It has sometimes been suggested that I should have pursued a musical career, as opposed to entering the rabbinate. Although my oratorical skills, knowledge of Halacha and insight throughout my pastoral duties helped me acquire an extra dimension in acquitting myself of my rabbinical duties, those who know me well feel my personality and aptitude may have been better suited to being a performer – even though I had no formal musical training, other than within the synagogue choirs and the cantors with whom I worked.
I was greatly gratified, in the shuls where I occupied pulpits, by the fact that the choirs I trained produced sounds and liturgy of a world-class standard. Music was always close to my heart. I amassed a collection of videos – before the advent of CDs – of the world’s top operas and symphony orchestras and continually watched and listened to them. The late Cantor Johnny Gluck and I shared these films and recordings and some of my chosen friends also enjoyed watching and listening to them, while I provided an accompanying commentary.
Thus it was that on board the ship to the United States, I had a convert in the form of Michael Wolfson and recruited him to join in harmonious renditions of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and other classical music which we would “sing” repeatedly, emulating different orchestral sounds. We were guys in our late teens and we tried to entertain the 12 other passengers travelling in the cargo ship. We quite enjoyed the three-week voyage and, apart from swimming and playing quoits or table tennis, we used to sing for our fellow passengers. There was one American guy, a pleasant person, whom we drove totally crazy, harmonising the tunes and breaking into song whenever we saw him. He put up with it – it was a way of alleviating the monotony of the trip.
We soon-to-be yeshiva bochrim were something of a curiosity to the other passengers, particularly to the American, who wanted to know all about a yeshiva and what becoming a rabbi entailed. One problem was the lack of kashrut. We tried as far as possible to avoid eating food that was intrinsically non-kosher, although the delicacies and food they served were very tempting. But we didn’t succumb: we ate mainly fish and salads and we did what we could to observe the Jewish dietary law. (That two Orthodox teenagers on their way to study in a strictly Orthodox institution considered eating fish and salads prepared in a non-kosher kitchen as being acceptable is a further indication of the disconnect that then existed between the relatively light level of observance we were used to in South Africa and the environment we were about to enter. This is notwithstanding the fact that, for various reasons beyond the scope of this book, even in strictly Orthodox circles, this might have been considered less problematic than it is today.)
For the most part, the voyage was boring because every day was like the next. The passengers saw no land except for the islands of St Helena and Ascension, but the ship didn’t stop there. Always interested in history, I made a mental note to find out more about the two islands. I later discovered that St Helena was named after Saint Helena of Constantinople and is an island of volcanic origin, governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. One of the most isolated islands in the world, it was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502 and was used by the British as a place of exile, including for Napoleon Bonaparte and over 5 000 Boer prisoners during the Anglo-Boer War.
Ascension Island is named for the day it was discovered and was notable as a coaling station for mariners and commercial airliners. During the Second World War it was an important naval and air station and is today a Royal Air Force station and a signals intelligence facility.
The voyage and arrival in Brooklyn were also lessons in history that I grew to appreciate over time. Even then, I was moved by my first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty, which seemed to be calling out to us, as in Emma Lazarus’s famous poem The New Colossus, written in 1883, engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the lower level of the pedestal of the statue. The often-quoted words of the sonnet are:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
However, I preferred the name “Mother of Exiles”, the term used to refer to the Statue of Liberty in the sonnet. And, ironically – though I couldn’t know it yet – I would indeed become an exile in both a religious and political sense, spanning the years of my career. At that stage of immaturity, though, all we young, aspirant rabbis could do was quip: “Is stat you, Michael? Is stat you, Ben?”
Michael’s Uncle Sam – a strangely coincidental name – met his nephew and me at the docks and took us to his home in Brooklyn for three days. During the time we were with him, he took us to watch ice hockey. On the third day, he escorted us to Grand Central Station and put us on a train bound for Cleveland, home of Telshe Yeshiva. It was not destined to be a soft landing.
After an overnight train trip, we were met by a guy with a big beard. We were terrified of him – I think he was a senior yeshiva bochur, but his appearance was daunting. He didn’t have a car, so we shlepped our luggage in one of those big taxis.
Telshe Yeshiva was situated at 706 East 105th Street, a “far from wealthy” area of Cleveland, and housed in an old building, with dormitories able to accommodate 200 bochrim from all over the world, including an Australian, a few Brazilians and one or two Britishers.
We were placed in the lowest class in the yeshiva – a come-down, because in South Africa we had prided ourselves on being such big, knowledgeable scholars – but discovered that we weren’t. We had to start from scratch. And we each had to have a partner who was more advanced than we were. The partner was known as a chavruta, from the Aramaic word, akin to the Hebrew chaver, meaning “friend” or “colleague”.
We learnt different tractates of the Mishnah and the Gemara, which together comprise the Talmud, the book containing the Jewish oral law. It could take years to finish all of this, collectively known as the Shas, the six orders of the Talmud. That was the aim of every student.
Luckily, I made rapid progress. Soon I was keeping up with my chavruta, who was only a couple of years ahead of me. At that stage, I didn’t expect anything of myself other than to become a big talmid chacham – a foremost Torah scholar – like my roshei yeshiva [heads of the academy].
In the days before Skype and e-mails and when long-distance telephone calls were complicated and costly, my parents would make a three-minute call before Rosh Hashanah and Pesach. Otherwise, I relied on the twice-weekly airmail letters from my mother and the less frequent ones from my father.
I settled in quite well, but – as a social animal – I missed the interaction with others outside the confines of Telshe. I did, however, befriend Rabbi Avraham Tanzer, who had already become a prominent student. This friendship has spanned the oceans and the decades and landed up in Johannesburg where, at the beginning of 1963, Rabbi Tanzer arrived to take up the position of Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva College (then still only a boys’ high school). A few years before this book went to print, Rabbi Tanzer celebrated his 50th anniversary both as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva College and spiritual leader of the adjoining synagogue in Glenhazel, a congregation established on the same campus in the same year of his arrival.
Then another “youngster” – one also destined to make an enormous impact as a rosh yeshiva in South Africa – joined the students at Telshe. Originally from Milwaukee, his name was Azriel Goldfein, of blessed memory. Rav Bloch, on being approached to find a suitable student to be his study partner, said “Nem der Afrikaner” (“Take the African”), meaning, of course, me.
Famous words! It was thus that I met up with a wonderful young man destined to make an indelible imprint on Judaism in South Africa. Rabbi Goldfein, starting off at Yeshiva College in Glenhazel, went on to found the Yeshiva Gedolah of Johannesburg. The Yeshiva Gedolah has trained many young South Africans for the rabbinate, the most prominent among them being the current Chief Rabbi of South Africa, Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein. The alumni have served some 50 synagogues, 20 Jewish communal organisations and almost every Jewish school in South Africa. Sadly, Rabbi Goldfein, still only 72, passed away in 2007.
Rabbi Azriel Goldfein, zt”l
The late Rosh Yeshiva’s wife, Clarice, has said that she believes my encouragement and assistance when the young Azriel first started out at Telshe played a significant part in persuading him to remain at the yeshiva and not choose what was a possible alternative path, namely medicine. However, I’m by no means sure of this: my young chavruta was a natural Torah genius and there was little I needed to do for him. Firstly, he was extremely quick to grasp the Talmudic text, displaying absolute understanding for the subject at hand. Secondly, and more importantly, he loved it, especially the question-and-answer method of the rabbis of old. Most of all, he was at home, totally, with the long hours that we spent figuring out the viewpoints of the various Talmudic sages. There was another important factor, namely his calm demeanour and patience when confronted with seemingly unanswerable questions in learning. This, of course, mirrored his approach to people and to life in general. So if, 60 years ago, I was privileged to make a small contribution to the growth and development of this great man,a true Gadol who can’t be replaced, then that’s truly something!
I recall clearly the saintly Rabbi Elya Meir Bloch, the Telshe Rosh Yeshiva, of blessed memory. Every shalosh seudas – the “third meal”, held in the afternoon towards the end of Shabbat – the entire yeshiva would come together while he combined giving Torah discourses with leading the assembly in singing the traditional Shabbat niggunim (melodies). He had a superb voice and heaven help you if you got the tune wrong or, worse still, interrupted the singing with chatter. He would rap the table and correct or shush you! Later, as a rabbi, I would sing much of his nusach [liturgy] in the shuls where I was officiating.
Rabbi Bloch was also a champion of the Mussar school of thought in the yeshiva world. Founded by Rabbi Israel Salanter, another giant of Lithuanian Jewry, in the mid-1800s, it placed a strong emphasis on ethical behaviour and the development of positive character traits, considering this to be far more important than chasing after the most stringent versions of the law itself, which often happened at the expense of the former.
I remember once coming out of the cloakroom and hearing a shout that echoed across the entire building. A student was wearing his tzitzis (ritual fringes) outside his clothes, as was common in many Orthodox circles. In fact, they were virtually hanging down to his toes. Far from being impressed, Rabbi Bloch considered this to be an arrogant display of false religious piety and publicly castigated the student, using the dreaded rebuke, “chillul Hashem” (a desecration of the name of G-d, the worst thing a Jew can do).
On another occasion, a student found a way to “rig” the public phone booth so that one coin could be used for multiple calls. On learning of this, Rabbi Bloch called all of us students together and told us that he was considering closing the yeshiva, since he hadn’t started it in order to train a bunch of thieves. Such was the uncompromising attitude of the great Mussar teachers for any dishonest behaviour, no matter whom it was directed against.
Despite my initial successes at Telshe, at learning and making friends, I was deeply homesick. My mother’s letters helped, but it took two weeks for them to get to America. I also found myself missing the Zionist-orientated culture, and more relaxed approach to social activity of my Bnei Akiva days. In the traditional yeshiva world, Zionism – because of its essentially modernist, secular nature – was seen as posing a threat to traditional Torah learning and practice. Nor were such fears unfounded. Inspired by the unfolding saga of Jewish national reawakening, many Jews, young and old, did indeed abandon the religious Orthodoxy of their forebears. Others, however, were able to find a synthesis between religious tradition and Zionism, and it was towards this camp that I increasingly gravitated. The fact that Bnei Akiva was a co-educational youth movement where boys and girls socialised freely, in contravention of the strict theological ban on such activities in the charedi yeshiva world, didn’t make things easier. In Telshe, and the charedi yeshiva world in general, anything that could possibly lead to inappropriate sexual activity outside the strict confines of marriage was seen as falling within the Biblical ban on sexual immorality and for the yeshiva, allowing its students to be part of the mixed activities of Bnei Akiva was a red line not to be crossed.
I had come from the Bnei Akiva youth movement. That was my background – a Zionist, religious movement. I knew that going to Bnei Akiva meetings was strongly discouraged at Telshe, and had even heard of a student having been expelled for doing so. I tried to dispel the notion of going, but my homesickness grew and wouldn’t abate.
The Bnei Akiva Cleveland group was situated up in Cleveland Heights, a two-hour walk from Telshe. I knew the names of the leaders of the movement, most of whom were students of the modern/centrist Orthodox Yeshiva University in New York. One Shabbat morning, I decided to brave the long walk. Upon arriving there, I introduced myself, wearing my suit and hat while they were dressed in their informal Bnei Akiva apparel. It was rather strange, but they were very friendly and insisted I join them for lunch. I was so at home; I was swept away by this feeling of belonging.
Unfortunately, my excursion got me into trouble with the yeshiva authorities. I was told in no uncertain terms that I had violated the rules of the yeshiva and that it was not to happen again. At that point, the most sensible thing would have been for me to either conform to the rules of the yeshiva, or to voluntarily leave Telshe for an institution more suited to my religious level and ideological outlook. Instead, I visited my new Bnei Akiva friends on two more occasions and, on being discovered, was duly advised to leave.
I still regret the anti-Zionist stance of Telshe, but I feel I need to expand on the extent to which it existed. Many people remain unaware of the fact that in the early 1950s, Rav Elya Meir Bloch attended in Cleveland a Yom Ha’atzmaut [Israel’s Independence Day] celebration, which was patronised by all sectors of the Jewish community. He even spoke publicly, referring to the establishment of Israel as a miracle from Hashem. Moreover, he did so at a time when he was the World President of Agudas Yisrael, the ultra-Orthodox party in Israel.
I duly commenced learning at the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva in New York. Prior to joining, I met with the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner, of blessed memory, one of the greatest rabbis of the 20th century. Rav Hutner told me that, while being ultra-Orthodox himself, he was flexible when it came to the lifestyle choices of his students. For example, he allowed those who wished to do so to attend night school at Brooklyn College or New York University and study for a degree, as long as they didn’t take time off from their day studies at yeshiva.
At Chaim Berlin, I found myself in an environment far more flexible in terms of establishing a modus vivendi between devotion to Torah study and adherence to religious Zionism (as expressed through the Bnei Akiva and Mizrachi movements). Despite the manner of my eventual departure from Telshe, I was also mindful of the duty of hakarot hatov (gratitude) that I had towards it. It was there that I learnt how to learn Talmud and grew to love it – a love that is still with me.
The Struggle Rabbi 