Yeshiva College of South Africa

Yeshiva College was established in the beginning of 1951; it is located in the Glenhazel area of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. Throughout Yeshiva College's history, it has grow in numbers and stature. The school has around 1000 pupils, between the ages of 3 and 18. It 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). The school 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 and cultural activities are offered and encouraged. ==History==

The yeshiva was co-founded by Rabbi Michel Kossowsky, 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 David Sanders (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. Sanders helped to bring Rabbi Avraham Tanzer, also an alumnus of the Telz, to teach at the yeshiva. Eventually Rabbi Tanzer was appointed the Rosh yeshivah ("dean") of the school, a position which he retained until his death in 2020. Rabbi Tanzer, in turn, brought out Rabbi Azriel Goldfein (again, a fellow Telz yeshiva alumnus) to be a co-Rosh yeshiva; Rabbi Goldfein eventually left to establish the Yeshivah Gedolah of Johannesburg. In the 1980s Rabbi Aharon Pfeuffer similarly taught at the school. The staff today includes Rabbanim from Israeli, American and South African yeshivot, and graduates of several seminaries, and retains its close association with the Bnei Akiva youth movement, extending to Mizrachi, and its local Kollel Bet Mordechai. ==See also==