welfare of two of his sons trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe. In 1941 both managed to escape and his younger son, Rabbi Michel Yechiel Kossowsky, together with his family, joined his father in South Africa.39 The latter immediately became involved in the community and was appointed president of the Mizrachi Organization.40 Like his father, he was steeped
exclusively in the East European Yeshiva tradition and had no knowledge of English, but realizing the need to accommodate himself to the new environment, he enrolled at Wits University, where, after apparently starting from scratch, he eventually obtained a
35 “Chevrath Shomrey Shabbat” (Hebrew) Barkai October-November 1937; In Egon Schoeman, interview with the author, (Bet Shemesh, February 2020), Schoeman provided anecdotes of German Jews who resigned from their jobs upon learning they would have to work on the Sabbath.
36 Ibid. Unfortunately, the short article is vague about the operation of this society, but it does mention that Griekst personally assisted people to observe the Sabbath.
37 Ibid. Harry Lourie was well known as an intellectual, who founded the Herzl Zionist Society as well as the South African Board of Jewish Education (see “Harry Lourie – Pioneer Zionist and a founder of the Record,”
Zionist Record (Supplement) 21 November 1958, p.16).; Y. Meiri “The Jewish Soul” (Hebrew) Barkai January- February 1938: 13. Meiri notes that the local rabbis lacked the courage to speak about the “rampant” desecration of the Sabbath and he urged spiritual leaders to support this society.
38 Letter from Zvi Ginsberg to the editor of Barkai (Hebrew), Barkai June 1957, p. 16. Not much is known about this organization, but the letter writer claimed to have been initially supported by some rabbis. There is some evidence that this organization was also involved in campaigning for Shabbat observance and complained about public desecration. Indeed, a disparaging reference was made at a Board of Education conference insinuating that Lemaan HaShabbat had drawn up blacklists of Sabbath desecrators (See “Broadly Traditional or Strictly Traditional: Heated Debate at All Evening Session,” Zionist Record, 9 March 1945: 11).
39 Mazabow, “Kossowsky,” p. 13. Unlike his father, who was life president, his son, Rabbi Michel, played a much more active role and also served as vice president of the Zionist Federation.
40 Ibid
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doctorate.41 At the beginning of 1942, the Chief Rabbi took ill, leaving the elder Kossowsky to share the Beth Din’s bench with two likeminded yeshiva trained Dayanim.42
Summing up his first decade of service in a letter to the editor of a Yiddish journal, he began by acknowledging his many detractors. He believed the reason he was disliked was due to what he considered a principled refusal to adapt to the low state of observance. While accusing the modern “rabbis” of making peace with Sabbath desecration, non-kosher
consumption, intermarriage, and the failure to enforce Jewish laws of divorce, he praised himself and his fellow rabbanim for raising their voice in protest.43 As a traditionalist, he seemed to have misconstrued the accommodators’ non-confrontational approach for
sympathy with the public’s non-adherence to strict Halacha. This in turn led him to compare the accommodators, somewhat hyperbolically, to false prophets seeking to curry favour with their flock.44 In contradistinction, he branded himself a true prophet who fearlessly
admonished his congregation.45 This stark analogy may have resonated with some of the journal’s readership; it is doubtful it appealed to the community at large. Most likely it
demonstrated that Kossowsky was not in sync with the zeitgeist. This may not have impinged on his status as spiritual leader of the Beth Medrash, but arguably it disqualified him from ever becoming Chief Rabbi. This created problems when Landau succumbed to illness in August 1942 and the search for a successor became urgent.46
After unsuccessfully searching for a candidate from the United States who could replace Landau, and who would share his more modern minded tendencies, the UHC council
41 “S.A. Jewry Mourns Loss of its Orthodox Leader,” South African Jewish Observer April 1964: 1; Jacob Rubik, “Rabbi Dr. Michael Kossowsky” (Hebrew), Barkai, 30 April, 1964: 1. Unlike the accommodators who received their degrees at a younger age and tended to be more worldly, there is no indication that obtaining his doctorate affected Michel Kossowsky’s traditionalist worldview.
42 Dennis Isaacs, “Our Chief Rabbis: Past and Present” Jewish Tradition, Shavuot 5764: 8. As mentioned Dayanim are rabbinical judges. The associate judges were Yisrael Soloveitchik and Shlomo Rosenzweig, both of whom had immigrated from Lithuania. Soloveitchik was considered ultra-Orthodox and was associated with the tiny local branch of the non-Zionist Agudath Israel Organization (Menachem Zimmerman, “In Memory of a Sage” [(Hebrew) Barkai, April 1951: 26). His appointment as a Dayan was endorsed by the then ailing Chief Rabbi (Landau archives, Series 3, Correspondence). Rosenzweig, on the other hand, was married to a South African, served as a community rabbi and appears to have adopted a more moderate approach (see Juan-Paul Burke “A man of the old school,” Jewish Life June 2019: 18-22).
43 I. Kossowsky, “What has the Rav done?”, 209. The word “rabbi” is transliterated into Hebrew in the letter, and was deliberately written as such to show its Anglo origins and to distinguish the role of an English styled rabbi from the more traditional (Hebrew/Yiddish) rav (plural: rabbanim) whose main purpose was to improve the religious observance of their flock.
44 Ibid. As shall be shown later, while the accommodators recognized the reality of non-observance they did not in any way approve of it. Rather they advocated a gradual approach to effect change.
45 Ibid.
46 “Chief Rabbi Juda L. Landau of Johannesburg Dies at Seventy-seven,” JTA 27 August 1942,
https://www.jta.org/1942/08/27/archive/chief-rabbi-juda-l-landau-of-johannesburg-dies-at-seventy-seven;
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turned in 1943 to Rabbi Dr. Louis I. Rabinowitz, minister of the Cricklewood Synagogue in London and invited him to visit Johannesburg.47 The university educated 36-year-old rabbi , who had been recommended by Britain’s Chief Rabbi Hertz, received the invitation while serving as principal chaplain to the Eighth Army and would not take up his new post until two years later.48
While the establishment UHC found itself temporarily leaderless, Hashomer Hadati, which made up the nascent traditionalist camp, was facing a bigger crisis. Depleted of its male leadership, many of whom were enlisted soldiers deployed in North Africa, the religious Zionist movement was facing the prospect of collapse.49 Driven largely by its female staff and assisted by Kossowsky and his son, the movement managed to return from the brink. By 1943 it even managed to secure a permanent home for its shul.50 At the beginning, many of its members were unskilled in leading the prayers and the Torah reading, so that special training had to be provided in these fields.51 Complementing the prayer services, shiurim [religious lessons] and lectures were delivered by rabbis Michel Kossowsky, A.H. Lapin and Dr. Harry Abt.52 These small and tentative steps in the midst of a war marked the genesis of a congregation later to be known as the Bnei Akiva Shul, which pioneered the idea of youth services around the city and was the first of its kind to provide an informal setting where prayers were conducted exclusively by its members.53 As we shall see later, it became a bastion for traditionalist rabbis and was pivotal in the early stages of the revival.
47 Mazabow, To Reach for the Moon p.4. It is interesting that the Council initially preferred a candidate from the United States rather than from Britain to lead its Anglo style community. Ironically, it would discover two decades later, with the importation of a number of American rabbis, that the latter tended to be less disciplined than their English counterparts; David Sher, “Johannesburg’s Mother Synagogue – 126 Years Young,” Jewish Affairs Rosh Hashanah 2013: 36.
48 Mazabow, To Reach for the Moon p. 4, 5. Since leaving the Od Witwatersrand Congregation, Hertz, as Chief Rabbi of the British Empire had visited South Africa as part of his pastoral duties to the colonies and appears to have kept in touch. Mazabow implies that Hertz was not the first person to put forward Rabinowitz’s
candidature even if he warmly endorsed it. Nevertheless, Rabinowitz is quoted as saying that Hertz convinced him to take the position (Ibid, .5 citing South African Jewish Times (hereinafter “SAJT) 17 November, 1944). As we shall see Kossowsky was under the impression that Hertz was Rabinowitz’ chief promoter.
49 Miriam Caplan, “The War Period,” in S.A. Bnei Akiva 1936-1956, 15.
50 Caplan, “The War Period”; Sher, “Our Shul”. The shul was housed in the Reb Moishel Talmud Torah which was attached to Kossowsky’s Beth Medrash Hagodol.
51 Sher “Our Shul”.
52 Miriam Caplan “The War Period”
53 See Sher, “Our Shul”. In 1956 the writer claimed that Bnei Akiva was the only shul in town that ran a “full”
service by its youth. This would change in later decades where the big shuls would offer a full complement of youth or alternate services which were affiliated with the parent shul.
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