Yeshiva College of South Africa
The Yeshiva College of South Africa (Yeshivat Beit Yitzchak), commonly known as Yeshiva College and formerly known as Yeshivat Bnei Akiva, is South Africa’s largest religious Jewish Day School. It was established in 1953.
Yeshiva College[]
Yeshiva College has around 900 pupils, between the ages of 3 and 18. The school is located in the Glenhazel area of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. The school consists of a nursery school (up to age 6), a coeducational primary school (grades 0-6), and separate boys' and girls' high schools (grade 7-12)
Yeshiva College adopts a Religious Zionist and Modern Orthodox philosophy. Throughout, pupils study a double curriculum, focusing on Torah study as well as secular studies; students ultimately sitting for the National Senior Certificate (see Matriculation in South Africa), where the school achieves competitively. Various sports are also offered and encouraged. The school is closely associated with the Bnei Akiva youth movement, and, educationally with Mizrachi, and its local Kollel Bet Mordechai.
History[]
The yeshiva was co-founded in the mid-1950s by Rabbi , an Eastern European Talmudic scholar who had settled in South Africa during the Holocaust, and Rabbi Joseph Bronner, an alumnus of the Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in Brooklyn, New York, who had settled in South Africa after World War II and was active in the business world. The yeshiva was named for Rabbi Kossowsky's father, Rabbi Yitzchak Kossowsky, who had preceded him and had served as one of the heads of Johannesburg's Beth Din ("religious court".)
The first full-time instructor of Talmud at the yeshiva was Rabbi , who was brought out from the Telz yeshiva in the United States to teach the young students Talmud in the traditional style of the Lithuanian yeshivas—of the non-Hasidic Jews. He in turn helped to bring Rabbi , also an alumnus of the Telz yeshiva in the U.S., to teach at the yeshiva. Eventually Rabbi Tanzer was appointed the Rosh yeshivah ("dean") of the school, a position which he has retained.
Rabbi Tanzer in turn brought out Rabbi Azriel Goldfein [1] (again, a fellow Telz yeshiva alumnus) to be a co-Rosh yeshiva; Rabbi Goldfein eventually left to establish the Yeshivah Gedolah of Johannesburg.
Throughout Yeshiva College's history, it has continued to grow in numbers and stature becoming South Africa's largest religious Jewish Day School.
External links[]
See also[]
- Jewish education in South Africa — under History of the Jews in South Africa.
- Orthodox yeshivas in South Africa
- Kollel Bet Mordechai
- Jewish day school
- Torah study
- Yeshiva
- Yeshiva College (disambiguation)
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- Ashkenazi Jewish culture in South Africa
- Lithuanian-Jewish diaspora
- Lithuanian South African
- Schools in Johannesburg
- Jewish schools in South Africa
- Modern Orthodox Jewish day schools
- Jews and Judaism in Johannesburg
- Orthodox yeshivas in South Africa
- Yeshiva stubs
- South African school stubs