This history is being documented to record, for posterity, the Jewish settlers in the towns and villages of South Africa and to highlight the contribution made by many of them to the development and growth of the country It fills an important omission in the overall history of this country.

Our general aims in chronicling this history are to:

• Remedy a significant omission in the overall history of this country.
• Record the many contributions made by Jewish settlers living in country communities.
• Provide South African Jews who lived in the country areas with a stronger sense of their roots.

This website is intended to:

• Make the published books in the series Jewish Life in the South African Country Communities available to many more readers from all sorts of backgrounds.
• Raise funds to enable us to finish the last volume in the series as rapidly as possible.
• Make our database of all the towns and villages we have covered available to the general public when this project is completed.

Sources of Information

The data base has been compiled with the help of the archives and libraries at the SAJBD, SAZF and the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research at UCT, and many other sources such as press cuttings, encyclopaedias, personal interviews with family members and various websites. From these the story of each place has been written.