Two Converts, One Mission: Reviving Jewish Life in Stellenbosch: Rabbi Chananyah & Eliana Duthie

00:00 Speaker 1 Chananya Dathi was once a student at the University of Stellenbosch.

00:05 Speaker 2 And on my route to campus was the synagogue in Stellenbosch, which I walk past every day, and it was always closed.

00:13 Speaker 1 But one day he noticed that the synagogue was wide open.

00:17 Speaker 2 And I thought, "Okay, this is my chance to go in, to see what does a, a synagogue look like, what goes on in there."

00:24 Speaker 1 Around the same time thousands of miles away, Eliana Dathi was talking with two of her high school friends about what they wanted to be when they were older.

00:34 Speaker 3 And then I, for whatever reason, said, "I wanna be a Jew." And then I went home, and I posted it on Facebook.

00:41 Speaker 1 Over the next decade or so, Eliana and Chananya fought to learn just what that meant. Once armed with that knowledge, the Dathis began to make a major impact at Stellenbosch University, an elite South African university where they now serve as the Rebbe's emissaries.

00:58 Speaker 2 We're giving Rebbe a lot of naches, and it gives us a lot of chizuk going forward, knowing that this is only the beginning.

01:09 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Back to our story in a moment, but first I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch. Chananya Dathi was raised in a Christian home in Cape Town, South Africa.

02:45 Speaker 2 For the first 19 years of my life, I didn't know a Jew and didn't know what a Jew was.

02:51 Speaker 1 Dathi grew up in Lansdowne, a neighborhood of Cape Town.

02:55 Speaker 2 We're quite sheltered. My parents didn't want me to be too influenced by other people.

03:01 Speaker 1 But things didn't quite turn out that way, did they?

03:03 Speaker 2 Yeah, exactly.

03:09 Speaker 1 When Chananya was a teenager, he had questions.

03:12 Speaker 2 Okay, there's something bigger than what I am. Maybe I should look and ask questions, not just go with the status quo. Just to say, "Okay, this is who I am," without questioning it felt a bit stupid. There were certain things that just didn't make sense to me.

03:30 Speaker 1 Dathi says the Trinitarian doctrine he'd been taught triggered a massive cognitive dissonance.

03:36 Speaker 2 The numbers game, how can God be one? There was a lacking of truth, a void that I did not know how to fill.

03:48 Speaker 1 In 2010 when he was still a teenager, Chananya went on a cultural exchange trip to Germany. He had known that his father's father was German, but one of the things he learned on that trip was that his grandfather was a Jew. Dathi had to learn more, so he consulted with Rabbi Google.

04:07 Speaker 2 What does it mean to be a Jew? What is Rosh Hashana? What is Shabbos? All these things.

04:14 Speaker 1 When Dathi began his studies at Stellenbosch University, these questions lingered. The answers started coming when he walked through a door that was left wide open. 8,000 miles away in Jacksonville, North Carolina, Eliana Dathi was asking questions of her own, stemming from negative experiences she'd had ever since she began Sunday school in a local Baptist church.

04:41 Speaker 3 And every time I asked these questions, I found myself getting either a roundabout answer or they didn't know. I'm like, "Something's not right here." And I despised it.

04:56 Speaker 1 Eliana says she was a voracious reader. When she was 10 years old, she read Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi.

05:03 Speaker 3 It's pretty intense, but I also felt like I was reading about my people, but I wasn't a Jew.

05:10 Speaker 1 At least that's what Eliana thought.

05:12 Speaker 3 And there was this confusion within me, and I didn't have anyone to really speak about that with.

05:19 Speaker 1 All the while, tension rose between Eliana and her mother.

05:23 Speaker 3 And it was, "Well, you're in my house, so you need to go to church, and when you go to college, you can do your own thing."

05:30 Speaker 1 But as the years went by, Eliana's fascination with the Jewish people grew. One day when Eliana was a high school junior, she talked with two friends. One of them said...

05:41 Speaker 3 "Oh, I wanna be a dentist." And then the other one, I can't remember what she said. She said she wanted to be something. And then I, for whatever reason, said, "I wanna be a Jew." And then I went home, and I posted it on Facebook.

05:55 Speaker 1 It would be about a decade before Eliana would fully realize what that meant. In January 2011, Chananya Dathi began his college studies. He chose Stellenbosch University, where he'd pursue a management sciences degree.

06:13 Speaker 2 At the time, I didn't know anybody who was Jewish.

06:17 Speaker 1 One Wednesday in 2012, Dathi walked from his frat house to campus.

06:22 Speaker 2 And on my route to campus was the synagogue in Stellenbosch, which I walk past every day, and it was always closed.

06:31 Speaker 1 But on this day, the doors were open.

06:34 Speaker 2 And I thought, "Okay, this is my chance to go in, to see what does a synagogue look like, what goes on in there."

06:41 Speaker 1 There, Chananya talked with the Stellenbosch Synagogue's gabbai, the first Jew he'd ever met. The gabbai told him the door was open on this weekday because renovations were being made. Normally, the doors were only open for Friday night Sabbath services. That was the only invitation that Dathi needed. Chananya attended services at the Stellenbosch Shul for about a year, during which time he had become close to the community. He graduated in 2013 with a degree in business and finance. He returned to Germany the following year for work. Dathi's neshamah was yearning to express itself, so he began to attend synagogue there. He began to teach himself how to read and write Hebrew, and he looked for answers to some of Judaism's big questions.

07:32 Speaker 2 What does it mean to be Jewish? What is Shabbos? What is a Mishnah? What is a Torah? It was mainly trying to find a connection to God.

07:42 Speaker 1 In 2015, after two and a half years, Dathi's German visa expired. He returned to Cape Town and began to forge connections there and in Stellenbosch. Dathi attended his first Pesach Seder run by two Chabad rabbis, Nissan Edry and Yosef Shapiro.

08:01 Speaker 2 And nothing could prepare me for a Chabad Seder. It was a life-changing event. And the morning after Pesach ended, one of the rabbis gave over some Hasidus, and it was the first time hearing Chabad Hasidus, showing what a neshamah is.

08:19 Speaker 1 By this point, Dathi's neshamah was on fire. He made more connections in Cape Town's Chabad community, including head shluchim Rabbi Mendel and Rebbetzin Avigail Popack, Bloberg emissaries Oshie and Zissi Deren, and Nissan and Ariella Goldman at the University of Cape Town. Rabbi Goldman was impressed by Dathi's single-minded determination, especially the time he and his wife celebrated Simchas Torah in the Chabad Shul 12 miles up the coast, run by his brother-in-law, Rabbi Oshie Deren.

08:51 Speaker 4 And out of the blue, Chananya shows up for Hakafos. Now, Chananya's living miles down Point Sea Point. Either way, it's at least a four-hour walk, and I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought, "Wow, this guy's committed to the cause." You know? That was unbelievable.

09:12 Speaker 1 Especially because at that time, Chananya was under no obligation to walk on Jewish holidays. Meanwhile, Eliana Dathi studied at East Carolina University, earning degrees in political science and German language and literature in 2015. She began a non-Orthodox conversion process right after graduation, which she completed in May 2016. Eliana upheld a basic level of kashrus and attended synagogue regularly. She moved to Cologne, Germany to live and work in 2016.

09:49 Speaker 3 I was going to the services, felt like I was getting what I needed. You know, it was the Friday night, and then a, a meal in the shul afterwards. There was challah, and then Shabbos day. And at a certain point, I found myself just, like, not happy with anything in my life. Who I was, where I was, what I was doing for my job, just, like, very confused. Because at this point I realize that according to some I was Jewish, but according to halakha, I wasn't.

10:22 Speaker 1 Eliana called a Jewish friend in Antwerp, Belgium, who was having his own struggles with religion. He invited her to visit Antwerp, where he introduced her to Chabad shluchim Yossi and Chumi Weiss.

10:34 Speaker 3 This incredible couple, really truly incredible couple.

10:37 Speaker 1 The Weisses invited Eliana and her friend for a Shabbos meal.

10:41 Speaker 3 And as soon as we walked in, she was like, "Hi, I'm, I'm Chumi." And I noticed immediately she was an American living in Antwerp. So I asked her, "Where in America are you from?" And she goes, "Oh, I'm from Crown Heights. I'm from Brooklyn." And her face just, like, lit up when she said that. And I said, "Oh, awesome. So I guess you love living in Europe now, right?" And she looks at me, and immediately her face changes, and she's like, "No, actually, I don't." And I could not understand why because my whole life kind of woven into the background was a dream of mine to go live in Europe, and I was currently living a life that should bring me so much happiness, but on the inside I was dying inside. And she saw through that because the next line that she said was, "Why are you here? My husband and I are here because we're on shlichus, helping Jewish people come back to their heritage and to their roots. If it wasn't for the Rebbe, I would not be here. I would be in Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, with my family. But you're here for shallow reasons." Like, I was astounded.

11:53 Speaker 1 Eliana began asking herself deeper questions, and she sought deeper experiences. Three months later, Eliana went to Israel for the first time on a 12-day Birthright trip. There, she immersed herself in the religious community of Tel Stone. Her experiences there, and by the Weisses, led her to realize that there was so much more to Judaism than she had known. Eliana knew that something had to give. Back in South Africa, Chananja Dathi was heavily involved in Jewish life. He began feeling a disconnection from his past, but he was unsure of what should come next.

12:36 Speaker 2 Because once I removed myself from my old life, my old friendship groups, no one came to check up on me. "Where are you? We haven't, we haven't seen you," which was quite hurtful. So where I came from, I didn't feel like I belonged, and where I was, where I, quote-unquote, didn't belong, I felt very much welcomed. And it was only for myself to decide, am I in or am I out?

13:07 Speaker 1 But deep down, Chananja knew the answer.

13:10 Speaker 2 What do I have to go back to? I've left everything behind. It's all or nothing, and I have to do things properly. And once I took that step, things started to fall into place.

13:21 Speaker 1 Chananja contacted the Beth Din around the end of 2016. His sponsoring rabbi was Mendel Popack of Cape Town. In June of 2018, Chananja Dathi became a full-fledged Jew.

13:34 Speaker 2 It took 14 months for my conversion, and for many other people it's like, "Wow, that's a super quick conversion." I was obviously very happy, and then also had the sense of, now what?

13:47 Speaker 1 The answer to that question, Chananja says, was yeshiva. But he was working and paying the bills. He didn't know how he could possibly study full time.

13:57 Speaker 2 A few months later, I was laid off, so it was a springboard to go to yeshiva.

14:02 Speaker 1 Beginning in early 2019, Dathi studied at Mayanut in Israel for two years, then Hadar Hatorah in Crown Heights for a few more months. The only thing missing for Chananja at this point was a life partner with whom to share his amazing ride. Eliana left Germany and moved to a suburb of Brooklyn in early 2018, where she worked for a Jewish non-profit that helps people with special needs. Her desire for uncompromising Torah Judaism just kept growing, so she met with an Orthodox Beth Din and moved to Crown Heights. Eliana's formal conversion process began in March 2018. She was able to complete her giyurs very quickly in December of that year. Eliana began her studies at Machon Chana Seminary in Crown Heights.

14:54 Speaker 3 And I realized that I actually was ready to start dating.

14:59 Speaker 1 Eliana reached out to a shadchan. Before long, she learned of an interesting possibility, a yeshiva bocher in Israel named Chananja Dathi.

15:09 Speaker 3 Of course, as anyone who receives a resume does, they go on Facebook and try to figure out a little bit more information about the person. And I noticed that my husband had also spent time in Germany and could speak German, and I go, "Okay, this is kind of crazy. I have to meet this guy. I have to figure out what his story is." And from there we started dating on Zoom.

15:30 Speaker 2 We met on Zoom, and we were dating for five months.

15:35 Speaker 1 That was in 2020, when COVID restrictions made it very difficult to travel or even meet people face to face.

15:43 Speaker 3 But, like, each time we would meet on Zoom, it would be for four, five, six hours long. He was up until, like, 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM sometimes.

15:50 Speaker 1 After a few months of fighting COVID bureaucracy, Chananja's visa went through. In February 2021, the Dathis planned to meet in Crown Heights.

16:00 Speaker 3 So my husband landed Tuesday morning. Wednesday he went to bake matzahs at the matzah factory in Crown Heights with his yeshiva, and then Thursday was the day when we were going to meet.

16:14 Speaker 1 The big day arrived. Eliana says she was a bit anxious, but not for long.

16:19 Speaker 3 Dating online was a bracha for us because we were pushed to delve into conversations with one another. So because I already had this comfortableness that had evolved over the last five and a half months, it was just like meeting kind of an old friend. And so after that it was like, okay, now I can't see myself not being with this person.

16:45 Speaker 2 And Sunday we were engaged.

16:48 Speaker 1 Chananja and Eliana Dathi were married in Crown Heights on June 1st, 2021. Chananja studied for another year in Crown Heights and earned smicha in 2022. He and Eliana began to think about going out on shlichus.

17:05 Speaker 3 And he looked at me, and he goes, "Well, what about South Africa? What about Stellenbosch?"

17:09 Speaker 2 They require help. There's a growing Jewish population.

17:13 Speaker 3 And I had never been to South Africa before, never looked up Stellenbosch, and I was like, "Well, seems like an exciting adventure. Okay, sure." And he, like, looked at me in disbelief. He couldn't believe it. He's like, "You would go to South Africa?" I said, "Sure. Why not?"

17:29 Speaker 2 And with Rabbi's brachas, things fell into place.

17:34 Speaker 1 Stellenbosch University has a total enrollment of about 35,000 graduate and undergraduate students. Chabad on Campus Cape Town Shliach Rabbi Nissen Goldman had been making the drive once a week to meet with Stellenbosch's small group of Jewish students, run lunch-and-learn sessions for them, and assemble a student WhatsApp group. Goldman realized what Stellenbosch's Jewish students really needed were full-time shlichim.

18:02 Speaker 5 I've been going out to Stellenbosch since 2017, so Chabad on Campus had a presence there all these years. And the students were committed every single week.

18:13 Speaker 2 And it's a big commitment

18:15 Speaker 1 Goldman began talking with Chananya about the possibility of a full-time Chabad presence in Stellenbosch

18:22 Speaker 2 And to do justice there, you know, to realize the Rebbe's vision for every single Jew in the furthest corners.

18:28 Speaker 1 In September of 2022, the Dathis flew to South Africa with their four-month-old baby to meet the community in Stellenbosch.

18:37 Speaker 3 We hosted a Shabbaton. We did all of the cooking. That's when I got to meet the shul for the first time, and the community.

18:45 Speaker 2 In its heyday, it was about close to 50 families big, and dwindled down to between five and 10 families, if that. And why we thought that was the, the place for us to be was because there was a growing Jewish student population.

19:04 Speaker 3 So at that point, in terms of Jewish students, there were probably around, I'd say, like 75 maybe.

19:12 Speaker 1 The town itself, which is dotted with wine farms, historic buildings, and surrounded by mountains, is home to about 78,000 year-round residents. But the only Jewish resource is the Stellenbosch Synagogue, which was established 125 years ago. So the Dathis reached out to the shul committee.

19:32 Speaker 3 And we pitched the idea to them about a rabbi and family moving to Stellenbosch, Shomer Shabbos, Shomer Kasher, and getting the Jewish students from the university involved, and they laughed at us. They said, "That's not gonna happen. The students have been here for how long? They still don't come," blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you could tell that they were very bitter, because here it is in an old community, but yet there's Jewish students at the university, and they don't know how to bridge the two. But they made it very clear from the beginning that they're not bringing us on as the official rabbi or rebbetzin of the shul, and we said, "No," like, "we don't want that. We want to work with you, and we want to help make Yiddishkeit flourish again in Stellenbosch."

20:19 Speaker 1 Eliana remembers conversations with the sometimes cantankerous farmers who asked pointed questions, like this one:

20:27 Speaker 3 "You're from the city. Why would you wanna come live in farmland?" And I said, "But you don't know that I was raised in a rural area in North Carolina. This feels like home. The only difference is that this has mountains." At that moment, he looked at me, and he was like... You could tell he didn't believe that we would make it.

20:45 Speaker 1 Eliana says she understood why the older community of Stellenbosch felt the way it did.

20:50 Speaker 3 They feel as though people don't really care about them. They're just some small farming community that was vibrant at one point when they had their Hebrew school and their heyday back in the '50s. They are very sincere and deep people, and they care a lot, and they want people to care about them.

21:09 Speaker 1 The Dathis both knew the power of the Shabbos meal, so they made one at the Stellenbosch Synagogue during that first visit. The farmer who had challenged Eliana was astonished.

21:21 Speaker 3 When he saw that 55 students filled that simcha hall of the shul for a Friday night meal following shul, he was blown away. And every single community member was like, "This is a young, happening place. We've never seen that much life in the shul before."

21:41 Speaker 1 The Dathis decided to move temporarily to Cape Town while they looked for a permanent residence in Stellenbosch, and made frequent visits to the community there.

21:51 Speaker 3 And when the shul saw over a period of four or five months that every time that we came, the shul had a minyan, it was brimming with students, they really saw that we were here to serve everyone.

22:02 Speaker 1 The Dathis were officially approved to become the Rebbe's emissaries to Stellenbosch in December of 2023. They arrived permanently in May of 2024.

22:13 Speaker 2 And for me, it's a coming home.

22:18 Speaker 1 Armed with Chananya's knowledge of the campus and Stellenbosch culture, the Dathis got to work. There have been weekly lunch-and-learn sessions, sushi buffets during study breaks, deliveries of Eliana's homemade sourdough bread, and that staple of South African life, the braai, a social event centered around a hot grill and lots of meat. It helps that Rabbi Dathi is a qualified shochet, which means that students who want kosher meat can easily get it for meals at home. That keeps him more than busy, especially now that he and Eliana are raising three young children. But he says it's all so rewarding that sometimes he forgets what his official role is.

23:00 Speaker 2 When you see the students going and they enjoying themselves, sometimes you feel like, "Oh," you know, "I also want to be invited to a golf day or go for drinks." But then you, like, realize, "Wait, I'm not a student." You forget that you're not a student anymore.

23:18 Speaker 1 The Dathis' youthful energy has engendered trust with Stellenbosch University students, like Ethan Epstein-Kay, a second-year law student.

23:28 Speaker 6 I'm from a very small town in South Africa called East London. It's a very, very small town, and the Jewish community there is even smaller. You struggle to get a minyan on Yom Kippur. It's quite sad. There's no Jewish day school. There's no Jewish real education.

23:43 Speaker 1 And yet Ethan arrived on campus ready to avail himself of what the Dathis had to offer.

23:49 Speaker 6 And they would have me over for Shabbos lunch, and you just feel at home. To keep kosher in Stellenbosch is, it's quite difficult. There's no kosher shop where you can go and get your meat. So it's, it's small things like that make a big difference in our lives, and I think that that says what Chabad on campus is there for. They will help you through anything and everything, and they will be there for you.

24:10 Speaker 1 Though they've only been in Stellenbosch for a little over a year, the Dathis have seen Ethan's growth as a student and as a Jew.

24:19 Speaker 3 He started learning more and more, and then reached out to my husband to help him get tzitzit, and then also tefillin. So thank God, now he puts tefillin on every day. He wears tzitzit as well, out in open on campus. If we need someone for a minyan, he's, like, my husband's number one call. Whatever he's doing, he'll come.

24:38 Speaker 1 Another regular at the Dathis' Chabad house is Zee Goldstock, a third-year law student. She's from Johannesburg, where she attended a Jewish day school through eighth grade, learned Hebrew, and kept Shabbos with her family, although not always.

24:53 Speaker 7 I'd say it was kind of a typical Orthodox South African Jewish upbringing.

25:00 Speaker 1 Like Ethan, Zee's first connection with Chabad was through the visiting Rabbi Goldman. She says she was happy when she learned that Stellenbosch was getting full-time shluchim, and happier still when she saw what that meant for her and other students.

25:17 Speaker 7 It, it always reminds me of the story of, um, Abraham and Sarah having their tent open on all four sides so that people can always enter, and they're always welcome. It's just this very caring sort of atmosphere that they've created. Once you create that space, you know, Jews find each other, and I think the growth that we see spiritually, but also the connections that are formed, are so much greater.

25:47 Speaker 1 That's also true of the members of Stellenbosch's established Jewish community. Because the Dathis run most of their programs out of the Stellenbosch synagogue, the older residents of Stellenbosch are coming much more frequently.

26:01 Speaker 8 We now are getting regular weekly minyans at the Stellenbosch Shul with Jewish students, and the shul is also incredibly happy about that.

26:10 Speaker 9 So it's also been a beautiful partnership between the Stellenbosch community and the students, and seeing that the one can't do without the other.

26:20 Speaker 8 It really is great.

26:23 Speaker 1 The Jewish growth in Stellenbosch is already palpable.

26:28 Speaker 9 So when I left for yeshiva, there were about 40 Jewish students that we knew of. Now we have about 220 that we know of, and that's in the space of five or six years.

26:41 Speaker 1 The Dathis purchased their own Chabad house within walking distance of campus and the Stellenbosch synagogue, and they're dreaming about building a new mikvah and opening a kosher restaurant.

26:52 Speaker 9 Stellenbosch is the beginning of the wine route, so when kosher tours come through Stellenbosch, they would like to have a place to have something to eat while they are here, building up the, the community. At the same time, we are availing to each Jewish student the opportunities to do a mitzvah. The potential is endless, and, uh, having the achdus, the unity of Jews, is a mitzvah, and it brings a lot of bracha, a lot of blessing.

27:25 Speaker 10 That's ultimately what the Rebbe wanted everyone to do in order to bring Mashiach, to get people connected to their heritage, to get people connected to their Yiddishkeit. They just need to do. Do, do, do, do, do. That's really how my husband and I operate.

27:41 Speaker 9 We're giving Rebbe a lot of naches, and it gives us a lot of chizuk going forward, knowing that this is only the beginning.

27:49 Speaker 10 All we want is a Jew to be connected to their neshamah and to do what Hashem wants us to do, which is to follow the Torah. That's all.

28:06 Speaker 1 I'm Gary Wolk. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.