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Pioneers of Torah education in South Africa
By: David Saks
“SA Jewry may then have been largely unobservant in the strictly Orthodox sense, but it was nevertheless deeply traditional, and manifested a deep sense of loyalty to their religious heritage.”
Rabbi Michel Kossowsky giving a shiur to the Yeshiva Ketana. Rabbi Kossowsky would become the first Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva College. Following his untimely death in 1963, he was replaced by Rabbi Avraham Tanzer, who would serve in that position for over fifty years.
This photograph, at once prophetic and profoundly symbolic, shows two young Telz Yeshiva bochrim, Avraham Tanzer and Azriel Goldfein, with three Torah giants of the generation: Gaonim HaRav Mordecai Katz, HaRav Aharon Kotler, and HaRav Yaakov Ruderman. Both later moved to South Africa, where initially together and later separately they played a pivotal role in fostering Torah education, in Rabbi Tanzer’s case as the long-serving Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva College and in Rabbi Goldfein’s in founding the Yeshiva Gedolah of Johannesburg.
Farewell function for departing Bnei Akiva Yeshiva graduates prior to their departure to yeshivot overseas, December 1956: From left, Chief Rabbi LI Rabinowitz, Mendy Katz and Rabbis
Michel Kossowsky, David Sanders, and Joseph Bronner.
Four of the departing young bochrim: Mendy Katz, Zalman Kossowsky, Siggy Suchard, and Sam Himmelstein.
“Back then, if you suggested going to yeshiva, people thought you were mad. Just mentioning of the word ‘yeshiva’ was considered treif.”
So the late Arno Hammerschlag once told me. The context was a discussion around attitudes towards Jewish education, and particularly religious education, within Johannesburg Jewry during the early post-World War II years. In our own day, when the Jewish community is served by so diverse a range of quality Torah education institutions, for all ages and both sexes, one should remember that it was not always this way and reflect on how much the community owes to those who laid the foundations of what was to come.
It was Arno Hammerschlag who, then chairman of Hashomer Hadati (as Bnei Akiva was still known), announced at the organisation’s conference in April 1951 that a Yeshiva Ketana was to be established, and in due course this became a reality. In the beginning, it was no more than a modest after-school study programme for a few dozen interested teenagers with part-time input from local rabbonim. Within a few years, however, it had led to the founding of Yeshiva College, South Africa’s first religious Jewish day school. In turn, that institution would mushroom from a single all-boys class into today’s bustling Yeshiva College campus, with branches catering for hundreds of learners, from nursery school to matric.
The impact of Yeshiva College does not stop there. As it developed, the institution was also responsible, directly or indirectly, for the establishment of a range of other Torah institutions in Johannesburg. The Yeshiva Gedolah of Johannesburg and Yeshiva Maharsha (both of which spawned day schools of their own) and the Shaarei Torah and Torah Academy schools all trace their origins to Yeshiva College initiatives.
Something equally unusual began happening in 1950s Johannesburg. Possibly for the first time in the community’s history a number of its young members, in some cases not yet out of school, chose to leave their families and comfortable home environments to study at yeshivot overseas. It should be emphasised that unlike in our own day, when those studying overseas generally return for Yom Tov or other occasions, going to yeshiva back then meant being away from home for years at a time. The only contact those who did so would have with their families was through letters (remembering that this was long before email and WhatsApp) and – in view of the cost of international calls – the very occasional phone call. At that time, they would learn at yeshivot in the US, generally as at Telz or Baltimore, or in Israel. Only later would some study at institutions in the UK, such as in Gateshead and Manchester.
Most of the departing bochrim had first learned at the Yeshiva Ketana (now called the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva). They included Shmuel ‘Siggy’ Suchard, Ben Isaacson, Zalman Kossowsky, and Mendy Katz. On their return, the first three headed up several of the country’s leading congregations, combined in Rabbi Suchard’s case with serving for many years as a Dayan on the Beth Din, while Mendy Katz became Senior Ram at Kfar Ha’roeh in Israel. In addition to their role as community rabbis, all were much involved in teaching.
Having given Arno Hammerschlag’s perspective, one should note that Rabbi Suchard has a different view. In his experience, rather than being looked down upon, those learning at the new yeshiva were generally regarded with respect by the mainstream community. SA Jewry may then have been largely unobservant in the strictly Orthodox sense, but it was nevertheless deeply traditional, and manifested a deep sense of loyalty to their religious heritage.
In a communication with this writer, Rabbi Katz movingly related how when he finally returned home to visit after an absence of some six years, his father’s final illness was so advanced that he was no longer able to speak. As he lay in his bed, however, he would constantly follow his son with his eyes as he moved around the room. It reminds one that the mesiras nefesh involved in leaving for yeshiva was not just on the part of the youngsters themselves but of their parents as well.
Not all of those who studied overseas had been associated with the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva. One was Eric Kaye, who afterwards went on to a long career in the rabbinate, first in South Africa and later in New York. Another was Koppel Bacher. He was only fourteen years old when he left in 1955 to study at Lubavitch Yeshiva in New York. Over the next nine years he visited his home only twice. On his return, Rabbi Bacher, as he now was, did not begin to formally practice as a rabbi, choosing instead to enter the family wholesaling business. As he once remarked to this writer, however, it was “in his blood to advance Yiddishkeit in South Africa”, and indeed he put himself at the forefront of several crucial developments in this regard. For a lengthy period he served on the board of Yeshiva College, was involved in the establishment of the Kollel Yad Shaul in the late 1960s, and a few years later was instrumental in establishing the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in South Africa. Truly one of the unsung heroes in the saga of Torah education in this country, Rabbi Bacher was niftar shortly before Shavuot this year.
The Kollel initiative did not originate with Bnei Akiva-Yeshiva College but rather through the Adath Jeshurun congregation in Yeoville, primarily Rabbi Yaakov Salzer and his son-in-law Rabbi Zvi Lieberman. Its impact on the local Jewish youth of the time, in the words of the late Rabbi Norman Bernhard, was “like water hitting parched soil”, with hundreds attending the weekly shiurim at its Observatory premises. Many of the original attendees went on to establish a thriving, Haredi-style community in Yeoville, which relocated to Orchards in the late 1990s.
Adath Jeshurun, founded in the 1930s by strictly Orthodox refugees from Germany, was also responsible for the establishment of the high schools Yeshivas Toras Emes for boys in the mid-1960s and Beth Jacob for girls the following decade. Both provided a high level of Torah education for its own children together with those from the Kollel community and other sectors of Johannesburg Jewry. Demographic shifts from its heartland in Observatory and Yeoville saw Toras Emes eventually close after some forty years, but Beth Jacob, which relocated from Yeoville to Waverley, continues to go strong.
The founding and impact of both the Kollel and Chabad in South Africa are, of course, stories in their own right which, b’ezrat Hashem, will be possible to tell in future articles of this kind. Suffice it to say that both were genuine game-changers, completely transforming the religious environment in the community at the time.
In this necessarily brief overview of how the foundations of Torah learning were laid in post-war Johannesburg, it has only been possible to touch on a few of the relevant events and personalities involved. The real significance of those pioneering times, however, is how it enriches and guides the community in our own times. As we all, in our own way, strive to be a part of and contribute to that legacy, it is fitting that we remember and pay tribute to those whose vision and dedicated efforts prepared the way.
