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Myer Yodaiken
Editor: Dr Saul Issroff Copyright © 2009 Saul Issroff, Mike Getz, SAfrica SIG and Jewishgen Inc. URL: http://www.jewishgen.org/SAfrica/family-histories/yodaiken/Myer_Yodaiken.htm Date: 2009 MYER YODAIKEN
As told by his son, SAM YODAIKEN In Australia - (Ex Rhodesia and S.Africa)
Myer YOKAIKEN (Meir being his Hebrew name)was born in RUSSIA in 1886, and arrived in Dublin, Ireland at the age of 3 months. He was one of 6 children, and all were born in Lithuania except for Maurice, the youngest, who was born in Ireland.
LIFE IN RHODESIA as it once was
By MALCOLM SHER (ex Rhodesia), USA Grandson of Myer YODAIKEN I can only say that for me, it was a mixed bag, with both very happy and deeply sad remembrances. Certainly as "middle class" Jewish kids growing up there, we were happy, spoiled by grandparents and family, dedicated servants, reasonably well educated in the strict, conservative British style, yet at the same time very insular and ignorant. After spending so many years in England and liberal Northern California, I can't imagine that I would have been able to live my whole life in Bulawayo, but I suppose that in those days we simply knew nothing different or better. When Sammy and Jean married soon after the war, they had little or no money and lived in a little flat on Fort Street in Bulawayo, around the corner from Jean's parents, Meyer and Rebecca "Becky" Yodaiken who lived on Abercorn Street in a sort of house attached to their shop as living quarters. The shop was the Charter Confectionery, a store selling all types of locally made and imported confectionery goods such as sweets, ice cream, chocolates as well as teas, coffees and baked goods and sandwiches and light meals. The sweets were kept on shelves in huge glass containers with metal lids.You had to climb a ladder to get to them. The ice cream was in big buckets under the front counter. There was always a choice of flavours, though nothing like you can get today. My twin brother and I particularly loved going to our grandparents on Friday nights for dinner when we were allowed to leave their living quarters and go into the darkened shop to get big bowls of ice cream and create lots of noise running on the long wooden boards behind the counter. Because the shop was right across the road from the Palace Theatre, one of only two cinemas, ("bioscopes") in Bulawayo, many of the patrons would run over there at interval, after the newsreels, trailers and comics to buy stuff before the main feature. Hylton and I loved being there when the folks from the cinema arrived and were always proud to have our friends come to our grandparents' shop. Our grandfather, Meyer,often sat in the cafe part of the shop, usually in the front window with his drink eating snoek on cream crackers or rough brown bread. My Dad's parents, Meyer and Anna, lived in a different part of town, not in the commercial center of town among other shops and businesses, but in a modest house in a suburb known as North End. They only spoke some English, and always conversed in Yiddish at home and with my Dad and his siblings. As grandparents, they were more "distant" than Meyer and Becky, with not the same tolerance for small, noisy, sticky little boys. However, I do remember them with affection. Meyer owned Atlas Motors, one of the used car businesses in Bulawayo, but fortunately had his sons "in the business" to help run the place and keep it "in the family". In later years, after their deaths, my father expanded that business, became the Southern Rhodesian representative dealer for the American company Chrysler and the French company, Simca. However, he always had a fondness for Jaguar and although he never acquired that dealership, did own most of the models of Jaguar and was noted for importing the first E-Type Jaguar into Southern Africa. What a gorgeous car. I saw one in San Francisco this past week and was quite envious!! My parents eventually were able to build a bungalow in Kumalo, a suburb several miles from central Bulawayo and where most of the Jews lived. Because my Dad was such an avid tennis player, and was appointed a Davis Cup selector, we had a clay tennis court, which required rolling with a heavy roller almost every day, especially when it had rained. We were fortunate to have many famous tennis players of the era visit and play on the court, including Lew Hoad, Pancho Segura, to name just two I remember. My parents often hosted elaborate tennis parties where, after the playing, they and their friends would sit on the veranda where servants would serve "sundowners" while the kids would ride bikes around the garden or take off for "The Quarry", an old, abandoned granite quarry, a couple of miles from our house, where we would build forts and be terrified by snakes and spiders! Most of the children knew each other, as did so many of the parents, who, or whose families had either emigrated from Europe or who were first generation born in Rhodesia. Thus, the Jewish community was closely knit and people either socialized at each other's homes or at Weitzman Country Club, until its membership declined and it closed or at Parkview Sports Club which had big time tennis and bowls facilities. Jewish kids invariably started their education at the Louis Landau Hebrew School, across the street from the beautiful old Shul where, of course BARMITZVAHS were celebrated. Later, some went to Carmel, the new Jewish day school. Hylton and I celebrated our Barmitzvah at the Bulawayo Shul in 1960, the first twin Barmitzvah there in forty years. An "open invitation" to the community resulted in several hundred people at the Shul, the Brocha and the dinner and dance. It was quite the event! The congregation labelled itself "Orthodox" and was observant, butnot really very frum and many people did not keep kosher although they would walk home from Shul on Kol Nidre to Kumalo and then back to Shul for Yom Kippur services the next morning, driving home in their cars at the end of the day. Myra Watkins, of blessed memory did the catering for almost all Jewish events in Bulawayo. Her kichel and herring were "a michel in the bichel" as we all used to say. All the boys went to Chader as was expected and, of course we gave the teachers, all older immigrants from Eastern Europe with thick accents, a particularly hard time. I recall with some mirth but now shame,how we once put sand in the petrol tank of Mr. Ninklebaum's car and one student, Michael Shmuckler would bring frogs into Mr. Slepek's class and taunt him. It was all really disgraceful behaviour....at least on reflection! In the very early 1960s, the first "Reform" Shul was started by Rabbi Cassel from London and that created quite a stir as the historically conservative community began to splinter. Things were really never the same, I'm told, although my Mom I and my brothers all left Bulawayo in 1963 to live in London and we did not really experience the deterioration of the Jewish community which is now all but decimated with only a couple of hundred congregants, if that many. In high school, boys and girls were segregated, with most boys going to Milton High and most girls to Evelyn High. Boys had to do cadet military-type training every Friday afternoon, dressed in typical Colonial-style uniforms of the era with boots which were required to be spat on and polished and with the rest of the uniform to be "just so" on pain of corporal punishment. Come to think of it, that was the same for school uniforms. I now cringe at the thought of schoolboys using a cane on other schoolboys, but such was the discipline of the time! Outside of school, the social interaction between girls and boys was usually limited to "get-togethers" at friends' homes, the cinema, attending BARMITZVAHS, sports events and Saturday night parties, including birthday celebrations, sometimes going to watch stock car racing or "speedway" motorcycles, trips to the "Dairy Den" or the "pie cart", a group of several trailers selling food near the park on Sunday night. We would always welcome outings to the Central Africa Trade Faire which was held in Bulawayo. Most of our socializing was reserved for weekends and might include. My Mom, Hylton and I were active in local repertory theater and each of us appeared in plays, many produced and directed by my aunt, Barbara Sher, who was a local T.V. personality and impresario. Many of us were members of Habonim or Betar and would frequently go on Machaneh to Weitzman Country Club, located many miles from Bulawayo or to camp at East London or Port Elizabeth where life-long friendships were forged. In our earlier years, my parents would take the whole family to Muizenberg, ("Jewsenberg") for a month or more in December, where we would either stay at the old Marine Hotel, (which is no longer there but of which I saw photos at a museum in Muizenberg some five years ago) or my parents would rent a flat in town. Usually our cook and a nanny would accompany us for the duration. So many of Bulawayo's Jews would take the same vacation and spend their holiday doing the same thing so that it was almost "life as usual" except that the parents would bake in the sun on Muizenberg Beach while the kids swam in the Vlei or played in the sand. Those were Halcyon days when we experienced and explored life in the greater world outside of insular Bulawayo, which, in retrospect, was a place where, apart from the divorce of parents, the odd "scandal" at the Shul or some businessman's downturn in fortune, nothing of any great moment occurred in our somewhat closed Jewish community. However, one unusual timeI do recall well was the refugee crisis of 1959/1960 when trainloads of white people fled the Belgian Congo and many took refuge in Rhodesia where Jewish families, including ours took them into our homes for months at a time. We would watch the news on T.V., which in those days was new in Rhodesia, only in black and white and with very limited hours per day. What a mess so much of Africa has become since then! It is a tragedy to see what has happened in Zimbabwe and I am often in tears when I think that all four of my grandparents are buried in Bulawayo's Jewish cemetery and that the rest of a once flourishing and wealthy community has fled to America, England, Australasia and elsewhere. My cousin, Brian Sher, is in charge of Bulawayo's Chevra Kadisha and I can only hope and pray that my grandparents' and other graves of people I knew are well tended. I do, of course have photos of the all four of my grandparents' gravestones. I last returned to Bulawayo about seventeen years ago, taking my family to visit our homes, schools, the Shul, before it was destroyed in a fire, Motopos and other spots such as the Victoria Falls and Wankie, (now Hwange) Game Reserve. It was a wonderful trip and I'm glad we made it before there is nothing left to see. Even then, I was heartbroken to see that so much of the infrastructure, from municipal and public buildings, including the Municipal Park and Gardens in Bulawayo were in such neglect and disrepair and so many of the homes in the suburbs had high walls and electric gates surrounding them. When in New York about five years ago, I was delighted to fine a map of Bulawayo from the 1950s and 1960s in the New York Public Library and even found the streets where many of our family and friends lived. I am such a nostalgia buff and that meant a lot! My Memories of Rhodesia
By MARTIN YODAIKEN (ex Rhodesia) now living in Cape Town Grandson of Myer YODAIKEN Our family came from Salisbury to Que Que. Que Que is an onomatopoeic name, which translates into the noise that the frogs make in the river. Que Que or Kwe Kwe as it is known today stands in the Midlands of Zimbabwe about half way between Bulawayo and Harare. After my parents married in Cape Town they went to Salisbury where after several jobs Dad, Julius, got a position as Town Electrical Engineer in Que Que. We moved there when I was about 5 years of age. There were very few Jews in Que Que and as far as I can recall only three other boys of my age Albert and David Hatchual and Morris Sloman. I had very little contact with them but always recall enjoying Albert's company. I am not sure why we did not see them more often. Anyway we had a small Shul and we would attend on High Holy Days mainly when people would come from the outlaying districts to attend. Between there were very few regulars. In fact I recall that often on a Friday night there were not enough attendees to make a minion and we would at times receive a telephone call from the Shul asking my dad and after I had bar mitzvahed to come to shul to make up a minion. I swam competitively and remember being collected from the swimming pool after training on a Friday evening, still in my tracksuit and wet costume and being taken by my father to Shul. Such was life in Que Que. Eventually and this was about a year before my *Barmy (Barmitzvah), Reverend Ermine (I think that is how you spell his name) came to Que Que and Judaism took on a whole new dimension. He was very conscientious and did his best to create a congregation. From my point of view his daughter Yeta which made my attendance at Shul more regular captured my interest. That is until I realised that she had no interest in me in that way. But we were good friends. The Sloman's were a prominent Jewish family in Que Que as were the Ralfs and the Samson's who featured prominently in my memory. We would gather at one of their houses on Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah and feast. These were the highlights for me. What I learned was that Judaism was more of an atmosphere, an ambience, than a religion. I recall that Mrs. Mulder Sloman's mother would cook exceedingly good parogen. My father loved them so much that she would send over a batch whenever she made. One dinner at their home my father in extolling the virtues of her parogen (sp) said to her "you must give the recipe to Dolores (my Mother). She said "Its very simple you take your piece of lung ..." and that was the last perogen that my father ever ate. The Sloman's owned a general dealer store called Sloman's and as far as I can remember they were the major traders in Que Que, which, as you have gathered, was exceedingly small. I am not sure what the other people did. There was of course Dr. Hirsch who was the local doctor. He thought of himself, as a bit of a psychologist and I recall him hypnotising me for some complaint concocted by my mother which he and she decided was neurotic. The congregation was very small and one year between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the man who blew the *Shofar died. As a result there was no one to do the honours on *Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). I however, played the trumpet and so was the obvious choice. At 16 years of age I was called onto the *Bima to play the Shofar to end Yom Kippur. I had never played a Shofar before and hard as I tried I could not make any sound. But my adolescent embarrassment grew and grew as one cue followed the next and the congregation sat in expectant silence. Eventually my embarrassment exploded and taking the Shofar in both hands I looked at it and exclaimed the word "CHRIST". I put the Shofar to my lips and blew a piercing blast. Rev Ermine was beside himself. He admonished me severely for calling out "Christ" the way I did, but seemingly it was only after uttering "His" name was I able to perform. My punishment: he taught me how to blow the shofar. Going to Bulawayo was always a great excitement. Every Friday and Saturday we would go to Shul and I always considered them lucky that they were real Jews. Interestingly there was another namesake (and related to our family, but at that time, it was unbeknown to me) in Que Que the "Jedeiken's". They used to refer to them as the "Jewdaikens" and us as the YODAIKENS. Not only did this reflect the nature of the spelling of our names but also the secularity with which the families approached their faith. Dad was very successful in Que Que and to his credit, in the late 50's introduced a system of load control into the midlands area. It is of note that ESKOM is only thinking of introducing this in 2008. Of my friends I believe that Morris Sloman became an airline Pilot and Albert Hatchuel I met in Johannesburg and he was a maxillo-facial specialist. I don't know what happened to David. I have met several other Jewish "Que Que-ites"who were much younger then me at the time. Most have become professionals. I mention this only because the education and variety in Que Que was so limited and so many of us finished school there. Martin Yodaiken M.A. (Clin. Psychology)(Wits) P.G. Dip in Law (Arbit. & Concil.)(UCT) PCC (GSB-UCT) CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST 12 Campground Road, Rosebank, Cape Town, South Africa, 7700 Tel: +2721685-6993 Fax: +2721685-6214 Cel: +2784685-6993 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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