Progressive Judaism has always been relatively smaller in South Africa compared to its American counterpart. South Africa did not experience a significant wave of Jewish migration from Germany, where Reform Judaism and the Haskalah originate (Hellig 1987). It is true that Anglo-German Jewry established the South African Jewish community and later around 6, 500 German Jewish refugees came to South Africa between 1933 and 1942 (Hellig 2009). However, Gustav Saron argues that as the dominant immigrant group, Lithuanian Jews have shaped the essential character of the community (Shain 2011). South African synagogue affiliation has also tended to be more focused on family association rather than on ideological choices (Hellig 1987). Community growth may have also been stymied by the significance of the non-observant Orthodox, the dominant mode of Jewish religious identification in the country (Hellig 1987; Stier 2004). Therefore, South African Jewish society remains mostly nominally Orthodox.
