Gardens Shul

Gardens Shul stands in the Company Gardens at the heart of Cape Town, surrounded by one of the city’s historic green spaces. Two synagogues occupy this site, linking Jewish worship with the architectural history of South Africa. The Old Shul dates from 1863, while the larger 1905 building brings Edwardian grandeur through its symmetry, large windows, and ornate stonework.

The congregation began in 1841, when Jewish worshippers met in a private home on Erev Yom Kippur. That gathering led to the Society of the Jewish Community of Cape Town and the country’s oldest Jewish congregation. Parker and Forsythe designed the later synagogue as the community grew, especially after Jewish migrants arrived from Eastern Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The grounds now include the South African Jewish Museum, the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, and the Gardens Jewish Community Centre.

A kosher café, Café Riteve, adds an everyday meeting place beside these cultural institutions. The site also hosted a memorial service for Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after his assassination in 1995. Inside the museum, exhibitions trace Jewish life in South Africa alongside the Holocaust and Jewish communities in Eastern Europe.