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.
