Darker Shade of Pale: Shtetl to Colony

Darker Shade of Pale traces early twentieth century Jewish migration from the Russian 
Empire to colonial South Africa through one man’s life. Blending personal memoir and 
historical inquiry, Deborah Posel reveals the hidden costs of uprooting—dislocation, 
ambition, shame—and the shame of failure in a settler colony.
 A sweeping story with intimate roots, Darker Shade of Pale traces a little-known 
chapter in the history of global migration: the journey of families at the turn of the 
twentieth century from the Jewish territories of the Russian Empire, called The Pale of 
Settlement, to the far-flung British colony of South Africa.
 At the heart of this book by acclaimed South African sociologist, Deborah Posel, 
is the story of her grandfather, Maurice Posel. An ordinary man whose struggles and 
disappointments mirror those of countless others, this book challenges the common 
narrative of Jewish immigrant success in South Africa. Darker Shade of Pale brings into 
focus the traumas of dislocation along with the pressures to succeed and the shame 
of failure. Through one man’s unfulfilled hopes, we discover what was given and what 
was taken as immigrants sought to build new lives in a strange land.
 From the shtetl’s rigid traditions to the racial hierarchies of the British Empire, Posel 
explores how migrants navigated social orders. She reveals how Jewish preoccupations 
with status and success travelled from shtetl to colony, and the psychological costs 
incurred; the ironies of this journeying for literate, working women from the shtetl; the 
version of whiteness that South Africa assigned to Jews from Eastern Europe and the 
various ways in which they interacted with Black people; the unexpected economic 
routes they chose as well as the prejudicial punches that Jewish immigrants had to 
take – from both the British and the already-assimilated English-speaking Jewish 
community in South Africa.
 Lyrical, probing and unflinching, Darker Shade of Pale is a powerful reminder that 
the migrant’s story is never simple and always singular.