a funeral. But we have never thrown down our siddurim and given up, even when our beloved shul burnt down in 2003. The opposite is evidenced by our determination to hold on to the basics of Jewish life, minyanim at least five days a week and our Rabbi has brought in many from the community who had not been in a Shul for decades. The Alimas live by Abraham’s tenet of an open door and there was never a Shabbat that did not find a full table at their home, even when the power was down and there was no water in the taps.
So nu, they made a plan just like all of us do here.

Pesach was just another time that we made a plan, the Alima’s and their support group put it all together. The truck loads of kosher goodies, greatly subsidised by the Jewish Agency, were brought in by a band of individuals known as runners - they run back and forth to South Africa to provide all, who can afford it, the luxuries most in the world take for granted. Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft, the regional Rabbi and his ex Bulawayo assistant, Carla Sher, are our supreme connection to the great kosher world of stuff. This wandering regional Rabbi has been an angel sent to us here in Bulawayo. His humour and “expansive” warmth enable us to feel we are a living part of the greater Jewish world.

Erev Pesach arrived and I was shocked at the number we were to set the table for. One hundred Jews would be celebrating the 115th official Seder in a country that knows only too well the evil wrought by a modern day Pharaoh. With an ingathering of visitors, many coming home for Yom Tov from South Africa, Australia and Israel as well as Ofer Dahan and his wife from the Sochnut, shlichim from Netzer and Bnei Akiva and some of their children, ours was going to be a truly special simcha.

In the kitchen preparing the seder feast was the famous Florence Maphosa. This extraordinary toothless Ndebele woman is one of the community’s most exceptional pillars. When Florence’s mentor and teacher, Sheila Swiel went on aliyah in the 80’s the culinary genius, Florence, decided that rather than working in one household she would hire herself out by the day. At first she only worked for Jews, but with the decline in our numbers she has expanded her clientele.

Florence almost singlehandedly prepared the entire seder from the chicken soup and kneidlach to the charoseth. There is no one in the world who can match her Jewish repertoire of dishes; she does a mean gefilte fish, her chopped herring is divine, her cheesecake is to die for and her tsimmes would make anyone’s Bobbah come begging for the recipe.

At 63 Florence is my great hero. She has taught me how to laugh in the face of adversity, the reward of hard work and to understand the dignity of the people we work, play, live and are helped by every day. The world only sees a one dimensional representation of Zimbabwe’s people, the tyrannical force towering over the cowering masses. But it is far more complicated than that, and I know the comparison is controversial, but how many of our own fought back in the last century when faced with the demon who tried to wipe us off the face of the earth? Will you be the one to lead them?

The Pesach service saw a shul bathed in candle light, for our power is switched off almost every day, and by now we are used to it and have learnt that electricity is not the only way to find light. In fact, I love the spirituality it brings to our services. There is no Jew to look after our shul, but Jack, the “Shammas”, who hails from the Binga region of Zimbabwe where the people are tall and strong, makes sure that the candles to light our way through the service are lit before the chag or Shabbat begins.

We moved from the shul to the hall to start the ancient repetition of the Hagaddah. Miraculously the power came back and there was light! The singing was certainly not the standard of the famous Gardens Synagogue Choir, and the tunes were as varied as the communities represented; the hall was beautiful, the place was filled with an extraordinary warmth and energy that took me back to the days of my childhood when the shul was so full that the kids sat squashed onto the steps, giggling through the service. The numbers are gone but the energy remains.

There is a tinge of irony and a certain poignancy at celebrating Pesach in Zimbabwe, we repeat the message every year and teach our children to question so that we can all understand a little more about slavery, oppression and violence; the overriding system of justice that was meted out for evil; the road to freedom took courage and commitment and was filled with obstacles, yet through true leadership freedom was found and our people today cherish that freedom and the homeland that is ours, even though we may not physically be there.

Rabbi Alima and his family have gone home, his wife said to me shortly before she left, “This community gave us far more that we ever gave the community” and I believe that is because here in Bulawayo, we all cherish community and understand the strength it gives us. It is getting harder to find and afford a new Rabbi, but we remain determined and as Hylton Solomon said, “We cannot turn our backs on over a century of Jewish history in this town.”

Yes, the past decade has been particularly trying but there is an old Jewish proverb that says, “He that can't endure the bad, will not live to see the good.” As Jews we understand suffering but we also understand that freedom is within grasp.