Progressive youth activities over the years
Youth activities over the years became less formal, and less subject to adult supervision.
Click on any spot in a picture below to see it enlarged.
A picnic and games in the countryside for the children, dated 1939. The real thrill though, was a long drive in a motor car, still something of a marvel
Members of the youth movement Matei Sinai dressed in their scout-like khaki uniforms, bring baskets of fruit to Temple Israel during Shavuot. Rabbi Weiler is in the centre.
Children play in the large swimming pool at Camp Caplan, a family retreat in the Magaliesburg.
Speaking to young adults – several puffing away at cigarettes - at a makeshift bench in the middle of the veld, Rabbi Weiler opens the first buildings at the Alan Isaacs camp near Margate in July 1950.
Camp superintendent Izzy Wainer teaches children how to boil a kettle over an open fire. The older girls are wearing the official scout-like uniform of Matei Sinai.
Great fun among pre-teen children at Temple Israel, ostensibly conducting their own Oneg Shabbat service in June 62. An adult hovers in the distant background.
B’nei Emunah was a post-barmitzvah ceremony held after further study, at age 15 (and called Confirmation in Cape Town). Graduates of the 1971 class at Temple Israel Johannesburg with Rabbi Walter Blumenthal are, from left: Mervyn Dendy; Sandra Heineberg; Philip Frank; Shelley Ellis; David Harris; Gael Paul; Eugene de Meillon; Cheryl Lipschitz; and Barry Davidow.
By the early years of the 21st century, the Progressive youth group Netzer had become far more ethnically diverse, as shown in this photograph taken at Beit Emanuel in Johannesburg in 2010.
Leaders of the youth group Netzer in earnest discussion on a beach outside Cape Town in 2013, where summer and winter camps were held for many years.