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10 Cheshvan 5763 - October 16, 2002 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Tribute To Unique South African Kehilla
by D. Saks, Yated South African Correspondent

Dayan Aharon Dunner, Senior Dayan of Kedassia Beis Din, London, was the keynote speaker at a gala dinner held last week to pay tribute to Johannesburg's Adass Yeshurun congregation and in particular to its esteemed rov, Rabbi Yossi Salzer. A broad cross-section of the Johannesburg religious community, including many past and present members of the historic shul, attended the function, which was held in the hall of the Beit Hamedrash Hagodol of Sandton.

The Adass, which was founded by strictly observant German Jewish immigrants in 1936, is widely recognized as having pioneered Torah-true Orthodoxy in South Africa. The congregation is seeking to reestablish itself in the Jewish heartland of Glenhazel after relocating from Yeoville three years ago. Yeoville, once a thriving center of Jewish religious life that among other things comprised eight synagogues, two Orthodox day schools, bookshops, kosher bakeries and restaurants as well as the headquarters of the Beth Din, went into precipitous decline in the 1990s when large numbers of black residents moved into the area.

Today, only one shul remains in the suburb, the Vilna Gaon Torah Center, founded in the early 1980s by HaRav Moshe Sternbuch.

High point of the evening was the address by Dayan Dunner, who focused on the importance of the rov in any kehilla and how it is he and not his baalei battim who is the ultimate authority responsible for determining how and in which direction the kehilla should develop. Taking this further, he said that Torah law is always paramount, whether or not this conflicts with the norms and mores of the times or even when circumstances see at times to dictate a different solution.

Dayan Dunner, who has had a long association with Adass Yeshurun and was guest speaker at its fiftieth anniversary celebrations in 1986, urged the Johannesburg community to lend a helping hand to the kehilla in its quest to reestablish itself. All of Johannesburg Jewry had in some way benefited from what the Adass had built up over the years, he said, and now is the time to make a meaningful return. This is by no means an exclusively financial issue, moreover. As much as the kehilla needs funds, it needs loyal supporters as well.

Past Adass Yeshurun President Egon Schoemann, who today lives mainly in Israel, described his recent visit to the kevorim of Rabbi Yaakov and Rebbetzin Miriam Salzer, parents of the present Rabbi Salzer, on Har Hazeisim. Rebbetzin Salzer passed away three months ago, 22 years after the loss of her revered husband. Rabbi Yaakov Salzer, a former talmid of Rabbi Akiva Sofer zt"l in Pressburg, arrived in 1953 to become the first rov of the kehilla and was acknowledged as the foremost halachic authority in South Africa by the growing chareidi community and many rabbonim from the mainstream shuls.

"There is probably hardly anyone in this room who hasn't been directly or indirectly influenced by the work of those two people," commented Schoemann, who arrived in South Africa as a baby in 1936, the year the shul was founded.

Schoemann described how times had changed for the better in Johannesburg, since the Adass had been founded. For much of its history, he said, the congregation had found it necessary to live in isolation from the rest of the community and be wary of outside influences. Today, the Torah community in Johannesburg is sufficiently strong for this no longer to be necessary.

On the contrary, it is time for the shul to throw open its ranks and welcome those who are striving to grow in their Yiddishkeit. Rabbi Yossi Salzer, he said, was a leader sufficiently attuned to the times to make this a reality.

Rabbi Salzer described the early years of Adass Yeshurun (then spelled Adath Jeshurun in the German manner). It had begun as no more than a small minyan in a private Yeoville home occupied by three sisters and their respective husbands, Jonas Emanuel, Fritz Homburger and Sam Loebenstein, but it soon established itself on a permanent basis as other Torah-observant German Jews and others flocked to it.

Apart from being the son of the shul's first rov, he said, he was also the grand-nephew of its co-founder Jonas Emanuel, through his late mother. He stressed that the intention of the kehilla had never been to be an Austrittsgemeinde (separatist community). Wherever existing religious facilities were considered adequate, there was no need for duplication. Only when they were found wanting did the Adass establish its own facilities, which were then made available to the entire Jewish community.

Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris described the Adass as a "quite unique and admirable kehilla," which for years, and almost alone, had carried the flag of Yiddishkeit in Johannesburg, thereby in no small way paving the way to what the Jewish community in the city has become today. He pointed out the importance the Adass pioneers had placed in the teaching of Torah to the youth, and how much the present bastions of Torah learning owe to their influence.

"We are saluting a pivotal congregation in our community that has sown fruit beyond the confines of their own kehilla," he said.

 

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