4. Historiography and Scholarly Contributions
4.3 Religious Revivals
Thirdly, this dissertation engages with the phenomenon of religious revivals that have witnessed non-observant, unaffiliated Jews becoming fully observant. This has occurred under the guise of what for more than half a century has referred to itself as the Baal Teshuva (literally, penitents or returnees) movement. Generally, unaffiliated Jews undergo this
transformation as the result of contact with observant activists who are occupied in Jewish outreach or kiruv: “the act or practice of bringing secularized Jews closer to Judaism, especially Orthodox Judaism.”119 The scholarship on this phenomenon has been focused on
115 Gurock, “Resisters and Accommodators”; Jeffrey Gurock, Orthodox Jews in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009); Jeffrey Gurock, “The Winnowing of American Orthodoxy” Approaches to Modern Judaism I. (Chico, CA, 1984): 41-54; Jeffrey Gurock, “Twentieth-Century American Orthodoxy’s Era of Non- Observance, 1900-1960,” Torah u-Madda Journal IX (2000) :87-107.
116 See Samuel Heilman, “American Orthodoxy: Where Are We, Who Are We, and Where Are We Going?” Edah 5:1 2-8.
117 Ferziger, Beyond Sectarianism, 130-150. This chapter is titled “Reform in the Eyes of the Orthodoxy.”
118 Davis Saks “Jewish Pluralism: A South African Perspective” Jewish Affairs 54(1) 1999, 73.
119 https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/kiruv, accessed on 3 January 2022.
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Israel and English-speaking countries and it traces the different ways the Baal Teshuva movement has adapted itself, and how the various organizations have reinvented themselves to take up the challenges of outreach. This body of scholarship is characterized by several trends. Some researchers have focused on why secular Jews turn to religion. Basic to this are the pioneering works of Janet Aviad and Herbert Danzger.120 While both scholars originally covered the 1970s and 1980s, Danzger updated some of his findings where he makes at least three points relevant to this study121 Against the backdrop of critiquing other scholars of Orthodoxy, he stresses the need to place the Orthodox revival in the context of a worldwide quest for more intense religious expression.122 Secondly he points out that in post-1980s America, the “portal of return” has shifted from the yeshiva to the community, and the Teshuva movement has been buttressed by returnees who are now veteran members of the community and who are mentors to the new returnees.123 In this regard, Johannesburg seems to be following a similar path, with most returnees not entering yeshiva but typically drawn to religion by second or third generation Baaley Teshuva. A third point made by Danzger is that the recent Christian and Jewish revivals appeal to the Yuppie generation.124 In an article partially profiling the trendy Tel Aviv returnees, Asaf Sharabi found similarly that his case study group consisted of “middle-class or upper middle-class educated adults.”125 This appears to comport with the conditions in Johannesburg where religious Jews reside mainly in wealthier areas. As we shall see the geographical centre for outreach has shifted from the low middle class Johannesburg suburb of Yeoville that attracted the spiritual seekers of the 1970s to the more fashionable and expensive suburbs of Glenhazel, Sydenham and
Sandringham.
Another trend in this field of research is to survey the outreach activists and organizations and their stated aims. In his article for Commentary, the veteran Jewish
120 Janet Aviad, Return to Judaism: Religious Renewal in Israel, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983);
Herbert M. Danzger, Returning to Tradition: The Contemporary Revival of Orthodox Judaism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989(.
121 See Herbert Danzger, “The "return" to Traditional Judaism at the End of the Twentieth Century: Cross- Cultural Comparisons” in Jacob Neusner and Alan Avery-Peck (Eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Judaism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 495-511.
122 Ibid. at 500. In note 19 at 509-510, he cites examples of Jews from the former Soviet Union who converted to the Russian Orthodox Church. Thus, even for Jews, the repression of their religion created a thirst for any religion, and not just a strengthening of their Judaism.
123 Ibid., 496: “The tshuva (sic) movement continued to draw on [those] people who had already entered…Orthodoxy”.
124 Ibid. at 496, 500. Although twenty years later the term Yuppie has lost some of its currency, it is apparent that the upwardly mobile middle class continues to be attracted to this movement.
125 Asaf Sharabi, “‘Boundary work' in a religious revival movement: The case of the 'teshuvah movement' in Israel,” Ethnography 14(2): 238.
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historian Jack Wertheimer claimed that some of these aims have been revised. He notes that the Chabad movement, a kiruv pioneer, and very active in Johannesburg, has redefined success as introducing newcomers to Judaism: Chabad efforts have “a non-result orientation, [even] if people don’t become frum (religious) ... Any mitzvah is a positive step.”126 An identical insight was relayed to me by a prominent Johannesburg Chabad leader, who explained that any spiritual connection with a fellow Jew is a goal unto itself.127 Somewhat ironically, as Chabad witnesses rapid growth in its activities, and in the number of
synagogues it establishes in Johannesburg, the number of observant Jews it produces has been dropping. Yet the problem of dwindling success is not confined to Chabad. The momentum of the once powerful Ohr Somayach Johannesburg branch, despite efforts at recreating itself and appealing to the youth, seems to have slowed.128 We will examine whether the Johannesburg kiruv movements have followed the example of many
communities in the United States by retreating inwardly. As Wertheimer notes, in doing so they isolate themselves and become distant from those they once attracted.
A new development observed by Wertheimer and examined more thoroughly by Adam Ferziger is the role of the community Kollel. Traditionally a Kollel refers to a seminary for married men who engage in advanced Talmudic studies and are remunerated with a stipend. While this model has remained dominant, a new hybrid institution has been established which is called the “community Kollel”. Here in addition to the Kollel
providing its members with a venue for personal Talmud study, it also engages in outreach, acting as an “informal educational institution geared toward addressing the intellectual and spiritual interests of local Jewish populations.”129 The existence of such an institution serves for some as proof of a tendency within the ultra-Orthodox or Haredi world to be less insular and more engaged with their secular brethren.130 A community Kollel per se does not exist in
126 Jack Wertheimer, “The Outreach Revolution,” Commentary April 1, 2013 available at https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-outreach-revolution.
127 Rabbi Dovid Hazdan, interview with the author, Johannesburg, May 2017. This appears to be the situation in Britain as well, see Elise Berman, “Voices of Outreach: The Construction of Identity and Maintenance of Social Ties among Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48(1), 2009, 69-85.
128 Rabbi Koppel Bacher, interview with the author, Johannesburg, May 2017. Bacher bemoaned the fact that most of the religious Jews live in close proximity to one another in the suburb of Glenhazel which, in his view, has alienated unaffiliated Jews who reside in the remoter suburbs of Johannesburg.
129 Adam Ferziger, “The Emergence of the Community Kollel: A New Model for Addressing Assimilation,”
The Rappaport Center for Assimilation Research and Strengthening Jewish Vitality, Bar Ilan University – Faculty of Jewish Studies, 2006 – 5766, 12.
130 Ferziger, Beyond Sectarianism, 175-194.
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any real sense in Johannesburg and will not be explored.131 I will however analyse Johannesburg’s Kollel Yad Shaul. At present it has become the centre of a small Haredi enclave, but in its heyday it enjoyed high levels of success when it also functioned as a full- time learning centre. Kollel Yad Shaul’s students devoted themselves full-time to their studies and were chosen for their learning acumen, rather than their kiruv abilities.132 Although the conditions of their contracts required them to set aside an hour a day to community outreach, their main aim was to become fully-fledged Torah scholars and to spread Torah learning. The fact that they succeeded within a few years to attract dozens of families to full observance may well be because of the prevailing milieu of the 1970s and early 1980s. This model appears no longer to be viable. Yet, the success of this Kollel, in terms of numbers, was apparently much greater than that of the current Kollel. Some Kollel veterans still reminisce about the special encounter between the unaffiliated Jew and a person almost fully devoted to his Torah studies.133 Whether this romanticizing of the 1970s is objectively valid requires analysis by comparing the earlier Kollel with its contemporary incarnations.
In Israel, the latest research into outreach focuses on the mass rallies normally geared toward the Sephardi population.134 Notwithstanding the gulf that divides local South African Jews from their Sephardi Haredi Baal Teshuva counterparts, there are similarities between the two regarding mass audiences. Nissim Leon has noted that the Teshuva conferences in Israel have consciously chosen as their venue the stadium used by Maccabi Tel Aviv, Israel’s most famous basketball team. This fills the formerly unobservant attendees with a strong sense of pride. In his review of the Teshuva movement, Yehuda Goodman notes the
entertainment value of the regularly held conferences and performances. Both these features are present in Johannesburg. In my interview with Chief Rabbi Goldstein and in a speech that he gave elsewhere, he referred to the idea of spiritual entrepreneurship, an element of which was the importance of presenting Judaism in a “kli mefoar” or “magnificent vessel”.135 This
131 While Cape Town boasts a Torah Mitzion Kollel (http://www.yeshiva.org.za/ accessed on 30 December 2021), which is involved in community affairs, it only recruits unmarried students, and has therefore had limited success.
132 Rabbi Shmuel Steinhaus, interview with the author, Jerusalem, February 2017.
133 Mr. Ivan Ziskind, interview with the author, London, February 2017.
134 Nissim Leon, "The Mass Assembly (The Kenes) in the Tshuvah Movement", in Emmanuel Sivan & Kimmy Caplan (eds.) Israeli Haredim: Integration without Assimilation? (Jerusalem: Van-Leer Jerusalem Institute, 2006) (Hebrew), 82-98; Yehuda Goodman, “The Baal Teshuva Movement and the New Religious Identities in Israel at the Beginning of the Year 2000,” Discussion Paper No. 2002-15, Pinhas Sapir Center for Development, Tel Aviv University (Hebrew).
135.Warren Goldstein, interview with the author, Johannesburg, May, 2017; See speech at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prupfVZ2CFc-accssed on 2 January, 2022.
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is why the Chief Rabbi raises considerable funds to secure the most elegant conference halls for his annual Sinai Indaba initiative. He adopts a deliberate policy of introducing the public to religious celebrities like Yonatan Razel and the singer and Baal Teshuva, Alex Clare. The idea in Israel and in Johannesburg of transferring Teshuva activities from the private informal sphere to the public domain will be explored in this study.
For English-speaking countries outside the United States, there is scant research on Orthodoxy in general and of the nascent Teshuva movement in particular.136