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.
