Identity area
Type of entity
Family
Authorized form of name
Isaacs Family
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
The Rev. Harris Isaacs was born in Poland in 1861. It is not known exactly when he immigrated to London, but between 1886 and 1889 he served as minister, lecturer, Reader, and Head teacher at the South Hackney Synagogue in London. He emigrated to South Africa after 1890, and from approximately 1893 to 1896, he served as minister of the Johannesburg Hebrew Congregation, the congregation that broke away from the original Witwatersrand Hebrew Congregation, founded in 1887. Rev. Isaacs became a naturalized British subject in the Cape of Good Hope in 1901. In 1904 he was granted a permit to enter and reside in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony. He served as the minister to the Kimberley Hebrew Congregation until his retirement due to ill health in 1927, when he went to live in Muizenberg. He died on 14 July 1935. Rev. Isaacs’ son, Philip Isaacs, born in 1906, was the longest serving pharmacist in Cape Town. Isaacs opened his pharmacy on the Camps Bay beach front in 1931. He was still practicing in the year 2000, keeping the pharmacy open seven days a week. He retired in 2002 at the age of 96, and died three years later, in August 2005, when the pharmacy building was put up for auction.