Under African Skies: Jewish Life in Rhodesia

In the heart of Southern Africa, far from Europe’s shtetls and Mediterranean shores, an unlikely chapter of Jewish history unfolded. Here, in Rhodesia’s sun-scorched plains, families who had fled pogroms, persecution, and war forged a community that was at once fragile and unshakable—its survival tested by fire, politics, and exile.

The Jewish community in Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe—was a mosaic of tradition and cultural richness. Though small in number, we were tightly knit, deeply rooted in faith, ancestry, and kinship. My family was part of this fabric, one of many threads in a tapestry woven over generations by Jews who came from scattered homelands to build something lasting in Southern Africa.

The earliest Jewish settlers arrived in the late 1800s, mostly Ashkenazi Jews from Russia and Lithuania, fleeing pogroms and persecution. They brought with them a commitment to Jewish life, a love of learning, and strong Zionist ideals. In towns like Bulawayo and Salisbury (now Harare), they laid the foundations of community life, building synagogues, Hebrew schools, youth movements, and communal organizations such as the Rhodesian Jewish Board of Deputies and the Zionist Council.

In the 1930s, a wave of Sephardi Jews arrived from the Greek island of Rhodes. They settled primarily in Salisbury, bringing their vibrant Ladino traditions and distinctive cuisine to the mix—borekas, pastelikos, biscochos, and folk songs that pulsed through community gatherings.

Six Torah scrolls carried by rabbis are held before being placed in the Aron Hakodesh, in the Sephardi synagogue, Salisbury, on 1st June 1958.

Then came the German Jews, my family among them, fleeing the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Many were professionals—lawyers, doctors, teachers—who carried both the trauma of their recent past and the refinement of Central European Jewish culture. They integrated quickly, contributing to Rhodesia’s intellectual and economic life.

In the 1960s, as civil war broke out in the newly independent Congo, another wave of Jewish refugees arrived. They brought with them a hybrid identity—European roots filtered through the dust and layered history of postcolonial Africa—adding new threads to an already rich communal tapestry.

Each group arrived carrying the weight of what they had left behind, but with skills, traditions, and stories that strengthened the whole.

Menachem Begin Addressing Rhodesian Jewish Community 1950s

My family owned and operated a successful dry cleaning business in Bulawayo. We serviced the local hotels and the Rhodesian Railways, washing and pressing linens for the couchettes—sleep wagons that carried travelers through the night to Mozambique or South Africa. Like so many others, we were part of the country’s growing infrastructure, part of the promise of a flourishing Jewish life.

As children, we belonged to Zionist youth movements—Habonim, Betar, Bnei Akiva—depending on our families' political leanings, passed down at kitchen tables. We camped under the stars, danced the hora, sang Hebrew songs around bonfires, and grew up with a clear sense of identity and belonging.

Then, in 1965, a seismic shift occurred: Rhodesia declared unilateral independence, triggering global condemnation, economic sanctions, and escalating tensions. By the late 1960s and ’70s, the once-stable environment began to unravel. Many Jewish families, uncertain about the country’s future, began to leave. One by one, they drifted away—to South Africa, Israel, the UK, Australia, the U.S. The community dwindled, the streets emptied, until it was our turn to go.

In 1986, our family emigrated to Gainesville, Florida. We joined a synagogue within the first week of our arrival. It was instinctive, like seeking shelter. How comforting to walk into a sanctuary 5,000 miles from home and hear the same melodies, recite the same prayers. Even the food—gefilte fish, teiglach, chopped liver—was comfortingly familiar. It made the upheaval bearable. We may have left our country, but we found our people.

Then, just as we were beginning to rebuild our lives, we heard news from back home in Rhodesia: the historic Bulawayo synagogue was destroyed in a fire.

In a biblical twist of fate, the synagogue that was founded in 1894, caught fire just after Tisha B’Av, the day commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. A burning hedge outside had ignited the building. As word of the fire spread, members of the community rushed to the scene and stood by helplessly.

Within minutes, the sanctuary was engulfed in flames, leaping into the skies. Suddenly two men broke from the crowd and, ignoring firefighters’ dire warnings, plunged into the burning synagogue. Moments later, they emerged, covered in soot, carrying all six Torah scrolls and a 300-year-old parochet (curtain) from the Aron Kodesh.

The siddurim and holy books were destroyed but the synagogue’s most sacred treasures were saved.

Perhaps the most haunting image from that day was Rabbi Leizer Abrahamson, then 104 years old, standing beside the charred remains of the shul where he had officiated for decades. He clutched his cane with one hand, wiped away tears with the other, and asked, broken-hearted, what he would be buried in—his tallit had been consumed by the flames.

Rabbi Leizer Abrahamson

The congregation continues to function, holding services in temporary quarters. But given the community’s dwindling numbers and fragile finances, it’s unlikely a new synagogue will rise from the ashes. In a city that once boasted a Jewish population of 3,000, fewer than 70 remain—most of them elderly.

And yet, the legacy endures.

Non-Jewish students in the Carmel Primary school.

Carmel, the Jewish day school in Bulawayo still stands, but the students are no longer Jewish. Instead, children of all ethnicities attend, drawn by its reputation for academic excellence. They sing Hebrew songs and recite prayers in a language they don’t understand, unwittingly preserving fragments of a once-thriving Jewish community. The old-age home houses a few remaining Jews who chose to stay as the world they once knew slips away.

The façade of the Bulawayo Synagogue

You may never walk the streets of Bulawayo, or hear the trains rumble through the night, their linen-clad couchettes bound for Mozambique or South Africa. You may never sit in a synagogue filled with voices singing Lecha Dodi under a hot African sky, but know this: a Jewish world once thrived there. We were bakers and butchers, teachers and tailors, dry cleaners and dreamers. We built businesses, schools, and synagogues. We danced at weddings, mourned at gravesides, and sent our children to Zionist youth groups.

We were few, but we were mighty. We lived fully, fiercely, and with deep conviction in who we were.  And when we left, we carried it all with us—not in suitcases, but in our hearts.

Photo credit: with thanks to zjc.org.il