Roaming rabbi tends to his scattered South African flock

CAPE TOWN -- Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft ministers to several thousand Jews, but he has neither a fixed pulpit nor is he based in a specific synagogue. He is the spiritual leader of the African Jewish Congress and head of the Country Communities Department of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies.

His "territory" covers an area some 3,000 miles long and up to 2,000 miles wide, encompassing 16 countries -- the entire African continent south of the Sahara (except the major urban areas in South Africa) as well as the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar and Mauritius.

Many once-thriving Jewish communities in small South African towns have disappeared and their synagogues closed as people moved to the main cities or emigrated.

Yet some Jews still remain in the country towns of South Africa, whether they comprise a tiny farming community, a businessman or professional and his family, or even a lone Jew. But they are not forgotten.

Silberhaft seeks them out and often shepherds them back into the folds of Judaism.

The rabbi loves his peripatetic lifestyle and spends around 20 days every month traveling -- much of the time through South Africa in his car. It is equipped with a refrigerator, not only for his own kosher food, but to enable him to cater b'nai mitzvah and other functions in towns that do not have kosher food.

Throughout his travels he says he has only encountered two incidents of anti-Semitism, "because in a small place, where a Jew has behaved badly toward the townsfolk, every Jew is judged accordingly," he said. "Other than that, I receive every courtesy."

Silberhaft's first stop in every country town he visits is the municipal office. He then goes through the town's records to find the whereabouts of Jewish residents -- both past and present -- and the location of Jewish graves in cemeteries, which he ensures are maintained. He looks after more than 20,000 graves in more than 240 Jewish cemeteries, and also abandoned historic synagogues, some more than 100 years old.

"On occasions, when I inquire why the town appears dead, or inactive, the immediate response is 'When the last Jew left, the town ceased to flourish.'

"There is no doubt Jewish residents played a vital role in the establishment and development of the small towns in which they lived," he said.

The vast South African countryside -- "I know every highway, byway and country road" -- beckoned Silberhaft shortly after his bar mitzvah, when he helped conduct High Holy Day services in a small town near the border with Zimbabwe.

"I love it with a passion -- the people, the countryside, the work," he said.

The rabbi's job also has its amusing side.

Silberhaft tells the story of a Jewish man from Namibia (then South West Africa) who died, leaving his non-Jewish wife intent on giving him a Jewish burial. The headstone on his grave carried the inscription in Hebrew: "Kosher l'Pesach," written upside-down and back to front.

Silberhaft has a photograph of the headstone. "And we removed it -- a grave cannot be the butt of unkind jokes."

Then there was the Israeli kosher slaughterer with limited English. Searched at the Zimbabwean-South African border crossing, he told the customs officers that the alarming array of knives in his suitcase was there because he had "come to kill for the Jews.'' It took some diplomatic intervention to resolve that one, Silberhaft recalled.

In a few towns the trend of people leaving is being reversed on a small scale. For example, the coastal towns of Plettenberg Bay and Knysna -- less than a half-hour apart by car -- now have 160 families permanently residing there, supplemented by many more during the holiday season in the popular resorts about 300 miles from Cape Town.

In December the coastal community opened a new communal center, and the first wedding, with the newly appointed rabbi in attendance, took place last month. Silberhaft was the driving force behind the new center, the culmination of seven years' work and effort.

The rabbi and his family -- his wife, Mandi, and children Yossi, 11, and Leah, 9 -- will travel to another coastal resort for Rosh Hashanah. He is set to conduct the services.

The international aspect of his work started after South Africa's peaceful democratic revolution in 1994.

Since then, Silberhaft has met many of the leaders of the countries whose Jewish communities he serves, including President Yoweri Musevene of Uganda. Silberhaft is working with Musevene to establish a museum at the Entebbe Airport to commemorate the 1976 Israeli rescue of hijacked passengers, as part of a plan to boost tourism to his country.