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10 Cheshvan 5764 - November 5, 2003 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Shaarei Torah 25th Anniversary Dinner
by D. Saks

A large gathering of well-wishers, including many of the city's leading rabbonim and benefactors, were in attendance at the 25th anniversary dinner for Shaarei Torah school in Johannesburg last week. The theme of the evening was the celebration of a quarter of a century of excellence in Jewish education by Shaarei Torah, which has been one of the mainstays of Torah chinuch catering for the Johannesburg chareidi community since its inception. Two new awards, the Rabbi Larry Shain Hasmoda Award for diligency in learning and the Principal's Middos Tovos Award were inaugurated on the night.

The main speaker was Chief Rabbi Cyril Harris, who is the chief patron of the school. Referring to the forthcoming parshas hashavuah parshas Noach, Rabbi Harris explained how the three sons of Noach, Shem, Chom and Yefes, epitomized a dedication to learning and piety, physical strength and external beauty respectively. The real importance of Shaarei Torah was the "Torah foundation of Shem," which it gave in abundance to its pupils.

"In the beginning of the 21st Century, we have a struggle for dominance between sheer physicality, sheer external beauty and all the things which are important to us -- learning, morality and ruchniyus. It is essential that primacy of place is given to the intense search for Torah, for the development of the mind and the spirit," he said.

The children at Shaarei Torah, he said, would be given such a sound foundation in this that, im yirtzeh Hashem, all of them would go on to a very deep understanding of Torah and would never deviate from it, despite the alternative attractions of the modern world.

Rabbi Zev Kraines, who took over as principal from the long- serving Rabbi Chagi Rubin at the beginning of 2000, described the mission of Shaarei Torah as being to instill a deep commitment to traditional Jewish practice and learning amongst its pupils.

"It is a school that imbues children with a tremendous love of learning and develops them as true Torah Jews" he said.

Shaarei Torah was established in the then vibrant Jewish suburb of Yeoville in 1978, largely on the instigation of Rabbi Yaakov Salzer of the Adath Jeshurun congregation and Yaakov Allison. The genesis of the institution in fact went back to 1966, when newly arrived Rabbi Norman Bernhard established Menora Primary School as a branch of the centrist Orthodox Yeshiva College and located on the premises of his congregation, the Oxford Synagogue. The school was in existence for twelve years, largely catering for the strictly orthodox Adath Jeshurun and Kollel communities.

In 1978, the school divided into two, the first becoming today's Torah Academy (Lubavitch) and the second Shaarei Torah.

The demographic decline of the Jewish community in Yeoville from the early 1990s onwards took a serious toll on Shaarei Torah, whose nursery school by the end of the decade had fewer than a dozen children. At the beginning of 2000, however, attractive new premises were built on the grounds of Ohr Somayach in Glenhazel, since which the numbers have increased substantially. Vice-principal Rabbi Dov Connack confirmed that since the move, the total enrollment of the combined primary and nursery school had almost doubled. He added that while the primary school was located on Ohr Somayach's premises, it was important to understand that it was not part of Ohr Somayach itself but continued to be a completely independent institution.

 

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