Rosh Beth Din, Rabbi Kurtstag, moves to Israel

SIMON APFEL

Up close and personal, though, he’s not nearly as frightening. His stern gaze dissolving like a mirage, a playful grin and pair of bright, gentle eyes come into focus, as he holds forth in a pleasingly craggy voice, and with a classic Israeli forthrightness that’s immediately reassuring.

At the beginning of May, Kurtstag relocated to his birthplace in Israel from where he is continuing his Beth Din duties, liaising daily with the local team and commuting once a month, while leading and guiding the next generation of South African dayanim.

“It wasn’t a difficult decision,” he says of the choice to return to Israel after 50 years of serving the South African community. “My wife hasn’t been well, and we have all our children in Israel. We felt it was the right time to make the move we were always going to make.”

Kurtstag is in touch daily via e-mail and Skype, though he jokes it has been a battle keeping pace with technology. “I used to dictate e-mails to my secretary, now I’ve had to learn to use e-mail myself. WhatsApp is the next step – the new frontier.”

He sees his key role as mentoring the new generation of dayanim.

“I realise I’m getting on,” he says with typical candour. “You know, the cemetery is full of indispensable people; you aren’t here forever – you have to educate and groom those who come after you.”

Moshe Aharon Kurtstag was born in Tel Aviv to Polish parents who came to Israel before the Second World War. Brought up in a Zionist-religious home with a great love for Israel and Torah, he attended a yeshiva high school, went on to study in various yeshivot, and served as a chaplain in the IDF, before taking up his first leadership role as Rosh Yeshiva of Bnei Akiva high school in Netanya.

In 1961, Kurtstag married his wife, Batya – who is South African and the daughter of the late, revered Rabbi Yirmiyahu Aloy – and began studying in kollel, eventually qualifying as a dayan. Soon after, he received a call from South Africa to head up a rabbinical training programme.

“My big passion has always been education, and it seemed like a good opportunity to make an impact on what was emerging as an important Diaspora community.”

A young, idealistic Kurtstag made his mark early on with JSUP (Jewish Students University Programme), which he founded not long after his arrival in 1967.

“At the time, kids learnt Jewish studies in high school and their Jewish education ended there. Our goal was to offer tertiary-level Jewish studies to university students.”

At the campus in Arcadia, students learnt in-depth Gemara, Tanach and halacha in the morning, and did Unisa studies in the afternoon.

“People thought we were mad to open what was basically a yeshiva university in such a small community, but Baruch Hashem, we were very successful. At our peak we had about 120 students enrolled in various programmes. Many people became frum through JSUP.

Some went on to yeshiva and became rabbis – Rabbi Menachem Raff from Maharsha, for

example, who was one of our first students. People still tell me it was the best years of their life.”

After the Board of Education underwent a financial crisis, and JSUP was closed, Kurtstag joined the Beth Din as a part-time dayan in 1976. He was the rookie in a group of much older, more experienced dayanim, but he grew into the role and learnt a lot from them (he cites his father-in-law as a personal mentor), and in 1989 was appointed as the head of the Beth Din.

Under Kurtstag’s leadership, the South African Beth Din became widely admired around the world.

“I believe we are the envy of many other communities because we have one central, unified body – one Beth Din, one hechsher, one Chevrah Kadisha,” he explains.

“This is especially important when it comes to kashrut. In England you have four different kashrut organisations, in America you have more than 100. This makes things difficult – not just for the consumer who is confronted by a confusing array of hechserim, but for kashrut authorities themselves, who have much less bargaining power when approaching manufacturers.

“Amazingly, South Africa has around 30 000 kosher-certified products; I’m told we have the highest ratio of kosher products to kosher consumers in the world.”

He is particularly proud of the institution’s reputation.

“Our judgements and decisions and hechshers are accepted everywhere in the world. We cherish our reputation and we always try to maintain the highest standards in our activities.”

Other signature achievements include a highly-regarded conversion programme (he estimates that around 70 per cent of new converts remain observant) and a series of landmark rulings that have seen South African civil courts uphold the Beth Din’s verdicts – not least of which was an amendment to South Africa’s Divorce Act, effectively enabling a woman to petition a judge not to grant a civil divorce until a get is given by the husband (or vice versa). 

Rabbi Kurtstag has seen many changes in the community
The South African Jewish community has changed considerably over the past five decades – a spectacle to which Rabbi Moshe Kurtstag has had front row seats.

“The main development I’ve noticed is that more people are becoming interested in Judaism. Today, there is no family without a frum relative – whether it is a son or daughter, a nephew or cousin.

“With this has come a tremendous development in Jewish learning. Going to yeshiva post-high school has become an accepted path. The frum community continues to grow in both numbers and quality, and it’s very heartening to see.”

He is particularly intrigued by the sudden spike in the number of people seeking to convert.

“There have been entire Afrikaner families converting, black Africans, pastors, you name it. It’s a phenomenon we’ve never seen before, and there’s no clear answer why this is happening.”

Kurtstag is rather less enthused, understandably, about rising intermarriage.

“It’s not at the alarming rate you find in the US, but still, any Jew that marries out is for us a loss. It is for this reason that we have strict policies for shuls not to give honours to members who marry out, and why we have a separate section in the cemetery. These are harsh steps, but we believe they are necessary.”

Looking ahead, he sees it as imperative that the South African Jewish community maintains its renowned unity, and that the Beth Din doesn’t splinter into factional entities each representing a different segment of the community.

But in an increasingly open world in which traditional power structures are crumbling, some have raised the question of there being too much authority invested in one institution.

His response is unequivocal. “People can challenge the Beth Din. They can dispute decisions and ask for explanations and hold us accountable. We are happy to answer to the public – indeed, we see it as necessary to do so – and sometimes we change our minds.

“But people who want to undermine and break apart – that’s a dangerous thing. If the Beth Din fractures, things become chaotic – rulings can’t be relied upon, and it becomes anarchy.”

The patriotic fire remains undiminished, but even for this most ardent Tzioni, being back in Israel after what seems a lifetime will take some getting used to.

“It’s a different Israel to the one I knew,” says Kurtstag. It’s nice to see how the country is developing technologically and economically. Here, as in South Africa, you are seeing a spiritual reawakening. Obviously, it’s more politicised – everything in Israel is politically charged from the day you are born. But it’s wonderful nonetheless.”

Finding himself with spare time is another unfamiliar sensation.

“I’m starting to devote more time to my own learning. I also hope to do some writing. Above all, I look forward to enjoying my children and grandchildren [he has 25] and great-grandchildren. I will not be bored. I will not sit idly looking at the four walls.”

In between, though, the work continues apace securing the future of a celebrated institution he has been instrumental in building.

“I think the Beth Din is in excellent hands. This new generation of dayanim are great guys, and I have full confidence they will do an excellent job – they already are – and maintain the culture and traditions and excellence that we have built over the years.”