Farewell to a Torah giant and gentleman

When Rabbi Avraham Tanzer passed away last Tuesday night, his machzor was still lying on his desk and his tallis was still draped over his chair from Yom Kippur.

Shock at the loss of this 85-year-old Torah giant and gentleman spread like wildfire as the community went into mourning. “The world isn’t the same world we know,” said Rabbi Alon Friedman, the associate rabbi of Glenhazel Hebrew Congregation, in a eulogy delivered at a tribute event held on Yeshiva College campus on Wednesday morning last week.

“We’ve lost a giant. We all went to sleep last night thinking it was a terrible nightmare, but we were woken this morning confused and lost without our beloved Rosh Yeshiva, taken from us so suddenly moments after Yom Kippur.”

Tanzer, a pillar of the Johannesburg Jewish community, dean of Yeshiva College School, and spiritual leader of the Glenhazel Hebrew Congregation, leaves a legacy few could rival.

Tanzer was the ultimate rabbi’s rabbi and people’s rabbi, Friedman said.

“He lived by the mantra of nothing is permanent, that Hashem will get us through everything. His entire life he got up before the birds to learn,” Friedman said. “Who could forget the Rosh Yeshiva standing at the pulpit and living his droshas and shiurim? He did it all with grace, love, and warmth.”

“He had an open-door policy, and literally never closed his study door unless dealing with a private matter. He was accessible to everyone: Jews and non-Jews, students, alumni, and staff. He had time for anyone who walked through his door.

“When someone was pained, he was. When someone had a simcha, he did. He carried around a notebook in his jacket pocket with hundreds of names of sick people for whom he davened daily. He knew every person and what they needed.

“He never forgot anyone, and after meeting the Rosh Yeshiva, no one forgot him.”

Tanzer was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 1935, and arrived in South Africa in the early 1960s to take up the position of associate Rosh Yeshiva at newly opened Yeshiva College for what was supposed to be a two-year stint.

He and wife, Marcia, ended up staying and making an impact few could match. Together, the couple invested their efforts in furthering the religious interests of our community, nurturing the recently founded Yeshiva College Boys High School, and founding an iconic community shul which would become the home of about 750 families.

Rabbi Dov Tanzer spoke of his father, “Who could discern what needed to be said like you could? Everything I ever said I asked you about first. I knew that If I asked your advice, what you felt was always the right thing. You just understood.”

“You taught that kavod is something to give, not to take. So humble, so gentle, so normal. Yet a giant.”

For close on 60 years, the great rabbi’s son said that he woke up every morning feeling warm because he knew that there was someone whose love he could count on all the time.

“You were a person who really cared,” he said. “Now, abba, the world is a bit colder. For your family, your children, this is like the churban hamikdash [the destruction of the temple].”

Rabbi David Masinter, Tanzer’s son-in-law, said that with Tanzer’s passing, Johannesburg, South Africa, and the Jewish world had lost some of its splendour.

“For the past 35 years, wherever I spoke [where Tanzer was in attendance], I got a call the next morning without exception from my father-in-law to tell me how well I’d spoken.”

Tanzer’s passing leaves our community bereft and orphaned, said Chief Rabbi Dr Warren Goldstein.

“We have lost one of the greatest rabbis in the history of South African Jewry,” he said. “I feel bereft and a deep sense of loss. Rabbi Tanzer was a mentor, guide, teacher, friend, and rabbi to me, and I feel such a sense of loss and pain at his passing.

“Before he got up to deliver a drosha in shul, he turned to me to ask me to daven for Hashem to help him find the words,” the chief rabbi said. “I don’t know why he asked – he was a master darshan [Torah orator]. But he always used to ask for that.”

When Rabbi Tanzer came to South Africa, he didn’t predict the future but created it, said Goldstein.

“He created with his rebbetzin a future that he pioneered and gave birth to in a way that is startling,” he said. “When Yeshiva College Shul [Glenhazel Hebrew Congregation] started here, a delegation came from the Sydenham Shul to tell them that a shul like this wasn’t necessary. What was in Glenhazel?

“Yet, Rabbi Tanzer came and built, nurturing a fledgling school into a shining light with thousands of talmidim. He spread Torah with refinement, gentleness, and even humour.”

Israel Bender, the chairperson of the Yeshiva College board of governors, said the success of Yeshiva College and its shuls was owed to Tanzer’s 58 years of creating and breathing life into the campus.

“Where Yeshiva College received the plaudits, one man was able to harness the support of so many, and ably backed by his wife and committed family, drove its success,” he told the SA Jewish Report this week.

“Rabbi Tanzer wasn’t an influence over Yeshiva College which he built brick by brick, classroom by classroom, and student by student. He is, was, and always will be the life force, that with much siyata dishmaya [providence] gave Yeshiva College its chiyus[spirit], its neshoma, and its influence over the hearts and souls of every individual that passed through.”

Tanzer was the benevolent rav of the people, with a bold and consistent human touch that spoke to everyone irrespective of age or creed, said Bender, a master orator but a quality listener.

“All of us have in some not-so-small way been shaped by the Rosh Yeshiva’s five decades of constant giving, building, and nurturing,” he said.

Tanzer is survived by his wife of 60 years, Marcia, his six children, and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren across the world.