David Sherman

Rabbi Dr David Sherman (13 September 1909 – 12 May 2002) was a South African and American rabbi. He was the first spiritual leader of a Reform congregation in Cape Town, where he led Temple Israel in Green Point. Early life and career He was born in Boston, Massachusetts to parents, Abraham Moshe Shereshevsky (1857–1927) and Shifra Shereshevsky (née Libovsky). His father was an Orthodox rabbi. He graduated from Boston University and later studied at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, a Jewish seminary where he was ordained as a Reform rabbi. At Hebrew Union, he befriended Moses Cyrus Weiler, future founder of the Reform movement in South Africa. Both were leaders of the 'Hebrew-speakers Club' at the college. His first rabbinical post was in Cleveland, Ohio as assistant to Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, a key figure in the mobilization of American support for the founding of the State of Israel. Chaim Weizmann, future President of Israel, was impressed by Sherman and hired him as Director of Community relations for an American Jewish Conference, which aimed to promote greater Jewish unity and organizational effectiveness for the expanding and pluralistic American Jewish community. He later took on a rabbinical position at the Jewish Community Center in Binghampton. In 1943 he emigrated to South Africa where he was the first Reform rabbi in Cape Town at his congregation, Temple Israel in Green Point. Weiler had been tasked with establishing a national Reform movement and in 1943, he agreed to help set up the first progressive congregation in Cape Town and was able to call upon Sherman, his friend and Hebrew Union classmate. The Reform movement in the city quickly grew under Sherman's leadership, eventually representing just under 25% of Cape Town Jewry. In 1947 he married Bertha Cohen at Temple Israel and the wedding was officiated by Weiler. In the 1940s and 1950s there was a cultural split between reform Jewry in Johannesburg and its counterpart in Cape Town, with the leadership in Green Point rejecting a proposal for the creation of the position of Chief Minister under which all Progressive congregations would fall. The appointee would have been Weiler, who was based in Johannesburg at Temple Israel in Hillbrow. Cape Town wanted a looser federation where each city made its own decisions and pushed back against the notion of a Chief Minister, arguing that it was against the democratic principles of Reform Judaism.