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was now virtually defunct.1 The diminishing presence of accommodators was exacerbated by South Africa’s political environment, and specifically by the increasing global criticism of the Republic’s racial policies since the 1960s. As historian Dana Kaplan noted, this deterred many potential overseas English-speaking rabbis from pursuing a communal position in Johannesburg.2
On the other hand, the traditionalists, who had already seen their number and influence expand by the mid-1960s, continued to enjoy steady growth. Not as active in outreach as the innovators, they nonetheless served to counterbalance the trends introduced by the newcomers. Indeed, as we shall see, it was primarily the traditionalist position,
fortified with a pro-establishment flavour inherited from the accommodators, and augmented by aspects of the innovators’ religious zeal, that ultimately defined Johannesburg Orthodoxy at the turn of the twenty first century.
This chapter is divided into three sections, the first of which is devoted to the accommodators’ reactions to the innovators. This is followed by an analysis of the patient strategy employed by the traditionalists, and their successful attempt to capture the reins of Johannesburg Orthodoxy. The third section observes the results of this traditionalist counterrevolution; we will survey the reactions -- positive and negative -- from the general Jewish community to the energetic programs and religious Weltanschauung of a new generation of traditionalists.
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one of the first to endorse the idea of a Kollel and presided over it as its president. Chabad’s first emissary, Mendel Lipskar, offered his services to the general community, and often shared platforms with establishments speakers and rabbis.3 Such cooperation occasionally bore fruit, as may be seen in Chief Rabbi Casper’s appointment of Kollel stalwart Rabbi Chaim Shein as director of the Pedagogic Centre. The latter used his position to issue booklets to thousands of Jewish pupils attending government schools at primary and secondary level. In the mid-1980s, a negotiated settlement to the multiplicity of kashrut supervision agencies was amicably reached, and subsequent hiccups notwithstanding, this resulted in overwhelmingly broad recognition of the Beth Din’s authority. From its
inception, Ohr Somayach’s founders carefully cultivated a relationship with the incumbents of the Office of Chief Rabbi, enjoying warm relations with both Bernard Casper and his successor Cyril Harris. The latter worked in tandem with the Chabad-dominated Rabbinical Association, where he was active in advocating for higher salaries for Orthodox community rabbis of all stripes. In turn he received the rabbis’ support and cooperation in promoting religious campaigns such as Taste of Shabbat.4 In mid-2004, on the occasion of the
appointment of Harris’s successor, Warren Goldstein, Harris praised the new candidate as a representative of “a younger generation …at the vanguard of the accelerating Ba’al Teshuva movement.”5 It appears, that the accommodators not only collaborated with those to their right, but were also cognizant of the changes in the religious atmosphere, and to a certain extent, expressed appreciation of this development.
2.2 Protest
Yet many within the accommodationist camp were alarmed by the effects the religious revival had produced. Beginning in the mid-1970s, and throughout Chief Rabbi Casper’s tenure, several local rabbis, as well as rabbinic visitors, raised their concerns in the Jewish press. In June 1978, after lauding the “missionary activity of the Lubavitch movement and the Kollel,” Louis Rabinowitz bemoaned the fact these movements dared to challenge the heretofore “unquestioned authority” of the Federation of Synagogues and Chief Rabbinate.
He warned that the divisiveness in Kashrut and shechita would lead to a gradual breakdown
3 See for example, “Federation of Synagogues of South Africa Lecture Series: Some Aspects of Judaism,”
Federation Chronicle, April, 1977.
4 See Yossy Goldman, “A Rabbi’s Rabbi”, Jewish Tradition, Rosh Hashanah, 2005; “An integrating force,”
Jewish Tradition, Chanukah, 2004.
5 Cyril K. Harris, “An optimistic indicator of the continuation of South African Jewry”, Jewish Tradition, Shavuot 5764 (June 2004).
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of “religious cohesiveness.”6 Less than two years later, Rabinowitz again expressed his dissatisfaction with the innovators, and with their tendency to introduce what he regarded as unnecessary, and even harmful, stringencies. Not only did he believe this trend cause the
“fragmentation of a united community” and the “denigration of the standards adopted by the community,” but in his opinion these actions contradicted Jewish law. Quoting Rabbi Shabtai Cohen, a respected 16th century Jewish legal authority, he declared that “just as it is forbidden to permit that which is forbidden, so it is forbidden to prohibit that which is permitted.”7
As we have noted in a previous chapter, Rabinowitz gained public admiration during his tenure for his willingness to issue lenient rulings, especially when it came to playing sports on the Sabbath.8 It is perhaps unsurprising then that he would fight for this legacy of leniency which he believed to be under threat. In 1981, the then head of Jews’ College, Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, who had visited South Africa twenty years earlier in 1961 as Rabinowitz’s guest, jotted down his impressions of his return visit to the Republic.9 Unlike Rabinowitz, he found the community enjoyed greater harmony than they had enjoyed two decades earlier. Externally, the community was more confident in exhibiting the outer trappings of observance and “kippot on campus were a common sight.” He was also impressed with the high level of Kashrut observance, and the immense improvements in Jewish education, where youth were trained in the “serious study of the Talmud.” Yet not everything pleased him. Although emigration from the country was on the rise, very few had chosen Israel as their destination and so, it seemed to him, Zionism was on the decline.
Moreover, he “confessed to a nagging feeling” that the religious developments had come at the cost of an “intellectual decline.” Recalling his first visit where he had met “Lithuanian Jews reared in scholarship and learning,” including “some fine Talmiday Chachamim [Torah scholars],” he conceded it would be unfair to imagine the present generation capable of replicating that success. He felt, however, that present trends of observance were crippling the intellectual attainments:
Of course it is too much to expect any society to create in one generation the personalities which were reared in Lithuania, in a milieu which evolved over several centuries. Yet the loss is real and perhaps the recognition of it may
6 Louis Rabinowitz, “A Gast auf a veil,” Federation Chronicle, June 1978.
7 Louis Rabinowitz, “Leniency and stringency in deciding Halacha,” Federation Chronicle, April 1980.
8 See above, Chapter 3.
9 Rabinovitch’s previous visit is briefly discussed in chapters 3 and 4 above.
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help to restrain some of the excesses of the public relations approach to Judaism which one frequently encounters.10
Though the culprit for the “public relations approach” goes unnamed, we can assume Rabinovitch was referring to the Lubavitch Foundation’s ubiquitously advertised mitzvah campaigns and educational programs. He probably felt it was producing a qualitatively inferior Judaism despite ostensibly increasing the level of observance.
In 1986, South African-born Eric Kaye, who had lived and ministered in
Johannesburg, but was then occupying the pulpit of the “mother congregation” in the Gardens in Cape Town, was invited to deliver the keynote address to the Federation of Synagogue’s annual conference.11 In his speech, Kaye condemned the “fundamentalist and isolationist attitudes” of some of the “religious authorities” who effectively discouraged interest in Judaism among the uninitiated, unobservant sectors. “Right wing elements” he noted “tend to exclude arbitrarily from religious legitimacy their fellow Orthodox Jews who do not subscribe to the same fundamentalist stringencies,” and thereby cast “unjustified aspersions on the centrist Orthodox community.” Reminiscent of Rabinowitz’s admonitions, Kaye recommended that any rabbinic colleague faced with a valid choice “between a lenient and stringent view” should always adopt the former.12
In 1988, shortly after retiring as Chief Rabbi, Kaye’s likeminded colleague Bernard Casper, struck a slightly more positive note when he spoke of the “two themes” that had
“dominated his Weltanschauung.” As someone who considered “Orthodox Judaism [an] all- encompassing religious concept,” his primary theme was “preserving the unity of the community and its centrist position in Jewish religious life.” This unity, he implied, was being threatened by “splinter groupings of religious Jews.” Notwithstanding the “good influence” the latter may have brought to “their followers,” the stringencies they introduced were undermining the Chief Rabbi’s position as well as the “Anglo-Litvak tradition and quality…as the centrist bulwark of the entire edifice of South African Jewry.”13 Indeed, for Casper and for his fellow accommodators, preserving the community’s religious status quo was vital. While there was a grudging acknowledgement of the innovators’ achievements, it seemed to be coupled with fears of disunity.
10 Nachum Rabinovitch, “Many Signs of Change,” Federation Chronicle, October 1981: 7.
11 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_Shul, accessed on 14 December 2021.
12 Eric Kaye, “The Role of the Rabbi in Practice,” Jewish Tradition, May 1986.
13 Casper, Broadcasts and Papers, 12.
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If some establishment rabbis felt right-wing innovations were foreign and divisive to the Johannesburg community, this was even truer when it came to the lay leadership. The growth of the smaller congregations or shtieblach, and the innovators’ increasing impact appeared to erode the influence of the once powerful laity. Nevertheless, on the eve of Chief Rabbi Casper’s retirement, the laity still retained the power to select his replacement and, indirectly determine the course of mainstream Orthodoxy. Prominent Jewish leader and philanthropist Mendel Kaplan warned that any errors in selecting the future Chief Rabbi would “threaten the unity that once prevailed” in the community. Noting the alien “levels of observance” introduced by the “Hassidic and Baal Teshuva movements,” Kaplan, betraying a fear that Casper’s successor would be a Lubavitcher, characterized the choice as a battle
“between control of the community by Hassidic Rebbes versus control by committed lay leaders.”14 Ultimately, Cyril K. Harris, self-described as “utterly traditional and at the same time thoroughly modern,” and one, who “loathed fundamentalism and preferred moderation,”
was nominated for the position.15 His appointment was met with much acclaim, if not relief, on the part of the lay leaders. A triumphant Kaplan described it as “an overwhelming victory for the determination of the majority of Johannesburg Jewry to maintain the traditional observance from its earliest days.”16
The passive tone of this statement notwithstanding, one suspects that Kaplan played an active role in securing Harris’s appointment. The search process was kept under wraps, and only once the executive body had made its decision were various entities including the leadership of the constituent members of the UOS and of the South African Rabbinical Association, invited to interview the candidate. In the case of the rabbinical association, they were told that while they may raise concerns, they had no veto power to block the
appointment.17 This condition reduced rabbinical input, and was perhaps a deliberate attempt to thwart a challenge by then chairman Rabbi Norman Bernhard who eventually put forth his own candidacy.18 The only rabbis apparently consulted were the United Kingdom’s then Chief Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits and Casper himself. Reportedly, it was Jakobovits who promoted Harris’s candidacy while Casper endorsed it. It is therefore unclear whom
14 Kaplan and Robertson, Founders and Followers, 252.
15 Cyril Harris, For Heaven’s Sake, (London: Valentine Mitchell, 2000), 52.
16 Kaplan and Robertson Founders and Followers, 252.
17 Ivan Sackheim, “These are the facts,” Jewish Tradition, October 1987: 1.
18 Ibid.
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among the lay leadership supported Harris’s appointment. At least one person suspected that Kaplan was the main mover.19
The friendship between Kaplan and Lord Jakobovits dated back to at least 1985 when Kaplan and his wife Jill named the Centre of Medical Ethics at Ben Gurion University, Beersheba, in honour of the British Chief Rabbi.20 Consequently one may speculate that Kaplan was at least informed of Jakobovits’s preferences. Even if one discounts any relationship, the views held by Kaplan, one of the foremost Jewish lay leaders in South Africa, certainly influenced the matter.21 As it turned out, the new Chief Rabbi’s activities in the religious and political spheres placed him squarely in the accommodators’ camp.22 His tenure succeeded in staving off challenges by the innovators and traditionalists. It also afforded the latter more time to launch a counteroffensive against the innovators. It is to the traditionalists, and their response, to which we now turn.
3. Traditionalist Response: Synthesis and Counterrevolution