“Wisdom is preferable to gold because in financial exchanges, if you exchange gold for silver your gold is gone, but when a person says to his friend, ‘Teach me your chapter and I will teach you my chapter,’ each one obtains fresh knowledge while holding on to the old, so that afterwards each one has two chapters” (Rashi ibid., loose translation).

The esteemed visitor this morning in Ami’s offices is Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, the Executive Vice President Emeritus of the Orthodox Union. Rabbi Weinreb is widely respected for his broad knowledge and uncanny ability to bring a fresh perspective to familiar teachings. But my connection to him is more personal. Chazal tell us that “One who learns from a person a single chapter [of Torah], a single law, a single verse, a single statement or even a single letter must treat him with honor” (Avos 6:3). Having listened to quite a few of his engaging and edifying Tishah B’Av webcasts and having read some of his writings, I’ve learned from Rabbi Weinreb more than just one chapter in Torah.

Like Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik, who was one of the first to teach Kinos instead of merely reciting them, Rabbi Weinreb sits in shul for hours on Tishah B’Av focusing on the tragic side of Jewish history. That he is nonetheless not a talmid of Rabbi Soloveitchik is particularly refreshing, as it has enabled him to explore subjects and cite sources that many of Rabbi Soloveitchik’s talmidim, who are under the shadow and spell of their master, do not. There is no doubt that he is an independent and original thinker who has made an important contribution to the understanding of evil in the world. In addition to being an ordained rabbi and talmid chacham, Rabbi Weinreb is also a qualified psychotherapist, which adds another dimension to his thoughts and insights.

“I don’t remember the exact lashon,” he tells me, “but Rav Hutner wrote in a letter to a talmid that being educated in various fields isn’t considered living a ‘double life’ but rather a ‘broad life.’ This is certainly true with regard to my rabbinical calling and profession in psychology. In fact, it goes beyond breadth, as they are really one and the same at this point. There may have been times early in my training when they were separate and existed side by side, but by now they have merged.”

“Sometimes there’s a question of whether one should try to help someone with mussar or therapy, but as a rabbi who is also a therapist you can decide which approach to adopt,” I point out.

“It’s very important to make that distinction,” he says in agreement. “There are some things that aren’t dependent on bechirah. No one chooses to become psychotic or clinically depressed, and no one chooses his parents, his genes, his biology or much of his circumstances. On the other hand, many of the frum psychotherapists deal with issues of bechirah. The way I was trained in the secular schools is that a psychotherapist’s job is to help the person make choices. The first thing is to show him that he really does have choices, because many people think that that’s just the way things are and everyone else is to blame. After that, one needs to explore with the person what those choices are. The difficulty for a frum psychotherapist is that once you open up a range of choices for him, some of them aren’t k’fi rucheinu.”

“I once spoke to a therapist who is also a rabbi like you who told me that when it comes to certain things like tefillah, people who suffer from mental illness are exempt. This is obviously a halachic issue, but to him it was obvious that you cannot expect some people with OCD, for example, to perform certain mitzvos properly.”

“I don’t practice psychology anymore and the field has changed greatly over the years, so a lot of my thinking is old-fashioned. But I would say that much of that is accurate.

“There’s a fascinating sefer called Eitzos V’hadrachos by Dr. Yaakov Greenwald. He was the first person from the American yeshivos to go to graduate school in psychology. I believe he got his PhD from Fordham University. He had a practice in Monsey for many years before moving to Israel a few years ago. When he first started out in the field he consulted with the Steipler Gaon, and he saved their correspondence. Many of those letters are printed in that sefer. They’re really fascinating, and have bearing upon the whole issue you brought up of wearing ‘two hats.’ In a sense, the Steipler was telling him that he also wore two hats and sometimes had to deal with people who were psychologically challenged. The main syndromes, which frum psychologists are still dealing with today, were OCD and depression.

“One of the questions Dr. Greenwald sent to the Steipler involved a typical OCD scenario about someone who was so busy making sure his hands were washed perfectly in the morning that by the time he was satisfied, it was already time for Minchah. That’s the definition of OCD: when a person is so busy with the minutiae that it interferes with his ability to function. He gave some other examples as well. The famous one is of having to repeat ‘l’maan tizk’ru.’ The Steipler wrote that he had paskened that the person is yotzei the first time. When you get that kind of psak from the Steipler it cuts through the OCD, but if I were to tell that to a patient on my own, he would simply tell me that I’m a kal and go elsewhere for advice.

“In his next letter, Dr. Greenwald asked about depression, and the Steipler advised him to deal with it behaviorally by telling the patient to do something that he knows will bring him simchah. For example, if he’s into learning, he should learn something that will give him sipuk and make a siyum. That will work sometimes, but other times the depression can only be alleviated with medication. There’s a very wide spectrum, and there’s a difference between atzvus, merirus and marah shechorah.

“Every person is different, and every depression is different. I have a story that also ties in with the idea of ‘two hats.’ I was somewhat close with Rav Dovid Kviat, zt”l, who was one of the last of the old Mirrer talmidim. He was also the rav of Agudas Yisrael on 18th Avenue. At one point Agudas Yisrael offered what I would call in-service training for rabbis, things like workshops and y’mei iyun. This is going back a long time ago to when I was a rabbi in Baltimore. I was friends with Rabbi Shmuel Bloom of Agudah and attended several of these events. There was always a topic in halachah, but they also included what the world would call ‘pastoral counseling.’ One time, the session was on cholim.

“One of the people there, a young Modern Orthodox rabbi who was just starting out, had a question about what to do with a very sick person when the doctors had already told the family that there was no hope. Should you tell the choleh? At that point Rav Dovid stood up and insisted that there was an answer. ‘The answer,’ he said, ‘is that you have to sit with the patient long enough until you know his uniqueness.’ I can still hear him saying the words ‘yeder mentsch iz andersh.’ Once you understand enough about him to know how he is different, then you can decide whether or not to tell him, and if yes, how to tell him.’

“The idea that everyone is different seems simple, but the way he explained it was profound. The same is true about mental illness. Every person has his own depression and his own way of how it should be dealt with.”

Between Poetry and Prose

“Speaking of depression, I’ve gotten to know you, so to speak, through a depressing topic, which is tzaddik v’ra lo and other theological questions about evil. How did you get involved in all of that?”

“I became a rav later on in life, after I was already a psychologist. Most people would do the opposite, first going into rabbanus and then getting into counseling, psychology and coaching. So when I finally became a rav, I knew that there were some things I wanted to do differently. One of those was Tishah B’Av. Over the years it’s changed a lot, and maybe I can claim some of the credit, but in those days the way it worked in most shuls in Baltimore was that everyone said Kinos—and no one except the rav knew what they were about. In the afternoon they’d go to the beis olam to visit kevarim, and that was it. I knew that wasn’t going to work with Modern Orthodox people, so I decided to teach Kinos on Tishah B’Av to my congregants.”

“Did you grow up in Baltimore?”

“No, in Boro Park. I was born in Israel Zion Hospital, which was the original name of Maimonides Hospital. There was a strong Reform element on the board that didn’t like the name because it was too Zionist, so they changed it to Maimonides.”

“Where did you go for cheder?”

“Toras Emes. Then for high school I went to RJJ every day by train.”

“What did your father do?”

“He was a garment worker who cut women’s garments. His real skill was that he could look at a piece of fabric and tell them how to cut it so there was minimal waste. As he got older he was the only one left with that skill, so he was hired by Mr. Calvin Klein himself.”

“But you became a psychologist, and later a rabbi.”

“After I got smichah I was a rebbe in RJJ for three years in the early 1960s. But when the yeshivah started downsizing it was last in, first out, so that was the end of my job. I’d always had an interest in psychology and I already had an undergraduate degree, so I decided to go for a doctorate in psychology. I’d heard about a program at the University of Maryland that was exactly what I wanted both in content and location—meaning, not too far away—so my wife and I moved to Silver Spring. I earned my degree and worked there for a while, but then we moved to Baltimore for the sake of our children’s chinuch. I kept earning my living as a psychologist, but I also said shiurim and gave drashos and so on. Then a chavrusa finally told me that I was wasting my time and I should go into rabbanus. Other people had suggested it as well, but there was something about the way he said it. Then Rav Moshe, zt”l, with whom I was sort of close, and the Kapishnitzer Rebbe, zt”l, also encouraged me to do it.

“I started looking for openings in my area and found a shul in Baltimore called Shomrei Emunah, which is still thriving. The rav there was Rav Binyamin Bak, who was an old Telzer from Telz. He was a very interesting person who was overwhelmed with grief after losing his entire family and all of his chaveirim in the Holocaust. Rav Gifter, who was really a bachur at the time, helped him get out of it. When he retired, I was chosen to succeed him. I wasn’t davening there at the time; I was davening in the shtiebel where Rav Sternhell, zt”l, was the rav.”

“He was a big talmid chacham. A Galicianer talmid chacham.”

“Yes. He was from Sanz and learned in Munkatch, where he was very close with the Minchas Elazar. He was known as the Sanzer iluy. A biography was just written about him by Chili Spiro. He quotes me a lot because I had a very special relationship with Rav Sternhell. Most of our connection had to do with psychology, because he’s the one I would go to with my sh’eilos in halachah. I’m not talking about hashkafah; the questions were more like ‘Can I answer the phone on Shabbos for this type of choleh?’ He was a posek nifla.

“Shomrei Emunah is a very interesting shul. It’s very diverse. I haven’t been back there in 15 years, but in my day everyone was shomer Shabbos, to the point that I rarely had the problem that many other rabbanim encounter in these kinds of shuls of not being able to eat in people’s houses—and even then they understood enough about kashrus to tell me if I couldn’t! A lot of the translation for the ArtScroll Shas was done by the Ner Yisroel kollel, partly because many of them had gone to college so they knew how to write very well. That whole chevrah davened in our shul. But even most of them didn’t really understood the Kinos, and I was determined to change the way they were recited. There’s a similar problem with Selichos, but it’s less problematic to shorten the Kinos because there aren’t any halachic restrictions. No one will be up in arms if you skip a few.

“It is said that Rav Hutner would quote the Gemara, ‘Tov m’at b’kavanah meiharbei shelo b’kavanah’ (It is preferable to say little but with the proper intent than a lot without the proper intent). He would also say, ‘Tov m’at shelo b’kavanah meiharbei shelo b’kavanah’ (It is preferable to say little without the proper intent than a lot without the proper intent). Look, it’s hard to understand the Kinos even with an English translation. Many of them were written by Rabbi Elazar Hakalir, which makes them the most difficult of all, because even if you understand the teitch and know which midrashim and divrei Chazal he’s referring to, the allusions and poetry and connections are way over the heads of most people.

“I announced that there would be an early minyan for whoever wanted to say Kinos, and I would show people which ones to say and which ones to skip. At the same time, there would be a different program in the main sanctuary. I instituted two things that year. One was that we would say ten to 12 Kinos. First I would explain them and then I would talk about other things that were related. Then in the afternoon, we would have films playing from after chatzos until the end of the day. That got a lot of flak from the other rabbanim, but the Kinos program really took off. Nowadays, showing films on Tishah B’Av is very common. A few years later there wasn’t enough room in the shul so we had to put speakers in another room as well. There were over 1,000 people coming from all walks of life. Then women started showing up, and I had to change my focus. It was a big to’eles, because many women tell me to this day that until these programs came along it was hard for them to appreciate the essence of the day.”

“In addition to the fact that the Kinos are hard to understand, it’s compounded by the fact that our culture isn’t particularly poetic,” I point out. “Reciting poetry b’al peh used to be a thing in many cultures. There are still some African nations that have a very strong oral tradition, but most of us don’t appreciate it anymore.”

“Which is something that the poets bemoan,” he rejoins. “The fact is that the Kinos are poetry and so are Selichos, and there are even divrei Chazal in Shas that can be approached from that perspective. Another one of my credentials is that I’m the editor-in-chief of the Koren Talmud Bavli, which is the English translation of Rav Steinsaltz’s commentary, but my title makes it sound like more than it really is. I basically designed how the whole thing would look and set the guidelines. For various reasons we felt that some of his translations had to be adapted, and he gave us his permission and encouragement. We are now in the final stages of publication.

“What does the page look like? When you open it up you see the tzuras hadaf of the Vilna Shas, with nekudos and punctuation for the Gemara, Rashi and Tosfos. I also wanted the poetic sections to have a special font in English, such as the tefillos in Maseches Brachos. The Netziv, in his hakdamah to the Sh’iltos, has a whole discussion about the difference between shirah and prose. It’s important for people to know that there are poems of Chazal, which is certainly one way to approach the Kinos, as a subset of poetry. While Rabbi Elazar Hakalir is extremely complex, other Kinos are quite pashut. Rabbi Yehudah Halevi, for example, is easier to understand because he makes fewer allusions to Chazal. His are more poetic.”

“It must be very tiring to give a shiur for so many hours on Tishah B’Av. How long are these programs?”

“Every year it’s different, but Shacharis usually begins around eight and the shiur goes from nine until chatzos. Most years it ends up being around four hours, give or take. Many people have come over to me afterwards to tell me they’re not sure they’re allowed to say such a thing, but they wanted me to know that they enjoy Tishah B’Av because of me. We reach tens of thousands of people through our webcast. This is not an exaggeration, because we know exactly how many computers are logged in, and some computers are being watched by an entire class or even a shul. I am always aware of my responsibility, so I make sure to have sources as well.”

“I would imagine that it requires a lot of preparation.”

“Well, every year I have to come up with new things, because I don’t usually repeat what I’ve said in previous years.”

Between Contentment and Suffering

“I must tell you that you made me think differently about the concept of Hashem’s charon af, Divine wrath,” I say. “I don’t know if it was just one particular year or if it’s one of your themes, but the idea that there is a charon af that sometimes targets the whole world and is inexplicable, if I may use that word, is frightening.”

“It is inexplicable, and Chazal say that it’s eino mavchin bein tzaddik l’rasha, it makes no distinctions between a pious person and an evil one: ‘Kivan shenitnah reshus lamashchis l’hashchis eino mavchin.’ Something like that is a theological challenge, but there are mekoros for it. And you don’t have to go to Kabbalah or sources in chasidus, because it’s clearly in the words of the Nevi’im and Chazal. Yirmeyahu is obviously a ‘key player’ on Tishah B’Av, and most yeshivishe people know him primarily through Eichah, because there isn’t really a seder in learning Yirmeyahu. I’m actually working right now on a new translation of Yirmeyahu, which is exceedingly depressing, even more so than Eichah. It’s very dark and stark, but if you study it with the classical mefarshim you see that there is such a thing as charon af, and that Hakadosh Baruch Hu was telling the Jewish people through Yirmeyahu that it was coming. While it doesn’t use these words, it’s basically saying that some people who don’t deserve it are going to be hit. Ay tzaddik v’ra lo? Yirmeyahu explicitly asked that question, and so did Moshe Rabbeinu.”

“Chazal say that they weren’t given an answer.”

“Right. I’m also not providing answers, but at least there’s the nechamah of knowing that we’re all struggling with this question, both as individuals and as a nation.

“I talk about the Holocaust almost every year. When I first started I said, ‘I’m not going to speak about the six million, because we cannot fathom six million people. I’m going to speak about five individual people.’ This year I spoke about the shoes in Majdanek and Auschwitz. There’s an essay written by Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l. People don’t usually think of him as a baal aggadah, but for a gadol b’Yisrael there are no specialties. The essay is about shoes and why we don’t wear them on Tishah B’Av. He explains that wearing leather shoes demonstrates our dominion over the animal kingdom, which is something we aren’t supposed to experience on Tishah B’Av. This year, Rabbi Yosef Grossman, the very chashuve rabbinic coordinator for the OU who also heads its Kosher Education Department, told me something very interesting. Apparently Rav Ehrentreu recently returned from Majdanek and Auschwitz, and he too had been very fascinated by the shoes there. It also brought to mind the pasuk, ‘Shal n’alecha mei’al raglecha ki admas kodesh hu.’ The grounds of these concentration camps are admas kodesh. When the Jews arrived and the Nazis told them to take off their shoes, they were essentially saying, ‘You no longer have dominion here. You are no more than a beheimah.’”

“A lot of people look at you as an expert on tzaddik v’ra lo.”

“The way I deal with the topic is by being shomei’a umosif, I listen and then I add. I don’t have answers. This is basically the same thing one does when visiting an aveil. The aveil has to speak to you first and you have to let him guide you, because you really don’t know what to say. When the three boys were nebach killed in Eretz Yisrael, the OU sent me to ten different cities in America to talk about it. Everyone was mispallel for three weeks and then we found out that they had been killed that very first night. People wanted to know what it meant to be mispallel for three weeks when it was essentially a tefillas shav. Those types of questions are tough.”

“I would imagine that talking about the Holocaust is an even a bigger challenge,” I say. “And whether or not it’s a unique phenomenon in history is a discussion unto itself. You’re probably familiar with the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s letter to Eli Wiesel in which he says that it isn’t.”

“Some people have defined the Holocaust as a very big pogrom. But I believe that that definition somehow diminishes it in scope. There was never anything like it in terms of the degree of cruelty, systematic persecution and fiendish scientific methods. I’ve always been guided by the Nesivos Shalom, who said that it was the worst churban in the history of the world, even worse than both of the destructions on Tishah B’Av. Still, I always point out that there were other Jewish catastrophes, including World War I. Although six million Jews weren’t killed, there were many Jewish victims and it destroyed the whole infrastructure of the kehillos and shtetlach. Nowadays it’s just glossed over. Some people say that you can even consider World War I as the beginning of World War II.

“These days we are witnessing the resurgence of Jew hatred. Anti-Semitism went underground for a while, but now it’s back and making itself known with a terrible force. That’s why part of what I do with my Tishah B’Av program is to make people aware of our history. The hatred is something that came down at Sinai, and it has no explanation.”

“I’ve read about your involvement in founding a Holocaust museum.”

“That would be an exaggeration. Today there are many frum museums, but one of the first was Shem Olam, which was started by Rabbi Avraham Krieger and is located on the campus of Kfar Haroeh near Hadera. Kfar Haroeh was founded by Rabbi Neria, who started the Bnei Akiva yeshivos and the whole Hesder movement. The original purpose of Shem Olam was to collect archival material about the Jews’ religious and spiritual reaction—not resistance—to the Holocaust. There are many stories told that are hard to believe, so they look for documented material that cannot be refuted. We’re not necessarily talking about halachic responses; we’re talking about spiritual responses. So if someone did chesed or wrote poetry, then that’s something that would interest them.

“The first time I was there, I saw something that really stood out. It was a notebook entitled ‘Pratei Kahal,’ which is a play on words for ‘protocol.’ The notebook contained the minutes of the rabbinat of the Lodz Ghetto going back to before the war. It seems that they had a sh’eilah: People were being sent out of the ghetto for forced labor. Some of them came back but some didn’t, which created a major issue of agunos. So they were thinking that maybe everyone who was conscripted should give his wife a get al tnai, so that his wife would be considered divorced retroactively if he didn’t return. There’s a halachic basis for doing this, as well as a precedent from Dovid Hamelech and his soldiers.

“These rabbanim were gedolei Yisrael, but they didn’t want to take the achrayus for such a step, so they wrote to Rav Menachem Ziemba, Hy”d, who was in the Warsaw Ghetto. How they were able to communicate with him we have no idea, but they somehow managed it and he sent back an answer, which is part of the collection. He told them exactly what they had to do in order to prepare the get al tnai. There are obviously unanswered questions about how the correspondence took place, but it’s documented and these are the facts.

“That’s also part of what I try to do on Tishah B’Av: expose people to the gedolei Yisrael. Rav Menachem Ziemba is someone most people have heard of, but the fact that the rabbanim in Lodz wouldn’t make a decision like this without consulting him is very instructive in itself. The interesting thing is that they decided not to do it in the end, because they were afraid that if people had to write a conditional get it would have destroyed their morale. They even use the word ‘morale,’ spelling it out mem-alef-reish-alef-lamed.”

“You said that you gravitated towards this topic because you felt it was necessary, but I would image you also had a natural inclination.”

“I suppose I have the right disposition. It took me many months to translate the Kinos. I did it in a library in Suffern, New York, so I could sit by a computer and have peace and quiet; you can’t do that kind of work in a beis midrash. Every time I came home my wife had to deal with my depression. I wrote about what it was like working on the translation for Jewish Action. I was born on Purim Katan, so most years my birthday is on Purim. My mazal should obviously have been Purimdik, yet my netiyah is towards Tishah B’Av—go explain that! But I really trace my interest, at least in part, to the influence of my great-grandmother.

“When I was growing up, most of my friends didn’t have grandparents, let alone great-grandparents, but I had a great-grandmother whom we called ‘Babbu.’ She was an old Galicianer who spiritually never left Galicia. She came here in the late 1890s and lived until I was around ten years old. I was so fortunate to have known her. I would sit on her lap and she would tell me stories. She’s the person from whom I learned Yiddish. What I didn’t quite understand at the time, although I understand it in retrospect, was that she was aware of the Holocaust because she lost a lot of relatives. She fasted every Monday and Thursday for her family in Europe and for all Yidden who were going through tzaros. I might have been safe and sound growing up in America, but the foundation was laid deep down during my childhood.”

“You said that your birthday is on Purim. But there’s also an element to Purim that shows us just how vulnerable we are.”

“Unfortunately, for me it’s also associated with a tragedy. Years ago there was a young man who was learning in Ner Yisroel. When some bachurim came to my house on Purim, my wife took away all their car keys and hid them. I don’t know how this guy found out where they were, but he took his keys and got into his car. He was killed in a car accident driving back to the yeshivah. Some people said he was intoxicated and others said he wasn’t. We’ll never know for sure, but that started me on my mission against so-called ‘Kiddush clubs’ and sensitizing people to the dangers of alcohol in general. Alcohol is freely available in our community, and even worse, it can work as an entry drug to stronger intoxicants. It’s a serious problem. Since then, Purim has always held mixed messages for me. I speak all the time about it. Now there’s more support for the idea, but when I first started cautioning people there was a lot of opposition. ‘How can you tell people not to drink on Purim? It’s a mitzvah!’ Yes, but the Biur Halachah quotes the Me’iri, who says that you’re not supposed to get shikker.”

“I read a sefer on Yirmeyahu in which the author writes that Yirmeyahu is one of the most unpopular figures in Israel because of all the tragedies Hashem sent him to foretell. I just hope that people don’t think you’re doing the same thing.”

“I am not a navi of doom. One of my main themes, whether in kodesh or chol, is the concept of resilience. You can look at Yirmeyahu as the most resilient of the nevi’im, because while other prophets had opponents, none of them had as many misnagdim as he did. The king was against him, the navi sheker was against him. Even his own family was against him.”

“They threw him into prison.”

“Correct. But prison then wasn’t like the prisons of today, where you get three meals a day. Don’t think of a modern jail, think of ‘v’habor reik ein bo mayim’ tripled. That’s where they threw him. But the next day he came back with ‘ko amar Hashem.’ So he was extremely resilient.”

“Is that your message, to be resilient even in the face of tzaros?”

“That’s part of it. Yirmeyahu was resilient until the very end. We all need resilience, and Tishah B’Av isn’t just a day of mourning, it’s also a day of nechamah, because it’s the day when Moshiach was born. In fact, the Rama says in Hilchos Tishah B’Av that you’re supposed to say divrei nechamah at the end of Kinos. I always end with a niggun—usually a Carlebach niggun because everyone knows them—but this year I said a few words about Reb Ben Zion Shenker, z”l, and sang his ‘V’liyerushalayim Ircha.’ Neginah is very much connected with the concept of nechamah. People translate the word as ‘comfort’ or ‘consolation,’ but resilience is a much better word. It’s all about bouncing back from what happened.”

“Would you say that that’s your motto?”

“My ultimate message is about overcoming depression and growing from it. The latest psychology literature is about growing from trauma. As Chazal say, ‘L’fum tzaara agra.’ All of these teachings are firmly based in Chazal. I give a speech about the three biggest problems facing Orthodox Jewry. People think I’m referring to anti-Semitism and things like that, but I tell them that the three problems are despair, discord and cynicism. To make it alliterative I sometimes use the word ‘disdain,’ but cynicism is better. The neshamah of a Yid is by its very nature hopeful and resilient.”

“What I always find interesting in your shiurim is the perspective you bring to them. OU Press recently published your book The Person in the Parasha, and it also offers a unique look at common, everyday things.”

“When I stepped down from my position as Executive Vice President of the OU there was a question of what I could do for them at that point. There was a fellow there who was in charge of public relations, and he asked me to write a column about the parshah that could be understood by anyone. I had the Jewish Herald-Voice of Houston in mind as I wrote it, using English terms like Moses and Sages. A few months later I started getting feedback from the 12th floor of the OU—the kashrus department. These people weren’t just talmidei chachamim but poskim as well, and they were very far from the target audience I envisioned. Nevertheless, they told me they loved it because it was unusual and offered a very different perspective.”

Between Modzhitz and Modern Orthodoxy

“Your wife is from the ‘Modzhitzer Taubs.’ You married into a rebbishe family, which also supported the establishment of the State of Israel.”

“Baruch Hashem, I fit right in. I even sing a little bit too, although not on a professional level. I actually have a very strong kesher with the family. We spent some time with my wife’s uncle, Rav Shmuel Eliyahu, who was the current Rebbe’s grandfather. Rav Shaul, who was my wife’s zeide, supported the establishment of the medinah, but he passed away in Eretz Yisrael before it was founded. The day of his passing was November 29, 1947, the very day on which the United Nations passed the resolution for partition and the creation of the state. I once heard a description of the contrast between the dancing in the streets of Tel Aviv and the somber levayah. There was a whole question of where to bury him because the Arabs were already shooting everywhere, and it wasn’t safe to go from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim.

“I heard from several eyewitnesses that they asked the Chazon Ish, who came to the levayah, what they should do. ‘Mit zeine zechusim?’ he replied. ‘Ehr hut machzir biteshuvah geven azoy fil mentchen. Fahrt!’ (With his merits? He made so many people do teshuvah. Just go!) They took his body to Yerushalayim and they were attacked, but they were able to make it there and back b’shalom. They say that he was the last person to be buried on Har Hazeisim before the Six-Day War. But the truth is that Harry Fischel was buried there after him, thanks to the personal intervention of President Harry Truman. Harry Fischel was a big supporter of the Democratic Party, so the family approached President Truman and asked him to intervene. He said, ‘For my Harry? Go tell the Marines who are guarding the American Embassy to go to the Mandelbaum Gate,’ and they made sure that they got through.”

“I had the great honor of speaking with the great Modzhitzer composer and singer Reb Ben Zion Shenker on his 90th birthday.”

“I spoke to him on the Friday before he was niftar. We used to talk to each other at least once a month for many years. For the first few years after I got married we lived in Crown Heights, so I davened in the Modzhitzer shtiebel, which was downstairs in my shver’s house on Crown Street. My shver was Rav Shaul’s son. Even after we moved away we used to come back to Crown Heights for Yom Tov. I heard Reb Ben Zion daven for the amud on the Yomim Nora’im at least six or seven times. When our paths started to diverge when we moved away, we resolved to stay in touch. He would send me homemade tapes from tishen and yahrtzeit seudos and other events. I have a whole collection.”

“Do you like that kind of music?”

“Yes. I like the old niggunim, but I can’t teach them to my family because they all prefer contemporary, faster songs.”

“People don’t have patience for it these days. It’s a little like having an appreciation for piyut. But let’s go on to something else. How would you identify yourself on the religious spectrum?”

“I dislike labels very much. When I first came to the OU I was interviewed by a woman from The Jerusalem Report, which doesn’t exist anymore. She asked me a number of questions and then she said, ‘The OU represents the Modern Orthodox, but you don’t come across as being Modern Orthodox.’ In the article she wrote: ‘Rabbi Weinreb refuses to pigeonhole himself, but if I had to label him I would call him “Ultra-Modern Orthodox.”’ I didn’t like that very much, to be honest. I would have preferred to be called ‘Modern Ultra-Orthodox.’ But I don’t know what any of those labels are supposed to mean anyway.”

“Well, we’re certainly living in a time when all these identities are in flux.”

“There are changes taking place all across the spectrum, and it’s going in both directions. Some of it is very disappointing. It’s no secret that there are dropouts from even the most extreme chareidi communities. There’s also a lot of change going on within the Modern Orthodox movement. One of the major issues right now is the role of women, which is also an issue for chareidim. It’s an important concern that has to be addressed one way or the other. I’m sure you know about chasidishe rebistves where the rebbetzin is the one who runs the show and constitutes the real power behind the throne.”

“I always say that the Satmar Rebbetzin played a very important role in her community, while the Lubavitcher Rebbetzin didn’t play any role in hers. Logic would dictate that it would be the other way around, but that was the metzius.”

“That’s very true. There was a podiatrist named Dr. Kreiser who treated the Satmar Rebbetzin. She once came down with cellulitis and he told her she had to stay in bed for the next ten days. ‘Do you know how many weddings there are in Satmar tonight?’ she asked him. I think she told him that there were five chasunahs that night. He said, ‘Well, those people will just have to understand that the Rebbetzin can’t come.’ She replied, ‘All five will understand why I can’t go to the other four.’ Clearly there is a role for women, and it plays out in various ways.”

“You had an interesting encounter with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”

“Indeed I did. After I got my PhD in psychology I got a job as a psychologist with the local school system in Silver Spring. At the same time I was also giving classes in Talmud, one on Shabbos afternoons for the general public, and one on Tuesday nights for a smaller group that wanted to learn on a deeper level. I was in my early 30s, and due to my various undertakings I had a number of very pressing questions. So in February of 1971 I called the Rebbe in 770.

“The Rebbe’s secretary answered the phone in English, but I could hear the Rebbe ask him in Yiddish, ‘Who’s calling?’

“‘A Yid fun Maryland,’ I told the secretary. Then I explained that I had a lot of questions I wanted to discuss with the Rebbe. As I was talking, the Rebbe’s secretary was translating and paraphrasing my words into Yiddish. Then I heard the Rebbe say in the background, ‘Tell him that there’s a Jew who lives in Maryland whom he can speak to. Der Yid heist Veinreb—his name is Weinreb.’

“I couldn’t believe my ears. When the secretary repeated the Rebbe’s words, I said, ‘But my name is Weinreb!’ Then I heard the Rebbe say, ‘Oib azoi, zol er visen zayn az amol darf men reden tzu zich—If that’s the case, then he should know that sometimes one needs to speak to oneself.’ Sometime later I went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe with Reb Ben Zion. The Rebbe looked at me and asked me who I was, so I replied, ‘I’m a Yid from Maryland.’ When he heard that he gave me a big smile and an extra warm handshake.

“I’ve had many situations in life when I was faced with something that I felt would compromise my religious principles. They weren’t dvarim asurim, but they weren’t me. Still, I could see that there were also very good reasons why I should take those jobs or whatever the conflict involved, and I didn’t know what to do. Over the course of my life I’ve asked various gedolei Yisrael and they all gave me different answers, but what helped me the most was the Rebbe’s words, that sometimes you have to ask yourself. It’s actually one of the most basic messages of the therapeutic process. You look for validation from others, but you also have to look within yourself. Whenever I tell the story, I emphasize that the Rebbe didn’t say ‘you should ask yourself,’ he said that sometimes you have to ask yourself. This doesn’t mean that you should just go with the flow and do whatever you want; it means that sometimes you have to reach inside yourself to find the answer.”

“Who were the most influential leaders in your life? I assume that your interaction with the Lubavitcher Rebbe was a one-time encounter.”

“Pretty much so. I went for dollars but not much more than that, although I’ve begun to appreciate his sefarim in recent years. Thanks to this story I’ve begun to have more interactions with Chabad people, and they send me gifts of his maamarim and sichos. He was a very impressive person, but I wouldn’t call him an influence on my life. The person I consider my rebbe is Rav Shmuel Dovid Warshavchik, although the name probably doesn’t mean anything to you. He said the shiur immediately below Rav Mendel Krawiec in RJJ. He learned by Rav Elchanan and then by Rav Boruch Ber before escaping to Shanghai, so he was both a Kaminetzer and a Baranovitcher. It was through him that I got a sense of both Rav Elchanan and Rav Boruch Ber, because not a day went by when he didn’t mention them. I was close to him mamesh ad sof yamav. But the rebbe I learned under for the longest period of time was Rav Mendel Krawiec.”

“Getting back to the place of women in Jewish society, the chareidi and Modern Orthodox communities have divergent approaches.”

“Rightly or wrongly, Modern Orthodoxy has encouraged women to become educated in ways that other people disapprove of, and there has to be some sort of role for them. As you probably know, the OU sent a sh’eilah to a whole board of rabbanim and they gave a psak that made a distinction between roles in education, administration, pastoral work and traditional rabbinical roles. The psak is both clear and complex at the same time, because it unambiguously prohibits women from serving in a rabbinical capacity with a rabbinical title, but it also emphasizes that they applaud women being active in educational settings and the like. But I don’t know exactly what that means, because I know many traditional rabbanim who spend most of their time doing counseling of one sort of another. They’re not paskening sh’eilos of basar b’chalav.

“The whole Orthodox world is struggling to come up with a proper resolution, because the role of women has changed in society, and there are many other factors as well. It’s just too complicated for anyone to control. There’s a movement—I think they’re changing their label right now, but it’s known as Open Orthodoxy. To me it’s a dilemma, because I know some of its leaders personally. We even grew up together. The question is, what do you do with them and their congregations? It’s a real problem.”

“I once told your friend and admirer Steve Savitzky when we were discussing this issue that achdus is very important, but it’s not the most important thing.”

“I agree. There are certain values that supersede it.”

“Preserving the purity of Yiddishkeit is the foremost issue.”

“Yes. The psak of the rabbanim is very clear, and the OU will follow that psak. When I say that it’s clear, I mean that there are certain things that are prohibited.”

“Are you also a member of the RCA?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think that the RCA has more of a problem with this than the OU?”

“Probably. But there are shuls that are currently part of the OU that have a rabbah or woman with a rabbinical title of some kind, and their functions vary from synagogue to synagogue. It’s something we’re obviously going to have to deal with. Everyone should be concerned, because my cousin, your cousin or somebody else’s cousin is going to be davening in a shul where it’s an issue.”

“We don’t realize how much of a problem this is for Jews living in smaller communities. After I wrote against the Open Orthodox movement, I was stopped by a shliach from Arizona who thanked me for writing about it. He told me that he was facing unbelievable pressure because his mispallelim were seeing other people do certain things he couldn’t permit, and they were asking if it’s Orthodox practice or not. So we have to understand that in these kinds of shtetlach it can become a serious issue.”

“What can I say? The question is what to do with member shuls that have women in rabbinical roles with rabbinical titles and advertise themselves as such. Do we expel them? I know that the OU is going through a process of working something out. I don’t want to use the word ‘compromise,’ but they’re working on some kind of understanding where we will not be forced into making the decision to expel a shul.”

Between Eretz Yisrael and Chutz La’aretz

“Do you live in Eretz Yisrael now?”

“We live as much of the year as we can in Yerushalayim. We have an apartment in Talpiot. But our children are all here, so we travel back and forth. We try to come to America twice a year, once for three or four months and once for four or five weeks. We’re usually here from before Tishah B’Av until after Sukkos and then we come back around Purim time.”

“So you get to experience both the Torah and the kedushah of Eretz Yisrael. Do you still have an apartment in the United States?”

“No. We like to say that the only real estate we own is on Har Hazeisim and in Yerushalayim. When we come to America we stay with our children.”

“Eretz Yisrael is a very different place. The Yiddishkeit is on a much higher level. I don’t know if you would agree, but I think it represents the golden age of Yiddishkeit as far as spreading Torah to the masses is concerned. And every aspect of Torah is being studied.”

“That’s 100% true. I do a lot of teaching in Eretz Yisrael, mostly in the OU Teaching Center. The learning is yomam valaylah. It’s also of a very high caliber. There are programs for all kinds of people. And that’s just one relatively small place.”

“But Eretz Yisrael certainly has a radical left wing as well.”

“That’s mostly an invention of the media.”

“So the sinah that used to exist doesn’t exist anymore?”

“You’ll still see it in the extreme left, which controls the media and certain political parties, but those parties can hardly get any votes anymore. Lapid is a whole different parshah, because even though he’s an over-the-top chiloni he isn’t a sonei das [hater of religion]; it’s a lot more complicated than that. Nowadays, when you go to the Kosel there are lots of non-frum people coming there to daven, aside from the tourists. You can also see that the kiruv movement is getting stronger and stronger.”

“I go to Eretz Yisrael quite often, and I meet many successful people who don’t own smart phones or even go online. You don’t see that in the United States.”

“There’s also a big disparity in gashmiyus, and I’m afraid it’s only getting bigger. Eretz Yisrael is on a much higher level in terms of pnimiyus and religiosity, and materialism is its telltale sign. You don’t really see over-the-top gashmiyus in Eretz Yisrael. As for ruchniyus, even those Jews whom the rest of the world would term ‘Modern Orthodox’ are learning all the time. Everyone goes to shiurim. Most of the people on a similar level in America don’t have that kind of commitment to learning.

“I made a siyum on Daf Yomi in one of what they jokingly call the ‘Modern Orthodox shtieblach’ in Katamon. They’re shtieblach like any others, but they’re more mixed than your typical shtiebel crowd. There’s a fellow who gives an English-language Daf Yomi shiur, and when they finished Bava Basra they asked me to say a few words. The oilam consists of 40 men ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s, all English speakers and from all walks of life. On one side there was a heart specialist, and on the other side there was a plumber still in his overalls.

“In my comments I said that in nusach Ashekenaz we say at the end of Shemoneh Esrei: ‘asei l’maan kedushasecha, asei l’maan Torasecha.’ In nusach Sefard, it’s the other way around. I explained that there’s a Torah to kedushah and there’s kedushah to Torah. For example, there can unfortunately be Torah without kedushah, as we see that there are some people who learn but aren’t affected by it. In fact, I was once challenged at a Shalom Task Force event for saying that there are lomdei Torah who are guilty of domestic violence. The person said that it wasn’t possible, because we are told that when a person learns Torah he becomes more refined. So I told him that Rav Pam, zt”l, said that Torah isn’t a segulah; it doesn’t work automatically and it isn’t magic. The effect it has depends on how you learn, what you learn and with whom you learn. Conversely, there can also be kedushah without Torah, as we see from the stories of the Baal Shem Tov and his interactions with simple, unlearned people. Everyone really appreciated the vort. And these were people who considered themselves kedushah without Torah, even though they’d already finished two cycles of Daf Yomi!” l