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at Oxford, while the Kollel-affiliated but independent Shaarey Torah school relocated to a house next-door to the Kollel’s Frances Street Beis Medrash.160
This split paved the way for Chabad’s role as an independent player in the field of education, emboldening it to expand. In 1981, Bernhard together with Lipskar purchased a 22-acre property in the upmarket Jewish suburb of Orchards.161 To fund payment of these new premises, the Chabad movement engaged in an ill-timed scheme involving borrowing foreign currency at low interest rates and reloaning it at higher interest rates. With the Rand’s collapse a year later, the scheme proved disastrous and although it almost resulted in financial ruin Chabad tenaciously held on to avoid foreclosure.162 Since its inception and in contradistinction to Shaarey Torah, Torah Academy has billed itself as a “school for all Jewish children,” and, true to its motto, has maintained a very liberal admission policy as far as the observance of its student body is concerned.163At the same time, it has educated a whole generation of home-grown Lubavitch rabbis, some of whom have become emissaries overseas while others have served the South African Jewish community. Similarly it
produced a crop of educators who were schooled where they now teach.164 Torah Academy and Shaarey Torah continue to thrive decades later; the latter has been taken over by Ohr Somayach, Johannesburg.
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inviting Ivan Ziskind and David Sanders from the Kollel, along with Mendel Lipskar from Chabad, to discuss matters relating to Jewish students.165 Aside from these invitees, Rabbi Bernhard, who at the time was involved in both the Kollel and Chabad, was also in
attendance, but in his capacity as a representative of the Zionist Federation. Asked to comment on the situation at Wits University, where student participation was weak, Ziskind suggested that “ways be found to bring rabbis and Orthodox Jewish personnel onto campus to provide facilities for students.” Adding his thoughts, Sanders emphasised the need to recruit inspirational leaders. Agreeing with both, Lipskar stated that Jewish student organizations need not be focused on the social scene but should serve as a forum for intellectual
discussions.166 He added that the most successful guests on campus were the rabbis.
Representing the student body, Harold Waner, chairman of the National Student Jewish Association (SJA), commended the influence of the rabbis and religious speakers. For its part, the Wits SJA committee praised the “highly successful” Shabbaton that had taken place in conjunction with Kollel Yad Shaul, and announced that the latter’s rabbis had been
delivering lunch time shiurim [informal lectures] in Jewish philosophy, ethics and Talmud.167 In a move that had the Kollel’s fingerprints all over it, the Wits SJA -- which was
constitutionally nonpartisan -- registered its official opposition to admitting the Maginim Reform Youth Movement as a member of the Zionist Youth Council.168 This action
apparently enraged Gus Saron, the long-time director of the Board of Deputies, who oversaw Jewish student activities.169 Since Saron was keenly aware of the Kollel’s influence on the students this incident alienated the Kollel from the Board and from other establishment institutions.
At the end of 1973, the Kollel’s allies, with the help of an apparently reluctant Bnai Brith established a Hillel House in Muller Street, Yeoville. It served both as a residence for students and as a social centre that provided shiurim by Kollel members.170 Rabbi David
165 “Minutes of Meeting of South African Jewish Board of Deputies, held on 12 March 1972,” (SAJBD Archives).
166 Presumably Sanders and Lipskar intuitively understood that in a campus where anti-Apartheid activism was occupying the minds of many Jewish students, they were offering a mental and emotional escape for the many students who could not face the anguish of having to fight against an evil regime. It is no wonder then that such refuge would have added to its popularity.
167 Ibid.
168 “Minutes of meeting of Wits SJA, July 1972,” (SAJBD Archives).
169 Ibid. Interestingly this disapproval of Reform was probably confined to the Wits SJA. The other SJA campuses almost certainly opposed it. See Report of University of Port Elizabeth Jewish Student Newspaper, September 1972, which condemns Bnei Akiva’s similar call to ban Maginim. The editor in that report accused Bnei Akiva of acting as religious zealots in Meah Shearim. (SAJBD Archives)
170 See letter from Gus Saron to the Board of Deputies 7 December 1973. Saron mentions the fact that Hillel House was established by the “strictly orthodox.”
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Rosen, who then served as the student advisor for the Board of Deputies, disparaged these shiurim as “irrational esotericism.”171 The students appeared to think otherwise and in 1975 they collaborated with the Kollel to launch a program at Wits University dubbed the “Kollel Campus.” Comprising five weekly shiurim, the programme included lectures on Talmud and on Prophets by Hassan, a course on “Man and G-d” by Sanders and a course on “Freedom of Choice” by Shakovitzky.172 In August that year, Sanders gave a public lecture on campus attracting a crowd of 500 students, and in its wake an unprecedented 200 people gathered at the Kollel to hear the same speaker on the eve of Tisha B’Av which at that time was not generally observed in Johannesburg.173
At the beginning of 1977, in addition to the five shiurim on main campus, members of the Kollel gave an additional three shiurim at the Medical School. That year, Kollel’s most active member on campus, Avraham Hassan, was officially appointed Wits University’s Jewish students’ chaplain.174 In 1979 the Jewish student organization (now renamed the South African Union of Jewish Students (SAUJS)) announced a daily lunch shiur with a schedule that included a twice weekly Gemarra (sic)[Talmud] class as well as weekly lectures on contemporary Torah living, Jewish ethics, and mysticism. The speakers are not named but presumably most were given by the Kollel, with the notable exception of mysticism which was probably given by a Chabad rabbi.175
While the innovators’ neutral stance on Zionism is discussed below, it is important to note here that at a SAUJS seminar held that year panellists were invited to debate the subject of “Israel as an Alternative.” Arguing for the Religious Zionist view, Julian Katz, who, headed Jewish Studies at King David, found himself pitted, inter alia, against an unnamed
“religious non-Zionist,” who took the view there was no need to immigrate to Israel as a Jew was free to practise his religion anywhere in the world.176 The speaker’s name is unpublished and the view he expressed could have been articulated by either a Kollel or Chabad
representative, but the fact that such a view was accommodated and tolerated within the confines of the purportedly Zionist SAUJS organization is an indication of the inroads made by the innovator movements.177 The next year, 1980, Avraham Hassan, the apparently
171 Report by David Rosen to South African Jewish Board of Deputies, 1974, (SAJBD Archives).
172 See Contact: A Publication of the Kollel Yad Shaul, Johannesburg, Pesach 5735.
173 Kollel Newsletter, 9 August 1975.
174 Coblenz, “Chronicle of Events.” It appears this was an unpaid position.
175 SAUJS Chairman Report, 1979, (SAJBD Archives).
176 SAUJS Seminar, April 1979 Report, (SAJBD Archives).
177 Ibid. While this was a national seminar, the speakers were all from Johannesburg, and it was only Wits that had such an intensive shiur line-up.
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underpaid and overworked chaplain, announced he was leaving his position to relocate to Manchester where a more lucrative chaplaincy position awaited him.178 Reacting to this announcement the disappointed student leadership, while acknowledging that some in the mainstream organizations considered Hassan “overly religious,” praised him for his
“dedicated work,…open home and understanding ear.”179 With Hassan’s departure, and the subsequent failure by any other Fellow to fill his position, the Kollel’s grip on the university students at the beginning of the 1980s apparently began to weaken.
In August 1981, the establishment cautioned that there was a lack of Zionist sentiment among some of the Jewish students. This phenomenon was partially attributed to unnamed irreligious “radical left-wing groups,” but “non-Zionist religious elements” were also blamed.
180 It was these elements presumably, who, by the year’s end, were presenting five shiurim per week, given alternately by members of the Kollel and of Lubavitch.181 With Kollel unable to replace Hassan, it appears Chabad stepped into the breach. In 1983, a lecture series on Hassidism was held at Wits Campus.182 It included talks by Rabbis Bernhard, Lipskar and Goldman as well as the attorney and Chabad adherent, Charles Mendelow. Under SAUJS’s auspices a Shabbaton also took place at Chabad House, and it seemed like this Hasidic group had the potential of becoming even more popular. At the end this did not pan out, and Chabad too saw its impact recede. One reason for this may be attributed to Chabad’s decision to send its day campers on an outing to an army base during the winter holidays in 1985. Apparently, it never occurred to anyone at Chabad House that barely months after a state of emergency had been declared by the Apartheid regime, news of a visit by a conspicuously religious Jewish organization to one of the Nationalist Government’s tools of oppression, may have placed SAUJS in a quandary. After SAUJS “virulently” attacked Chabad’s leadership for organizing the trip, the latter responded indignantly to the student organization’s criticisms.
Mocking the concerns, an anonymous Chabad representative suggested either SAUJS had a
“very big axe to grind with Lubavitch,” or “were extremely nervous about their call up for National Service.”183 With their insensitive response, the Lubavitch organization seemed to
178 “Wits Students want full time rabbi,” Jewish Herald, 10 February 1981.
179 SAUJS National Committee: “Memo: Purpose Request for Salary for Campus Rabbi,” 22 December 1980.
(SAJBD Archives).
180 SAUJS National Report, August 1981 (SAJBD Archives).
181 “Minutes of SAUJS National Conference, November 1981,” (SAJBD Archives).
182 “Talks on Hassidism, SAUJS Report, c. 1983,” (SAJBD Archives).
183 “My Dear Worrier,” Wellsprings, Cheshvan 5746 (November 1985):2. In light of the fact that many Jewish students conscientiously objected to military service, accusations they feared fulfilling their duty must have sounded grating to some of their ears. (see Shimoni, “South African Jews and the Apartheid Crisis” American Jewish Year Book 1988, 88: 21-25; Shimoni, Community and Conscience, 144- 146; Letter from Evan Robbins,
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broadcast the message to the student community that its outreach was strictly on its own terms; no apologies necessary. Such an attitude presumably did not sit well with the student population. Eventually, by the decade’s end, the void created by the decreasing influence of the Kollel and Chabad was filled by Ohr Somayach, which, as we will see, became the dominant force among university students.