Browsing by Author "Belling, Veronica"

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    The history of Yiddish theatre in South Africa from the late nineteenth century to 1960
    (2003) Belling, Veronica; Shain, Milton
    This dissertation sets out to investigate the history of Yiddish theatre in South Africa. Yiddish theatre first emerged in Jassy in Rumania in 1876. However with Czarist persecution and the great Jewish migration from Eastern Europe, the 1880s it had spread to Western Europe, the Americas, and South Africa. This dissertation attempts to answer the question as to why of all Eastern Europe's diasporas, Yiddish theatre at no stage put down permanent roots in South Africa. It aims to prove that the survival of Yiddish theatre was entirely dependent on the survival of the Yiddish language. Thus the fate of Yiddish theatre in South Africa was influenced by the early timing of the formative immigration, between 1890 and 1914, the common origins of the immigrants in Lithuania and White Russia, and their educational and cultural poverty. These factors were reinforced by the exclusive adherence of the Anglo-German Jewish establishment and the vast majority of the immigrants, to Zionism and the Hebrew revival. Yiddish was unequivocally rejected, so that it never featured in the construction of South African Jewish identity. Finally the Quota Act of 1930, reinforced by the Alien's Act of 1937, put a total halt to Eastern European Jewish immigration, the lifeblood of Yiddish theatre.
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    Recovering the lives of South African Jewish women during the migration years c1880-1939
    (2013) Belling, Veronica
    This dissertation sets out to demonstrate how a group doubly situated on the margins, as Jewish and female, helped to build the larger community of South African Jewry and contributed to the wider South African society. The investigation is rooted in the transformation wrought in Jewish communities worldwide in the nineteenth and twentieth century through emancipation, assimilation, immigration, acculturation, and Zionism. The discussion is divided into three sections, of which the first two constitute a description of the normative experience of Jewish women, the majority of whom were first and second generation immigrants from eastern Europe. Entitled "Setting up house", the first section opens with their migration, their establishment of immigrant neighbourhoods, and the perpetuation of their close knit communities through bonds of marriage. Entitled "Beyond hearth and home", the second section explores how the period, 1880- 1939, that witnessed dramatic changes in women's status worldwide - through education, the workplace and the attainment of the vote - resonated among South African Jewish women. It will show that while pursuing a career beyond marriage was exceptional, participation on the Jewish communal scene, whether in the welfare societies or in the Zionist movement was normative, and by the end of the period women had wrested control of their organisations from the men. In contrast to the normative experiences described in the first two sections, the third section, "Varieties of integration: case studies of extraordinary women", that is divided between the fields of "Politics" and "Culture", compares and contrasts the lives of women, who by virtue of education, career, lifestyle, political or cultural orientation, did not conform to the norm. These female iconoclasts accentuate what is considered to be normative in the South African Jewish community, whether it be the traditional family, the identification with the English language community, or passive conformity to the existing racial status quo. The dissertation will show that these idealistic and driven women were frequently the most far sighted, and their contributions to the political and cultural life of South Africa in retrospect, take on much greater significance.