Goldfoot Genealogy

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

Aubrey Solomon Meir Eban; 2 February 1915 – 17 November 2002) was an Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages.

During his career, he was Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and ambassador to the United States and to the United Nations. He was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

His comment that Arabs "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" (i.e., for peace), made after the Geneva peace talks in December 1973, is often quoted.

Eban was at times criticized for not voicing his opinions in Israel's internal debate. However, he was generally known to be on the "dovish" side of Israeli politics and was increasingly outspoken after leaving the cabinet. In 1977 and 1981, it was widely understood that Shimon Peres intended to name Eban Foreign Minister, had the Labor Party won those elections. Eban was offered the chance to serve as minister without portfolio in the 1984 national unity government, but chose to serve instead as Chair of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee from 1984 to 1988.                                                                           

Stanley Goldfoot, born 1914,  was my 2nd-3rd cousin.  I found him in his home in Jerusalem and was able to meet with him several times.  He had been the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group, a group of young men before 1948 that fought against the British, etc.  He was born in South Africa from Lithuanian-born Jews.  His family had gone to Ireland like my grandfather did from Lithuania, and from there to South Africa, which mine did not.  Instead he opted for the USA.  Stanley had a beautiful home in Jerusalem. When I met him in 1980-81, he had the very same slim physique.   

The Jerusalem Post Magazine-Newspaper  of Friday, September 23, 1983 on page 12, had an interesting article on the Jews of South Africa. I had found our grandfather Nathan in Ireland living with another Goldfoot relative.  They were both from Lithuania.   I kept that article with a few others and just ran across them again.  It mentions that they were great Zionists.  There had been for some decades, 120,000 Jews in South Africa, the overwhelming majority of them being Litvaks--ie, they, or their parents, or their grandparents, or their great-grandparents were born in Kovno, Vilna, Grodno, Vitebsk, Minsk or Mogilev. (or other towns in Lithuania like Telsiai or Papile)

My paternal grandfather, Nathan,  was from Telsiai, and  my 3rd cousin twice removed through genealogy; 4th through DNA connecting to my brother.   Grant Gochin's paternal grandfather, Samuel,  was from Papile.  Grant's Descendants of Faive Shrago Gochin born 1837 in Papile, Sialuai, Kuanes, Lithuania had married my Tsipa Goldfus b: 1842 in Papile, Lithuania. We have the connection vetted via DNA and genealogy.    

"There were a few thousand Jews in South Africa who had immigrated there from England and Germany.  Many of them had become immensely wealthy mining magnates, like Barmato, Oppenheimer, Joel, Philips and Albu.  They despised us as "greeners" and we loathed and disdained them, not because they were so rich---many of our best Zionists were very affluent, we had nothing against dear, lovely money as such,---but because they were assimilationists, would-be  "passers" when married their children to Christians, and even got converted.  We were all Zionists.

Max Gluckman:  

Many years later, after the state was established in 1948, Sarah Gertrude Millin, the novelist, was persuaded by Moshe Sharett to introduce him to Sir Earnest Oppenheimer.  Sharett hoped that the magic of his tongue would win this sinner back to Zion---there is more joy in Zionism over one who repenteth than over one who always believed---and that Sir Ernest would cough up a substantial slice of his gold and diamond and other holdings for the cause.  Sir Ernest's pockets remained closed, but he did agree to do something of greater value than a donation---he got the diamond Syndicate to help Israel's infant diamond industry with allocations of diamonds.

Still later, Sir Ernest's son, Harry Oppenheimer, whom I once interviewed and found  so attractive that I suspected his ancestors really came from Kovno, was completely converted by the combined persuasions of Judge Issy Maisels and Pinchas Sapir.  Whenever Israel faced a crisis---which was every few months---Sapir would ring up Issy to go to Oppenheimer to make him double his donation.  

Why the Zionists so dominated the lives of the Jewish community is a subject that fascinated Gideon Shimoni, of the Hebrew University's Institute of Contemporary Jewry, who wrote an authoritative book on Jews and Zionism:  the South African Experience.  This was remarkably good  up to a point, this point being the inadequate attention he paid to certain Zionists I revered throughout my boyhood.  In no other country did Zionists dominate organized Jewish life to the same extent as in South Africa.

Zionism was to my brothers, my sister and me like gin to Eliza Doolittle's aunt.  Our mother, Katie Gluckmann, was to Southern African Zionism what Henrietta Szold was to American Zionism.  She carried the flag, and fought the good fight, in every city and dorp (hamlet) between the Congo and Cape Agulhas.  (My cousin once put it to her that she should carry a few lines, like stockings or blouses, to sell to the Jews in between indoctrinating and inspiring them).  She was the 1st woman to be elected to the S.A. Zlionist Federation, and was chairman for endless years of the Keren Kayemet in South Africa.  There in a family tradition that she suggested the introduction of the blue box. 

I still remember the alarms and excursions when Vera Weizmann visited South Africa together with her great husband, and suggested to the leading Zionist women that they establish a women's branch of WIZO in South Africa.  

All the men leading S.A. Zionism at the time were as determined male chauvinists as any Prussian Junker, and they resisted the move by every possible means, foul or foul.  Our telephone hummed with calls to and from Mrs. Weizmann, Ethel Heyman, Deborah Katzen (later Sagorsky), Anna Franks and Mrs. Greenberg.  In the end, virtue triumphed, and the S.A. women's Council was created. 

As Gideon Shimoni points out in a thoughtful brochure issued for the Beth Hatefutsoth exhibition, South Africa was very different from America as far as the Jews were concerned.

While all the whites belonged to a privileged minority compared to the blacks, there were deep and bitter divisions and hatreds among the whites.  The Afrikaners never got over the traumatic experience of the Boer War.  The Jews, largely identified with the English-speaking section, were despised by both the Afrikaners and the English.  Social anti-Semitism was a deeply rooted phenomenon. 

It is true that Jews, Italians and Irish suffered at the hands of the WASP's (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) in America, but there was an overriding drive in the U.S. for everyone to become American in a melting-pot,---there was no such drive in South Africa.  We were South African patriots, but we were also well aware of the gulfs between us and the other sections of the white population.  We loved South Africa for its incredible beauty and its gracious way of life, but we knew that other South African did not love us.

We grew up trying to reconcile 2 somewhat contradictory dreams---to play cricket for South Africa and to emigrate to what was then Palestine.

The flame of our Zionism was kept burning ever brighter by the visits of great emissaries on Keren Hayesod and Keren Kayemet campaigns.  Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, Colonel Kisch, Josiah Wedgwood, Alexander Goldstein, Mossinsohn the educator, Zuckerman the American---they came, they saw, they orated, they conquered. " 

And there my piece of the article ended.  How many immigrated to Palestine?  They could have been in the great numbers of making aliyah from 1882 on in 5 great migrations.

South African Jews in Israel are immigrants and descendants of the immigrants of the South African Jewish communities, who now reside within the state of Israel. They number around 20,000.  

Labels: Abba Eban, Aliyah, Israel, Lithuania, South Africa, Zionism

# posted by Nadene Goldfoot @ 12:18 PM 0 comments