Wanderings led from Lithuania to U.S. to South Africa to Israel

 Editor’s Note: In this column, Dov Hartuv, a new correspondent in Sha’ar Hanegev municipality, Israel,  introduces himself.  Sha’ar Hanegev, alongside the border of Gaza,  is the partnership region of the Jewish Federation of San Diego,

By Dov Hartuv

Dov Hartuv

KIBBUTZ NAHAL OZ, Israel– It must be in our genes. We have always been nomads. Since the times of Abraham our people have journeyed from country to country. Never have the majority of our people spent more than a couple of centuries in any particular country. We’ve always sought pastures new, whether by choice or by force. Even the Golden Age of Spain came to a horrible end as did the Enlightened Period of our sojourn in Germany.

My own particular family history is typical of the “Wandering Jew.” On my father’s side my great grandparents left Rosein in Lithuania in 1893 and sailed to the United States  – the land of endless opportunities for so many poor Jews of the shtetel.

My grandfather, the eldest of the eight children, got married in Phildelphia and then in 1900 for reasons I have never been able to plumb, sailed for South Africa with his wife and two daughters. In a suburb of Cape Town my father was born in 1908. Many of my grandparents “landslat” must have also immigrated to the same area, as in my childhood there were numerous people whom I called uncle and aunt even though we weren’t related. I went to the same school and the same university as my father and no doubt would also have followed in my father’s footsteps and become a lawyer if fate had not stepped in and changed the course of my life – but that is another story.

On my mother’s side two brothers married two sisters in Keidan, Lithuania, and before the end of the nineteenth century emigrated to Bloemfontein South Africa where my mother was born. Although I don’t know the exact year it was before the ‘Anglo Boer War’ as today I own a Dutch pewter jug which English soldiers who were billeted in my grandparents’ home, took as booty from a Boer’s farm.

The Jews of South Africa of the first and second generation were a very close, closed community. Even though I went to a government public school, all my friends outside school were Jewish. My parents’ friends were all Jewish. It was only at the University of Cape Town that my circle widened to include non Jews. Any contact with the non”white “community was limited to the master-servant relationship which only  a South African born individual can understand. Perhaps one day I’ll try to explain the Black-White-Jewish-Christian situation which was so particular to South Africa. Today my South African relations are spread all over the globe

I “made aliyah” to Israel ( a Jew doesn’t immigrate to Israel) in 1960 and during my army service – another quirk of fate as I was supposed to enroll in the Hebrew University, I came to Nahal Oz which now over 50 years later is still my home and where my wife and I brought up our four children. Today they are living in different parts of the country and we have 14 grandchildren.

There is an amazing unexplainable bond between Jews in communities all over the world. This link must be cherished as it is a trait which is peculiar to our people. Have we stopped “wandering? I think not. Still we can proudly claim an unbroken chain of Jewish generations over three thousand years.

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Hartuv is a freelance writer based in Nahal Oz, Israel.  He may be contacted at dov.hartuv@sdjewishworld.com