We stood in the first synagogue built in sub-Saharan Africa, now a part of the South African Jewish Museum. I’d arranged to have a private tour of the institution with its director, the affable Gavin Morris. He pointed out notable objects in the cases lining the wall, including a rare Haggadah written in Afrikaans. A group of kids on a field trip passed by, and Morris paused our tour to greet them. When he returned, he told us how the museum brings in about 8,000 children from township schools per year, paying for the buses and their lunches. “This will likely be the only field trip they ever get,” he said with a sigh.

The kids looked quite fascinated. Morris told us that since South Africans tend to be religious, they’re interested in religion in general, including Judaism. I suspect the museum is also compelling to locals because, as we learned, the history of South Africa’s Jewish community intertwines inextricably with that of the country as a whole.

Jewish people started arriving in the mid-19th century after the Dutch, who didn’t allow Jews to live in Cape Town, lost control of the colony to Britain, which did. A few decades later, the original British-Jewish immigrants were joined by about 40,000 Jews from Lithuania, who were fleeing pogroms and the antisemitic May Laws enacted by the Russian czar. Together, these groups forged a distinctive South African Jewish identity, and the local Jewish culture remains relatively homogeneous to this day.