MOYSHE VOLOZHINSKI

MOYSHE VOLOZHINSKI (1908-September 17, 1951)

            He was born in Vilna.  He studied in the local Tarbut high school, from which he graduated with distinction.  In 1926 he came to South Africa and settled in Cape Town where the well-known community and religious leader, Reverend Bender, took an interest in him and sought to help him.  He entered Cape Town University and received his B. A. and later his M. A. there with first class honours in Hebrew language and literature.  He was initially a lecturer in Hebrew at the Stellenbosch Theological Seminary, later at Cape Town University from 1934 to 1938, when he moved to Oudsthoorn where he served as director of the local Talmud-Torah.  From there he moved on to Bloemfontein also for a position as director of a Talmud-Torah, later to settle in Johannesburg where he became administrator of the Talmud Torah in Mayfair (a suburb of Johannesburg) and lecturer in Hebrew at the Hebrew teachers’ seminary named for Yehuda Leib Zlotkin.  He was a great scholar of the Hebrew language and literature and published dozens of articles and essays on literature and community cultural matters in local newspapers and magazines, including: Afrikaner idishe tsaytung (African Jewish newspaper), Dorem-afrike (South Africa), Barkai (Morning star), South African Jewish Times, and Zionist Record.  He wrote a great deal on the history of the city of his birth, Vilna, and was an accomplished speaker in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English.  He was also an active Zionist.  He died suddenly in Johannesburg.

Sources: Obituary notices in: Afrikaner idishe tsaytung, South African Jewish Times, and Zionist Record for September 21, 1951; and the monthly Dorem afrike (September 1951).