Ryan and our Sindiswa are growing up not tattooed White Master/ Swart Meisie just as the Nazis tattooed numbers on the inmates of concentration camps. Why d’you need that ghetto disguise to make you real?
This Jonathan, the functionaries, the boy, are now grouped on the platform.
Jabu senses beside her that Steve is not aware of the address being given about the significance for the boy to be bar mitzvahed, he’s not even hearing the edict taken not only to be faithful to Judaism but to fulfil human responsibilities to everyone, the people and the country. Good sense to hear; she turns to him—and there are his hands splayed palm-down on his thighs. The male gesture of tense reaction she knows in him although she doesn’t, this time, know a cause. Her hand like a secret between them goes over his. There is some sort of text reading announced to which the assembly apparently is to respond at points from the pages and lines given in the books supplied. In the church most know the Bible but here at the occasion there is scuffling and consultation of Torah and prayer book among the congregation, which certainly includes Jonathan’s business associates of various backgrounds religious or otherwise, some Afrikaners, ambitious brother capitalists no longer the master race. There’s one black man among them, must be member of a board; an example of forward-looking recognition of Black Empowerment policy in the second Leninist definition of power, ‘first gain the political kingdom then the kingdom of finance’.
She is the only black woman.
Jabu flutters the pages of the right volume and speaks the responses at the right moment in the English version along with the Hebrew of the old man in his fringed prayer shawl. During pauses when nothing seems to be required of respect while there is activity of some sort going on up at the platform, Jonathan’s alter ego stands as if awaiting orders, there are men in the same kind of dress and in conventional dark suits coming to put a hand on the shoulder or briefly round the arms of the boy Ryan with instruction, advice or homage, the boy’s not seen to do more than nod slow and repeatedly. Brenda leaves her seat and goes up to the official group, comes down again, then once more summoned. There is no word seen to be exchanged between her and the figure of her husband. At some stage there is a rustle of hush in the congregation-cum-audience; a moment has come. The boy walks up to the podium-pulpit with back intently bent, straightens, swallows (you can’t see the movement of the Adam’s apple from the distance of the seats but everyone knows that brave pause) and delivers his candidacy speech in the English version and in Hebrew for which he has been under tuition for several years. Then comes the other Moment, the revelation by the young hand about to be that of a man, of what is most holy in this house of God, as the revealing of the likeness of the rebel Jew, Jesus, is in the other religion He inspired. The boy takes hold of a cord, the curtains sway on the wall, shake folds and curl back either side with the flourish of a retreating wave. He lifts out the Scroll of The Law. Jabu’s half-turned in her seat as if she’s about to applaud, but knows better than this secular impulse, in a house of worship.
And that’s only the beginning of the spectacle, there are ceremonial embraces up there, it’s like a scene from a religion ancient as an archaic Greek frieze, it looks as though some in embrace are going to succumb to the floor. And the solemnity changes key to something different, an order is being made of the rabbi, his cohort of family men and male friends, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, businessmen, some transformed by a token enrobement, family women in whatever is their individual best (just as down in the congregation Steve’s wife is in hers) with the inducted boy carrying aloft like a trophy the Scroll of The Law on its staff. He leads the parade down from the
This Jonathan, the functionaries, the boy, are now grouped on the platform.
Jabu senses beside her that Steve is not aware of the address being given about the significance for the boy to be bar mitzvahed, he’s not even hearing the edict taken not only to be faithful to Judaism but to fulfil human responsibilities to everyone, the people and the country. Good sense to hear; she turns to him—and there are his hands splayed palm-down on his thighs. The male gesture of tense reaction she knows in him although she doesn’t, this time, know a cause. Her hand like a secret between them goes over his. There is some sort of text reading announced to which the assembly apparently is to respond at points from the pages and lines given in the books supplied. In the church most know the Bible but here at the occasion there is scuffling and consultation of Torah and prayer book among the congregation, which certainly includes Jonathan’s business associates of various backgrounds religious or otherwise, some Afrikaners, ambitious brother capitalists no longer the master race. There’s one black man among them, must be member of a board; an example of forward-looking recognition of Black Empowerment policy in the second Leninist definition of power, ‘first gain the political kingdom then the kingdom of finance’.
She is the only black woman.
Jabu flutters the pages of the right volume and speaks the responses at the right moment in the English version along with the Hebrew of the old man in his fringed prayer shawl. During pauses when nothing seems to be required of respect while there is activity of some sort going on up at the platform, Jonathan’s alter ego stands as if awaiting orders, there are men in the same kind of dress and in conventional dark suits coming to put a hand on the shoulder or briefly round the arms of the boy Ryan with instruction, advice or homage, the boy’s not seen to do more than nod slow and repeatedly. Brenda leaves her seat and goes up to the official group, comes down again, then once more summoned. There is no word seen to be exchanged between her and the figure of her husband. At some stage there is a rustle of hush in the congregation-cum-audience; a moment has come. The boy walks up to the podium-pulpit with back intently bent, straightens, swallows (you can’t see the movement of the Adam’s apple from the distance of the seats but everyone knows that brave pause) and delivers his candidacy speech in the English version and in Hebrew for which he has been under tuition for several years. Then comes the other Moment, the revelation by the young hand about to be that of a man, of what is most holy in this house of God, as the revealing of the likeness of the rebel Jew, Jesus, is in the other religion He inspired. The boy takes hold of a cord, the curtains sway on the wall, shake folds and curl back either side with the flourish of a retreating wave. He lifts out the Scroll of The Law. Jabu’s half-turned in her seat as if she’s about to applaud, but knows better than this secular impulse, in a house of worship.
And that’s only the beginning of the spectacle, there are ceremonial embraces up there, it’s like a scene from a religion ancient as an archaic Greek frieze, it looks as though some in embrace are going to succumb to the floor. And the solemnity changes key to something different, an order is being made of the rabbi, his cohort of family men and male friends, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers, businessmen, some transformed by a token enrobement, family women in whatever is their individual best (just as down in the congregation Steve’s wife is in hers) with the inducted boy carrying aloft like a trophy the Scroll of The Law on its staff. He leads the parade down from the
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