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chats, or deep penetrating questions.”38 Like Hassan, Moffson’s campus position proved a very effective recruitment tool so that many who eventually joined the Ohr Somayach community did so as a result of this contact.
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new congregation would be named Ohr Somayach Savoy. Furthermore, despite Furman not having been educated at Ohr Somayach institutions -- he was a graduate of Yeshiva College, had been associated with Bnei Akiva and the Yeshiva Gedolah -- he was placed on Ohr Somayach’s payroll in consideration for replacing Tatz as the main Monday night speaker. In return, Ohr Somayach undertook to contribute to the running costs of the synagogue to Furman’s monthly salary. Consequently, at the beginning of 1994 Furman along with his followers moved to the new venue in the nearby suburb of Savoy. Furman concurrently assumed Tatz’s role as Ohr Somayach’s main drawcard. Though this was not the first time a small synagogue was built around the personality of the rabbi, it was apparently the first time a rabbi left the congregation that launched his career, taking core members with him.
Observers of this move, unfamiliar with its details, would have believed the responsibility for the split lay with Ohr Somayach. Though it does not appear to have aroused public debate, it seemed at that time that Ohr Somayach was competing with the mainstream big synagogues, and in this case hiring away their spiritual leader.
A year later, in 1994, Rabbi Ezriel Tauber, one of the founders of Ohr Somayach Monsey, who had visited Johannesburg on a number of lecture tours, convinced Milton Weinberg, a property developer and one of Ohr Somayach Savoy’s primary benefactors, to approach Shain and Moffson with the idea of establishing an Ohr Somayach Advanced Kollel on the premises. After Weinberg proposed he would take care of the bulk of the funding, the latter agreed, and in 1995, young men from overseas, together with locals who had learned in Yeshivas abroad, were recruited to found the new Kollel’s first contingent.40
The excitement Furman’s shiur had previously generated wore off within a few years, and Ohr Somayach was in danger of losing touch with the student generation. Its main congregation continued to grow as its members established families, but this came at the cost of alienating unmarried students and young professionals who began to feel out of place in the older community. Noticing this trend, and noting the drop in outreach, Allan Zulberg, the educational entrepreneur who had served as Ohr Somayach’s original honorary financial director in its early years, decided to take action. After consulting with Moffson, he acquired a new property in Glenhazel, which came to be known as the Sunny Road shul. While it was intended to be run as an independent congregation aimed specifically at attracting the youth, Ohr Somayach agreed to provide one of its staff to serve as its spiritual leader. Gavriel
40 Milton Weinberg, interview by author, September 2019, Johannesburg.
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Klatzko, a member of the new Kollel, initially filled this role, but he died soon after.41 After failing for a number of years to locate a permanent successor, Ohr Somayach turned once again to Waverley Synagogue, this time recruiting its junior rabbi, Warren Goldstein. who had built himself a reputation as a popular speaker and an erudite Torah scholar. (A few years later Warren Goldstein was chosen to succeed Cyril Harris as Chief Rabbi of South Africa.42) Prior to Goldstein’s accession, Sunny Road shul was able to attract a considerable following. Quite rapidly, families replaced young students as the core members of the new shul which meant its original mission to serve as an outreach centre was undermined. To remedy this situation, an additional small shul was built on the premises which was led by Rabbi Moffson and was targeted specifically at young unmarried students with the aim of providing outreach. This marked the beginning of what was later to be called OhrSom Student, which eventually became an independent organization with its own campus, and whose development and activities are discussed below.
At the beginning of 2000, Rabbi Chagi Rubin, the longstanding principal of Shaarey Torah Primary School, approached Shain in the latter’s capacity as Ohr Somayach’s financial director. He noted that for the last few years he and his committee had been running the Yeoville-based Shaarey Torah independently but could no longer afford the overheads for this ultra-Orthodox school. Furthermore, since many Jews were leaving Yeoville, its location was becoming less attractive to the pupils and their parents. Rubin himself was planning to return to his native United States, and he offered Shain the keys to the school, with the suggestion that Ohr Somayach take over the enterprise.43 Upon hearing of this conversation, Rabbi Mendel Lipskar, who more than two decades earlier was one of the rabbis who presided over Menorah Oxford’s split into the Lubavitch Foundation’s Torah Academy and the Kollel-affiliated Shaarey Torah contacted Shain with an offer of his own. Seeing this as an opportunity to rectify what he regarded as a historical mistake and to unify the ultra- Orthodox communities, Lipskar proposed that the Torah Academy would open a non-
41 See Larry Shain, “Rabbi Gavriel Eliyahu Klatzko zt"l” (undated) https://ohr.edu/special/misc/klatzko.htm, accessed on 12 December 2021.
42 Goldstein has still maintained some links with Ohr Somayach, where he delivers a shiur on the Talmud every morning after early morning prayers named in his honour. See “Chief Rabbi’s Minyan” at
http://www.ohr.co.za/davening.html, accessed on 12 December 2021.
43 See Shain, interview.
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Hassidic branch on its premises and run the Chabad and so-called Litvish [Jewish Lithuanian]
streams under one roof.44
Shain appreciated the fact that someone was willing to shoulder the burden of running a school. It certainly made financial sense to use the educational resources of a functioning school where secular studies could be taught to both streams jointly. On the other hand, based on his experience with Chabad, Shain was concerned it would not take long for the Litvish stream to become fully integrated into the school. Uncertain what to do, he shared his dilemma with his mentor in Israel, Rabb Mendel Weinbach, one of the founding Yeshiva heads of Ohr Somayach. The latter pondered for a few days before reconfirming Shain’s doubts, and recommending that despite the financial burden, Ohr Somayach Johannesburg should find a way to take over the school. Shain took his advice, raised the funds to build Shaarey Torah on Ohr Somayach property, and installed their Gallo Manor rabbi, Zev
Kreinis, as principal. With the demise of Toras Emes boys’ high school, in around 2010, and the amalgamation of the formerly independent Beis Yaakov girls’ high school into the
Shaarey Torah network, Ohr Somayach effectively become the main provider of ultra- Orthodox education. Other non-establishment schools, such as the Yeshiva Gedolah’s Hirsh Lyons, and Maharsha, discussed in the next chapter, are also active in Johannesburg but it is the Shaarey Torah network which attracts a much larger student body.45