How South African Jews founded the modern city of Ashkelon

There are complaints, and there are other kinds of complaints. Anne Bloch, wife of the late Dr. Aaron Bloch, the first resident doctor in Ashkelon and a founder of Barzilai Hospital, relates one of the stranger gripes from a Yemenite immigrant to Israel in the early days of the state. Most babies in Yemen died soon after childbirth, he grumbled, and now the brand new, swanky hospital was enabling all the offspring to survive. How could struggling parents cope with that?

This anecdote is just one of the unexpected laugh-out-loud moments in David Zwebner’s The Founding of Modern Ashkelon by South African Jews – a history of the coastal town that was funded and founded by money raised in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The book – and entrepreneur Zwebner’s interest in Ashkelon (where he now promotes real estate) – sprang from a random mitzvah some years ago. Completing a stint of IDF reserve duty just before his final tour guide exams, he gave a hitchhiking soldier a lift to Ashkelon, even though it was in the opposite direction of his Jerusalem home. 

“I thought that seeing the town might be useful before my tests,” he recalls. The detour gave Zwebner a sharp sense of déjà vu; driving through Ashkelon’s leafy suburb of Afridar, he felt transported back to Emmerentia in Johannesburg, where he’d grown up. To his amazement, he discovered South Africa Boulevard, Johannesburg Street, and Kaapstad Street, and single-family homes with gardens strikingly reminiscent of neighborhoods 6,000 miles away. Locals told him that many years previously, South African immigrants had lived in the area but they’d long since left.

Zwebner was intrigued. He subsequently enrolled to do a BA at Ashkelon College and dived into research on South Africa’s historical involvement in the town. What he discovered is documented in his book, together with some 100 pages of maps, newspaper clippings, SA Jewish Board of Deputies reports from the early 1950s, and photographs of the city then and now. 

South African Jews in Ashkelon

The seeds of South African involvement were planted in the sands from which the city of Ashkelon would spring right at the beginning of the nascent Jewish state. Starting from 1948, the South African Jewish Appeal, on the advice of Israel’s government, changed tack and invested in settling Holocaust survivors and other immigrants in Israel instead of supporting survivors in Europe. Minister of Labor Golda Meyerson (who’d later change her name to Golda Meir) proposed settling the former Palestinian town of al-Majdal; the South African Jewish Appeal took up the challenge to plan a modern, decentralized garden city for those who had escaped Hitler’s genocide. 

Zwebner, who became a tour guide, starts his narrative from when God separated the heavens from the Earth: Tel Ashkelon is rich in remnants of Canaanites, Philistines, Persians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines. The city flourished in the Bronze Age – its location smack on the sea between Egypt and Syria, Anatolia and Mesopotamia, made it an important station on the ancient Via Maris trade route. In the Middle Ages, the port oscillated between Muslim rulers and Christian Crusaders until Mameluke sultan Baybars ordered the citadel and harbor destroyed. The inhabitants abandoned their broken town, and the once-flourishing port fell into the sands. 

Read the book to discover how Ottoman rule saw an Arab village called al-Majdal established adjacent to ancient Ashkelon. The British Mandate period involved erecting public structures and settling Jews and Christians in the area until Israel’s War of Independence led to the Arab village, together with the whole of Gaza, being captured to check the advance of Egypt’s army that was marching toward Tel Aviv. 

After the war, Israel was keen to populate the city with Jews as quickly as possible, settling deserted Arab land with new immigrants from Yemen, Turkey, North Africa, and central Europe. The infrastructure was nonexistent or not sufficient, and the large influx of new residents made planning and expanding a matter of urgency. South African Jews stepped in to plan a new city. 

Zwebner meticulously relates how terms were established, money was raised (some two million pounds sterling), roads, railway lines and a station, bus routes, schools, medical clinics, industry and community services were planned, and the Afridar Building and Development Company was formed.

South African town planners and architects envisaged a master plan that evoked Houghton or Constantia; luxury villas in a garden-style city with verdant parks and sea views, accessible employment, and all necessary facilities and services. Despite inevitable bureaucracy, altercations over power and differing views, Afridar eventually received 3,000 dunams for 10,000 inhabitants, and the Afridar neighborhood was constructed. Building began at the end of 1950; by July 1952, the first five families moved in.

South African immigrants and those who remained abroad were active in setting up Barzilai Hospital, a sports club, synagogue, a communal hall and post office, a library and museum, shops, workshops, and a bus shelter. A new immigrant from South Africa, Dr. Henry Sonnabend, was the first mayor. 

Then in 1958, South African Jewry transferred the entire Ashkelon project to the Government of Israel as a gift. Slowly their influence over the city waned, and ultimately many left town, although over the years other new immigrants from South Africa have settled there.

Ashkelon’s strategic position comes with its drawbacks: It’s been on the front lines since Fedayeen terrorist raids in the 1950s, right up to today with rockets from Gaza. But the beach is still beautiful, and the waves still crash to shore; the air is clear, and the well-planned city still attracts Israelis and new immigrants looking for a relaxed way of life (as relaxed as possible in the middle of the Middle East). ■

For more on the city and the unique connection it has with a Diaspora community, get your copy of the book from Amazon or email davidz@ashkelonproperties.com.