A New Lease on Life: Rediscovering My Soul in the Sephardi Hebrew Congregation of Cape Town

A New Lease on Life: Rediscovering My Soul in the Sephardi Hebrew Congregation of Cape Town

Nearly four years ago, I stood at a crossroads. My family and I were preparing to return toIsrael from a 2 year experience learning in the Chief Rabbi of South Africa’s Community Kollel in Cape Town, ready to begin a new chapter back home.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I was approached, and then offered, a temporary rabbinic position at the SephardiHebrew Congregation in Cape Town.

At first, I said no.

I didn’t think I’d fit. I didn’t think I was what the community needed. I carried assumptions, hesitations, and a quiet inner fear of not being “Sephardi enough,” not rooted enough in their world. However a few weeks later, with a little hesitation and a lot of curiosity, I accepted the offer: a short-term contract, I told myself. A meaningful experience, if nothing else.

And now, nearly four years later, I’m still here “Living the dream” as I’m known to say.

Oh, I mean it.

I have never felt more connected to Torah, to Jewish peoplehood, and to my own mission.

What began as a temporary post became a profound turning point for me and my family. I view it as having been a new lease on my Jewish life. The Sephardi Hebrew Congregation of Cape Town didn’t just offer me a pulpit.

It gave me a rebirth.

The Sephardi Hebrew Congregation, called “Kahal Kadosh Shalom”, named after one of the Synagogue’s on Rhodes Island, has become part of my identity. I don’t just feel for every congregant, I feel for the soul of this Kahal, for its past and its future, for its layered legacy.

The history of this community, rooted in Rhodes, Turkey, the Congo, Zimbabwe, and across the broader Edot HaMizrach, has become a part of my own story.

The resilience of this community continues to inspire me, but what I find even more awe-inspiring is the treasure that lies within it.

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to truly see the beauty that’s right in front of us. And what I see, what I’ve grown to cherish, is staggering in depth and brilliance.

Today, on Yom HaShoah, as we remember and mourn the destruction of Jewish lives — families and communities — I also reflect on something more hidden: what was lost together with the lives.

The destruction of sacred knowledge, of Torah passed hand to hand, of relationships with Hahamim, of customs and sensitivities that shaped every moment of Jewish life. And it strikes me that the Jews of Rhodes, some of whom were among the last deported to their deaths, lost not only their bodies. They lost the voices of their sages, the halachic genius and prowess of generations, the melodies of tefillah, the street-corner Torah spoken in the Judeira.

Well, we have not lost it all.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve been blessed to discover the writings of some of the Hahamim of Rhodes — sefarim that offer a window into a Torah that is not only halachically precise but human, textured, communal. Torah that answers to life. Torah that lives.

We have already seen wonderful progress, with copies of “Moshe Yedaber” now being published, and my dear friend and teacher, HaRav David Benchlouch of Ezra Bessaroth is Seattle, who together with other Rabbanim, Torah Scholars, and community leaders, has been learning and teaching from these texts. (You can find them on YouTube here)

I’ve come to feel that we are part of something greater. Part of a return.

This is not nostalgia. It is a mission.

Not sentiment. But obligation.

To revive the Torah of Rhodes; to study it, to live it, to transmit it, to love it — this is how we honor the memory and souls of the holy martyrs ripped away from us. It is how we respond to the Shoah not only with remembrance, but with commitment.

Because our traditions are not just about foods or melodies or funeral customs, all of which matter deeply too.

They are about how we serving our Creator, God Almighty. They are about a worldview. A Torah methodology. A way of reading halaha through the lens of community, clarity, compassion, and depth.

That is what we must rebuild. That is what we must claw back.

And I, an outsider once, now stand firmly inside. I am immeasurably grateful to be part of this community, and filled with awe that Master of the World gave me this opportunity.

So this is how I mark Yom HaShoah.

Not only in memory, but in motion.

Not only by saying “never again,” but by saying “yes again”.

Yes to Torah, to Mesorah, to Sephardi Rabbinic and communal wisdom, to the Torah voices of Rhodes and beyond.

And may that “yes” echo louder than the silence that tried, and continues to try, to take us.

Amen.