OUDTSHOORN, JERUSALEM OF AFRICA;

xviii, 206 pages: illustrations (mainly portraits), maps. Inscriptions on half-title page. Cloth with gilding.

Oudtshoorn, during the ostrich feather boom times, had a proportionally larger concentration of Jews than any other centre in Southern Africa. The vast majority of those Jews came from Kelm and Shavel, two communities in Lithuania. However, as trade declined, most of the Jewish inhabitants left for other centres around the country. In his foreword, Dr Frank Bradlow indicates the value of the book, as it records for posterity a unique community that 'was and is no more'. As they dispersed, the community’s Lithuanian traditions were spread amongst the wider Jewish population. The original manuscript was written in Yiddish by Feldman who Bradlow describes as a 'kulturmensch'.