2. Founding and History of the Kollel
2.1 The Early Years
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innovators made, and to an extent still make, a significant contribution to the religious community, as we shall show in detail below.
2. Founding and History of the Kollel
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their Kollel as a quasi-halfway house between a full-fledged yeshiva and an ordinary Talmud study circle, which had already seen incremental growth in Johannesburg, as noted in the previous chapter. Perhaps for that reason, this Kollel garnered the support of Chief Rabbi Casper, who, a few weeks after its founding, was asked to deliver the official opening address. Playing on the Hebrew word “Kollel” which denotes both a small-knit community and something “all-embracing,” Casper declared his desire that the institution would “spread the knowledge and message of the Torah among all sections of the community” and in turn introduce the youth to the “treasures of Jewish learning.”9 Despite these expectations, the Kollel was only partially successful in its mission. While successfully attracting older learned men to its high-level study environment -- which was maintained by lectures from overseas emissaries who felt at home in the strictly Orthodox confines of the Adath Yeshurun -- it struggled to draw members of the broader community.
In 1968 the Kollel began publication of a bilingual journal of scholarly Talmudic articles. The English section contained contributions from the Chief Rabbi and Salzer,
whereas the Hebrew section contained essays from among others, Rabbi Moshe Kurstag, the then assistant lecturer at the Ministers’ Training College, and Rabbi I. Grossman of Jerusalem who lectured at the Kollel on his visits to South Africa. Reviewing the appropriately named HaKollel [The Kollel] journal in his monthly column, Dr. Harry Abt -- his staunch
accommodator credentials notwithstanding -- praised the journal for breaking “entirely new ground in South African Jewish life.” He hoped it would lead to interest in the Kollel’s other activities.10 In similar but far more enthusiastic tones, the London based ultra-Orthodox weekly, The Jewish Tribune, viewed this publication as evidence of there being “every chance that Johannesburg may yet become a leading Torah Centre in the Diaspora.”11 While the Tribune’s hyperbole, typical of an Orthodox weekly, cannot be taken at face value, and while the periodical itself did not gain a broad readership in Johannesburg, the fact it was published reveals the ambitions and optimism of its founders.
At the same time, Salzer and Lieberman realised that the Kollel’s programme was not having the effect on the broader community they had hoped for. They proposed instead that the Kollel should live up to its name and recruit married Yeshiva students from overseas who would engage in full time learning.12 Since the envisaged plans effectively rendered Adath
9 “Chief Rabbi launches new Torah group.”
10 H. Abt “Latest Periodical.” Jewish Affairs, April 1968.
11 “South Africans Publish Journal,” Jewish Tribune, 1 May 1968.
12 For full details of these aims see “The Growth of Torah in South Africa,” Jewish Tribune, 19 December 1969.
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Yeshurun unable to continue hosting the Kollel in the long run, an appeal was made for new premises. Answering this call, Rabbi Koppel Bacher, a stalwart supporter of Salzer who had studied for many years at the Chabad Yeshiva in Crown Heights, New York, offered the free use of his late father’s home, which was located on Urania Street in the nearby suburb of Observatory. 13 As a gesture of thanks for this kind offer, the Kollel was renamed the Kollel Yad Shaul in memory of the venue’s previous owner Mr. Shaul (Solly) Bacher. In September 1969 it was officially dedicated at a grand ceremony on its premises. In addition to a few words by Chief Rabbi Casper the audience was treated to a speech by the guest speaker, Rabbi Joseph Wineberg from New York, an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who opened his address by reading out the Rebbe’s personal blessings for this new venture.14
In view of the fact that within the space of a very few years a fair measure of tension would come to the fore between Kollel members and the burgeoning Chabad movement, it was somewhat a quirk of history that the Kollel’s initial home was provided by a staunch disciple of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and opened with the latter’s blessings.15 It is also noteworthy that when both the Kollel and Chabad were at their stages of infancy in Johannesburg, Casper, the official leader of the Orthodox establishment enjoyed cordial relations with them. It could then not have been predicted that serious disagreements would soon place a dampener on this relationship.
The Kollel continued its regular public shiurim in Talmud and Jewish ethics while raising funds to recruit fulltime students from overseas. The latter, it declared, would serve as Fellows of the Kollel, who would be supported by bursaries so that they could learn
undisturbed.16 These aims would come to fruition a year later when the fulltime Kollel was officially launched. Lieberman and Salzer sought to recruit Kollel members from the small town of Gateshead in the northeast of England. This remote town boasted a Yeshiva founded in 1929 that was led by famous rabbis who had fled Eastern Europe. It was also home to one of the oldest Kollels, founded by the world renowned Rabbi, Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, with
13 See Koppel Bacher, interview by author, (Johannesburg, May, 2017). Bacher made this offer after apparently being assured by Salzer that the proposed faculty would include Chabad affiliated students; Bernhard, “Torah Academy Mini Conference.”
14 “Kollel’s New Home is Dedicated,” SAJT, 12 September, 1969
15 Ibid. Rabbi Yossi Salzer, interview by author, (Johannesburg, May, 2017). Salzer stated that notwithstanding the Kollel’s later attitude, his father (Rabbi Jacob Salzer) enjoyed warm relations with the Lubavitch movement and was fond of its Rebbe; See also Egon Schoeman, interview by author, Beth Shemesh, Israel, January 2020, where Schoeman mentioned that Rabbi Salzer had written to the Lubavitcher Rebbe on some personal issues.
16 See “The Growth of Torah in South Africa”; “Kollel’s New Home is Dedicated.”
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the aim of cultivating the finest Talmudic scholars.17 Contemporary reports described Gateshead’s learning environment as British Orthodox Jewry’s “very own Oxbridge.”18 For Lieberman and Salzer, both alumni of pre-World War Two East European Yeshivas, its reputation as the bastion for training English Talmudic scholars in traditional learning would have been reason enough to render it the ideal option.
There were, however, also personal reasons for this choice. Salzer had sent his daughters to the equally renowned exclusively female Gateshead Jewish Teachers Training College,19 and two of them had married Gateshead yeshiva graduates. Having previously visited the town, Salzer was deeply impressed with its Kollel and the impact it had had on the local community.20 Like his independent Adath congregation, the Gateshead Jewish
community was openly non-Zionist, and did not feel beholden to the United Kingdom’s Chief Rabbinate. In fact the Gateshead Kollel’s founders’ insistence that their institution be free from the purview of Britain’s established Orthodox institutions earned them the enmity of the then Chief Rabbi Joseph H. Hertz, who attempted to thwart the formation of that Kollel.21 It is quite possible then that this element of anti-establishmentarianism appealed to the
founders of Johannesburg’s Kollel, who were themselves ardent separatists.
With these considerations in mind, Zvi Lieberman, in December 1969 flew to the United Kingdom on his mission. On the 21st of that month at a meeting attended by, among others, the then Rav [head rabbi] of Gateshead, Rabbi Bezalel Rakow, a decision was made to appoint Rabbi Mordechai Shakovitzky, the son of the previous Gateshead Rav as Rosh Kollel [head of the Kollel].22 As a youth activist for the Yad LeAchim [Hand to my Brother]
anti-missionary organization, and as a community rabbi in Leeds, Shakovitzky understood that the prospective position would not only involve intensive learning, as was the norm at a traditional Kollel, but would also require a fair amount of outreach.23 In fact, a condition for being a member of the Kollel was a commitment to learn one hour a day with members of the
17 For a history of the Gateshead Yeshiva, see https://gyalumni.org/history-of-the-gateshead-yeshiva/, accessed on 6 December 2021 ; for a history of the Gateshead Kollel see http://gatesheadkolel.weebly.com/history.html , accessed on 6 December 2021.
18 Harriet Sherwood, “Torah on Tyne: how Orthodox Jews carved out their very own Oxbridge,” The Observer, 22 December 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/22/gateshead-torah-on-tyne-britains- orthodox-jewish-community.
19 Ibid.
20 See Steinhaus, interview.
21 See Esther Solomon, “Rabbi Dessler’s View of Secular Studies and Wissenschaft des Judentums,” Pardes, 24 (2018): 122.
22 Chanan Coblenz, “Chronicle of Events”, The Kollel Yad Shaul 20th Anniversary Banquet.
23 Rabbi Boruch Grossnass, interview by author, Johannesburg, May, 2017.
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community and to deliver public lectures on a weekly basis.24 This commitment was likewise accepted by the two others selected as future members, or fellows, at that meeting: Rabbis Eliezer Chrysler and Avraham Hassan. Chrysler served at that time as a teacher at the Gateshead Boys’ High School and Hassan was a young recently married yeshiva student unable to find a Kollel in England that would admit him, but desirous of furthering his
Talmudic studies at a postgraduate level. These three founding members were to be joined by two other young rabbis who had already been in Johannesburg for a number of years: Rabbis Mordechai Korn and Shmuel Steinhaus. Korn, originally from London, had been employed by the Adath Yeshurun to run their youth programs but his recent independent decision to become a Satmar Hassid put him at odds with the congregation. Steinhaus on the other hand was a Gateshead Yeshiva graduate and a son-in-law to Salzer who had been brought to South Africa in 1968 to teach at Toras Emes. It was agreed that the five rabbis mentioned above would constitute the Kollel’s first year intake, and they would officially begin studies in September, 1970.