Welcome to the website of the
Jewish Community of Woodstock and Salt River
Woodstock and Salt River, close to the docks in Cape Town, is where the earliest immigrants to Cape Town settled, including Litvak Jews arriving from Eastern Europe. At first it was a fashionable seaside suburb with cottages next to the beach. Later with land reclamation, it became an inland industrial centre in which the Jewish community participated vigorously.
They built a shul called Agudat Achim, 'A Band of Brothers', which was home to the Woodstock and Salt River Hebrew Congregation for over 60 years. It was a close-knit community of hardworking, Yiddish-speaking grienes (fresh immigrants) who lived side-by-side with a variety of races. From one generation to the next, they became South Africans who placed a great emphasis on Jewish education and values, a proud bastion of Yiddishkeit in a suburb beyond the Cape Town city bowl. Today it no longer exists. The community dissolved and the shul was sold in the 1980s. Still, its memory lives on in the hearts and minds of Woodstockers around the world, and in their descendants, to whom its values have been imparted.
Herschel Gelbart in Florida, USA, is driving this CHOL website. With his cousins Cecil Gelbart and Harold Idesis of Cape Town, they put together a vast Woodstock and Salt River Hebrew Congregation collection of its history, legacy, and heritage - which has been added to the South African Jewish Museum's digital archive. The collection includes a variety of photographs, documents, audio recordings, published and original articles, and interviews, covering 1914 until the present. This CHOL website, which has permission to use material from the archive, hopes to bring to life and tell the stories of the remarkable people involved.
Herschel's father, Mike Gelbart, was the last chairman of the Woodstock and Salt River congregation, for 30 years, ending in 1982 with his death when the shul finally closed. We are pleased to link to the YouTube channel, where you'll find the almost hauntingly uplifting traditional chants from that immigrant generation, sung by Mike Gelbart, a baal tefila/baal kore. There are 15 audio recordings covering a variety of tunes, or nusach, sung throughout the Jewish year.
If you have comments questions or information about the Jewish Community of Woodstock and Salt River do get in touch with Herschel Gelbart muizie@icloud.com or with info@chol.website.
Click here for a map.
Website of the Woodstock and Salt River Jewish Community
Created and hosted by CHOL – Community History On-Line
For information and to join the CHOL mailing list, email info@chol.website
Compiled by Herschel Gelbart, Florida, USA
Edited and illustrated by Geraldine Auerbach MBE, London, UK
Formatted and uploaded by Bramie Lenhoff, Delaware, USA
February 2025
