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.
