Modern Communities of European Descent
- There is a substantial, mostly Ashkenazic Jewish community in South Africa. These Jews arrived mostly from Lithuania prior to World War II, though others have origins in Britain, Germany, and Eastern Europe. To a lesser extent, Sephardic Jews, primarily originating from the Island of Rhodes also settled in sub-Saharan Africa, in territories such as the Belgian Congo. Subsequently, members of these Jewish communities migrated to South Africa. Connected to them were the small European Jewish communities in Namibia (South West Africa), Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia), Lesotho (Basutuland), Swaziland, Botswana (Bechuanaland), Zaire (Belgian Congo, mostly Sephardim), Kenya, Malawi (Nyasaland), Zambia (Northern Rhodesia) all of which had synagogues and even formal Jewish schools usually based in the capitals of these countries. (See History of the Jews in South Africa.)
- Historically, there was a Jewish community in Maputo, Mozambique, but after the independence of the country, most left. The government has officially returned the Maputo synagogue to the Jewish community, but "little or no Jewish community remains to reclaim it."
Read more about this topic: African Jews
Famous quotes containing the words modern, communities, european and/or descent:
“These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models, the books they read and the speeches they hear, their table-talk, gossip, controversies, historical sense and scientific training, the values they appreciate, the quality of life they admire. All communities have a culture. It is the climate of their civilization.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Unsophisticated and confiding, they are easily led into every vice, and humanity weeps over the ruin thus remorselessly inflicted upon them by their European civilizers.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“My life has been one long descent into respectability.”
—Mandy Rice-Davies (b. 1944)