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Rabbi Noach Weinberg, 1931-2009

With the major Jewish educational presence overlooking the Western Wall in Jerusalem, with many innovative and massively attended programs, with 27 outreach branches throughout the world — including a vibrant one in Denver — Aish HaTorah reflects the sheer force of will of its founder and visionary, Rabbi Noach Weinberg, who died last week in Jerusalem at the age of 78.

It is one thing to gaze upon the Jewish landscape and see the meltaway, the illiteracy, the indifference, the intermarriage, and to bemoan them. It is quite something else to hold in the mind’s eye a vision of a completely different world — and then determine to create that world, from scratch.

Back in the day, in the 1960s, when Rabbi Weinberg first came upon the outreach scene in Jerusalem . . . well, there was no outreach scene in Jerusalem.

No Birthright Israel. Only one, very small returnee yeshiva for Americans and none for Israelis. Only two post-high school study programs. No experienced counselors, teachers or role models. Yes, there was  Rabbi Noach Weinberg — who failed. He started a yeshiva. It failed. All that he possessed was the sheer force of will, and his vision of a completely different world. Rabbi Weinberg did not have the pedagogical know how, the fundraising know how, the organizational know how. But he was determined, and he was a very charming, endearing and demanding man.

So he just kept at it — all the while raising a very large family, with a very dedicated wife, at a time when large families were hardly in vogue either, not even in Jerusalem. The Weinberg vision — familial, educational, societal — could be reduced to this: repopulation of the Jewish people with Jewish Jews.

He kept at it, despite the criticism and even the mockery he received — eventually co-founding “Shma Yisrael” in 1972, an outreach yeshiva for rank beginners, for American students, for visitors to Israel, people with virtually no Jewish skills, in many cases not even the ability to read Hebrew, let alone understand it. “Shma Yisrael” was for students who had little or no commitment to Jewish observance, little or no plans for Judaism in their future.

Rabbi Weinberg believed in them.

He believed in the pintele Yid, the infinite spark. He saw in raw, untutored, uneducated students the potential for greatness. And he had the idealism of the 1960s on his side.

In 1974, Shma Yisrael split in two, forming Ohr Somayach and what Rabbi Weinberg chose to call, reflecting his vision, “The Fire of Torah” —Aish HaTorah. It’s a well known brand by now; but in 1974, the name seemed audacious, over the top — it was vintage Noach Weinberg. He saw beneath the surface of ignorance and indifference to the Jewish people’s capacity to be rekindled, reignited, enflamed by the spiritual heat — the holiness — of the Torah. With his new institution, Aish HaTorah, he very gradually mustered the pedagogical, fundraising and organizational know how to make it stick.

Aish HaTorah began quite small. All it had was a couple of rooms in the Old City of Jerusalem and a few students — and that unquenchable, fiery vision of its founder, Rabbi Noach Weinberg. To him, outreach was a one-person-at-a-time proposition, most often undertaken in the framework of what became his signature — his class in “48 ways to wisdom” (based on Ethics of the Fathers). He saw no mass production method for creating love of G-d and love of mitzvot. With his few students, he succeeded and he failed, but more often he succeeded; and gradually the student body grew. As it did, so did Rabbi Weinberg’s plans and reach.

He began sending some of his best students abroad, to found outreach centers in American cities. These, too, succeeded and failed, but more often succeeded; and gradually the number of outreach centers grew.

His essential philosophy was that each and every Jew has the potential to reach many more Jews. No Jew is too unlearned to grow — not only personally, but pedagogically (taken in the broadest sense). Every Jew could light the fire in another Jew.

Given the massive crisis of assimilation, it was more important to Rabbi Weinberg to create outreach experts than scholars. He encouraged, nurtured, built up, demanded that every Jew consider becoming an outreach worker, formally or informally. Too many Jews were falling away and too few were out in the field trying to stem the tide. The man who knew that outreach is a one-person-at-a-time proposition sustained his vision of a massive outreach. He kept planning more — more outreach centers, more programs, more innovations. Gradually he became the expert fundraiser he needed to be in order to turn his ever expanding vision into reality.

His thirst to reach every Jew also led to a major shift, once his yeshiva in the Old City and his branches around the world solidified. That shift was the search for ways to reach Jews within a mass production framework. He and his disciples developed the Discovery Program and the Jerusalem Fellowships. Through these and other programs, that twinkle in the eye of the man who had to close down a couple of educational centers in the 1960s was transformed into hundreds of thousands of Jews deeply challenged and touched.

Rabbi Weinberg was intrigued by the Elder of Novorodock (1850-1919), who, in Eastern Europe, first brought outreach to the Jewish people on a major basis. The Elder’s sheer will, his utter defiance of every norm (even within the religious community) that doubted the possibility of rebuilding the mitzvah-based framework of the Jewish people — this intrigued Rabbi Weinberg.

Many of the Elder’s techniques — Yiddish-based, ascetic, deeply introspective — could not be replanted in the post-Holocaust and post-European reality of the Jewish people. But his will and vision could — and just as there was no one like the Elder of Novorodock, there was no one like Rabbi Noach Weinberg.

There are, however, thousands of his disciples to carry on and, as he would have it, to expand his legacy.

It has been a privilege to live contemporaneously with Rabbi Noach Weinberg. May his memory be a blessing.

See also the full obituary for Rabbi Noach Weinberg.


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