Leila Bronner’s name lives on at Yeshiva College

JORDAN MOSHE

Education was her calling, and she was the first woman to receive a doctorate in Bible and Jewish Studies in South Africa.

She was also a prolific author, and contributed innumerable articles to scholarly and popular publications. She was an assistant professor at Los Angeles’ University of Judaism (today the American Jewish University), a visiting professor at Harvard and Bar-Ilan universities, and a frequent presenter at academic conferences around the world.

Bronner was born in 1930 in Czechoslovakia, the youngest of seven children. Her father, Rabbi Yitzhak Amsel, a respected Hungarian chassidic leader and scholar, perceived the growing threat of anti-Semitism, and obtained visas for his family to emigrate to the United States in 1936.

At the age of 10, Bronner convinced her father that she should receive a Jewish education like her brothers. After school, she attended a teacher’s seminary, and took classes at Hunter College in New York City. She went on to marry Rabbi Joseph Bronner in 1949. The couple and their newborn daughter moved to Johannesburg in 1951.

Together, they founded Yeshiva College, the first religious orthodox day school in South Africa. In 1984, Yeshiva College rededicated the Leila Bronner Girl’s High School in her honour, a name which the institution still carries.

By 1974, Bronner was a published author who regularly filled auditoriums and synagogues for standing-room-only lectures. She had two more children while earning her Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in 1955, and a Masters in Jewish History in 1960. She chose to continue studying to achieve her doctorate, only to be told that women were not welcome in the doctoral program at Wits. She simply transferred to Pretoria University, where in 1964, she earned her doctorate in Northwest Semitic languages. She became an associate professor at Wits.

The role of the Torah and Judaism was central to her educational outlook. “The Hebrew Bible has had a great impact on the development of modern civilisation,” she wrote in 1983. “It’s not a book, but a library of books written over a long period of time and dealing with every facet, form, and problem of human life.”

The co-author of Bronner’s memoirs, Julie Gruenbaum-Fax, writes that Bronner was a pioneering Jewish feminist, quoting her writing in a newspaper in 1974, “Let us have less sermons, speeches, and articles teeming with apologetics trying to prove that Judaism places woman on a pedestal, and more concrete actions showing that she has equal opportunity with her male counterpart to develop her talents, and make a meaningful contribution to every sphere of Jewish life.”

The family moved to Los Angeles in 1984, where Bronner taught at the University of Judaism and several other educational institutions. She became president of Emunah Women, and was involved in Amit Women, Builders of Jewish Education, and the Jewish Federation.

Bronner chose not to retire, publishing a book on the afterlife, Journey to Heaven, in 2011, and her memoirs, The Eternal Students, in 2017. She continued teaching until just a few months before her death.