The Special Tzazzdik Rabbi Berel Wein z"l

DIN: I found this tribute of Rabbi Wein in Substack, and decided to post this because it really delves into who he really was. I personally knew him well as I was a neighbor of his!

Rabbi Berel Wein Zt"l, my personal "Renaissance man"

by Dovie Kornreich

I started crying on the Friday night of Parshas Eikev while walking home from Shul. I really didn’t know why I got so emotional so suddenly. It was true that I was going through a stressful time—moving from a wonderful suburban community I had lived in for the past 8 years—and I had grown very fond of the place and was sad to leave. But I don’t usually cry from stress or sadness.

On Sunday morning, I heard the news of Rabbi Wein’s passing, and my sudden crying spell made sense to me. My neshama realized that I was about to lose one of the greatest Jews I will ever come into contact with.

My connection to Rabbi Wein started in 1986 when I became a freshman at Shaarei Torah Yeshivah High School and Beis Midrash. (Little did I realize at the time, that this was the Golden Age of Rabbi Wein’s rabbinical career.) Coming from a sheltered haredi cheder-like elementary school in Brooklyn to a “centrist” high school with a big emphasis on secular studies, there was a lot I needed to adjust to. My father decided to send me there because he was very dissatisfied with the level of education I was getting in frum Brooklyn yeshivah system.

I considered myself a Brooklyn refugee. I was running from a strict, close-minded, narrowly defined sense of what Yiddishkeit should look like and sound like. Black-and-white, tzitzis out, peyos, and no television or movies. (Following professional sports was somehow okay…) There was no State of Israel, there was no discussion of the Holocaust which actually gave rise to much of our immigrant community. There were no Conservative Jews or Reform Jews or Secular Jews. None of them existed in our world. Completely transparent. The Modern Orthodox were the butt of jokes and derision.

And the Goyim? Let’s not go there.

The secular studies teachers openly complained—to us!—that we were worse than the kids they taught in public school. It was a constant, daily chillul Hashem and I was sick to my stomach.

So I found refuge in Rabbi Wein and in Shaarei Torah.

1. I had time on my hands and somewhat of a nerd, so I actually spent time in the English library. To my surprise, there were “all kinds of books” in this library (which doubled as the balcony for the Ezras Nashim on Shabbos and Yom Tov). Shaarei Torah had a very serious secular studies program, and the library was stocked to encourage excellence in those secular studies. Books on general world history and literature, Jewish history and Zionism by secular authors, etc.

2. But Shaarei Torah also had a Beis Midrash program—with older bochrim from very diverse backgrounds. Some FFB’s from Lakewood and a large contingent of guys who grew up very modern (or not really frum at all) and went to Israel for a year or two and frumed out. I found myself hanging out with these guys more than the classmates my own age. And they introduced me to the Beis Midrash English library—most notably Rabbi Avigdor Miller books.

Rabbi Wein was everybody’s Rosh Yeshivah—giving a shiur klali on the more difficult and intricate sugyos that were going to be learned that zman to the Beis Midrash, and Jewish history to the high school boys.

3. But was most memorable for me was the daily post-Shacharis Seder. That’s right. BEFORE breakfast, Rabbi Wein went up to the podium in the front of the Beis Midrash and gave a daily shiur on Iggros HaRambam for 20-30 minutes! This was my introduction to Shaarei Torah. (After a few months, he moved on to Tehillim, which was kind of a let down for me. But he quoted Rav Hirsch’s commentary a lot, so that was compensation.)

4. Another memorable shiur was his Friday morning (AFTER breakfast) exposition on Rav Tzadok HaKohen’s sefer “Tzidkas Hatzaddik”. His insights into this sefer were deep and brilliant somehow extremely practical for life at the same time. He pulled this feat consistently—week after week for years. For the life of me, I could never understand how he was able to see all those themes and concepts within the cryptic words of the short passage he was expounding. After a while, I just gave up.

I was often in Monsey on Shabbos, so I was able to attend Shabbos davening in Rabbi Wein’s shul next door—Beis Torah. And that meant I could hear his Shabbos morning drashos and Pirkei Avos shiur.

I basically couldn’t get enough of what the man had to say.

People will say that Rabbi Wein was a great orator. He had a unique gift for fashioning phrases, timing, wit and humor, and dramatic flourishes and pauses, etc. All that is true. But it makes it sound like he used speaking techniques to capture audiences. The truth is that he used these techniques to convey such deep and eternal truths; profound Torah concepts and attitudes that have been part of our heritage for centuries. It was those concepts and attitudes that captured me. At the risk of making a pun, his speaking ability was merely a beautiful vessel for vintage wine.

And fellas, I was drunk.

But aside from being overwhelmed by his consistently brilliant and penetrating insights regarding Torah, history, the human personality, and practical life generally, he provided the breath of fresh air that I was desperately looking for.

Here was someone who, on a single day, can draw from the Rambam’s ultra-rational G-d of negative attributes on the one hand, and the greatest chassidic masters of folk religion like Rav Tzadok, who related to G-d in the most intimate and personal levels on the other.

He was constantly quoting Steven Hawking and explaining to us the latest theories of physics and biology to prove a point about Hashem’s fined tuned universe. He made kiruv seminars for you without you realizing he was doing kiruv.

For a great example of this, one of his mispalleim authored a book little-known book on Torah and Science published by Shaar Press called “Fingerprints on the Universe”. It was deeply inspired by Rabbi Wein’s teachings and approach to the topic.

For another example Rabbi Wein’s kiruv prowess, see the late and sorely missed Dr. Weiss’s introduction to the book “Vintage Wein” published by Shaar Press. A congregant who started off a secular humanist English professor and ultimately came to be one of Rabbi Wein’s biggest chassidim.

(Rabbi Wein’s Jewish History trilogy and other books were also published by Artscroll’s Shaar Press, leading myself and my school friends to theorize that Artscroll couldn’t publish such open-minded and sophisticated books under their flagship printing house, so they had to invent a new printing house for the “thoughtful people” which was mainly comprised of Rabbi Wein’s not-right-wing but thoroughly frum readership. Calling it “Shaar Press” after Yeshiva Shaarei Torah was the dead giveaway, we thought.)

He was a serious follower of the mussar movement and a great admirer of Rav Yisroel Salanter, and at the same time was a huge advocate of Rav Hirsch’s Torah Im Derech Eretz.

He was my Renaissance man.

Rabbi Wein constantly stressed balance and proportion in avodas Hashem. He was well aware of the tendency for intense Jewish observance and piety to foster unhealthy extremism, and he warned us against it. I got the feeling that on occasion, he too was glancing over his right shoulder regarding a number of public stances that he took. But he was never intimidated by the kanoim because he simply knew too much Jewish history. He knew too many geonim and rishonim and achronim who shared his more balanced and accommodating outlook on Yiddishkeit to feel any insecurity in his derech.

And he wasn’t shy in implicitly criticizing those who made inappropriate religious compromises to his left either. He did this by constantly praising every prominent Jew “made it” on the American scene —in politics, finance, sports and entertainment, etc. and yet remained strictly Orthodox despite the enormous pressures to conform. They were “mechayev” the rest of us to keep up our standards despite the temptations.