Rabbi Norman Weitzner, who for 17 years headed the CU Hillel Foundation in Boulder, passed away Jan. 11, 2014 in Highland Park, NJ. Funeral services, with Rabbi Hillel David and Rabbi Eliyahu Kaufman providing eulogies, took place Jan. 12 at Congregation Ohav Emeth. Burial took place at Washington Cemetery in Deans, NJ.
Rabbi Weitzner was born in Malden, Mass. in 1935 and moved to New Yorks Lower East Side when he was five years old. He studied at Yeshiva Rabbi Jacob Joseph, and was named valedictorian at both his elementary and high school graduations.
Rabbi Weitzners higher education took place at Yeshiva Netzach Yisroel, from which he received his ordination. He married Naomi Siegfried in 1962.
After serving briefly as Jewish students chaplain at NYU, he was named spiritual leader of Congregation Ahavas Achim in Wichita. In 1965, he moved to Boulder to lead the CU Hillel House there.
While in Boulder, Rabbi Weitzner brought a standard of Orthodoxy to a community that had little experience with fully observant Judaism. During part of his time there, he was the only rabbi in the city and thus officiated at many simchas and lifecycle events. He taught many classes on religious, historical and other subjects at the Hillel facility and often had both university students and community members in his classes. The Weitzner home was wide open for students.
His children wrote of Rabbi Weitzners Boulder years in a recent article in Yated Neeman: The Hillel House and our own home became one big factory for Torah and chesed. It was a place where any Jewish student, no matter how distant from Torah, could feel welcome and comfortable.
Leaving Boulder in 1982, Rabbi Weitzner became the Hillel rabbi at Rutgers University in New Jersey. During his time there, his Hillel house and other campus facilities were targets of neo-Nazis who painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans. Rabbi Weitzners forthright and articulate responses to those incidents were covered widely by the media.
Rabbi Weitzner retired in 1995 and spent much of his remaining years pursuing Torah studies. During the last six years of his life, he taught a shiur to a seniors kollel in Highland Park, NJ.
In addition to his wife Naomi, Rabbi Weitzner is survived by many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
