Born New York, February 16, 1930. Died Jerusalem, February 5, 2009, aged 78.
March 5, 2009 12:16A product of the Lithuanian rabbinic school, Rabbi Noah Weinberg was its leading pioneer in the ba’al teshuvah, or born-again movement, through Aish Hatorah, the global network of educational outreach programmes he set up for secular Jews.
He reached out to business executives, professionals and Hollywood celebrities with private and tailor-made group courses and programmes. Many became successful spin-offs in their own right, such as honestreporting.com and the Aish.com website, which receives over 2 million hits per month.
His warm, charismatic personality and message that self-esteem, pride and happiness could be built up by acquiring Torah wisdom and experiencing the pleasure of a loving relationship with a forgiving God were well-known to listeners of his widely-circulated tape series, The 48 Ways to Wisdom, based on a passage in Ethics of the Fathers. Uniquely for a college principal, he taught beginners himself until restricted by illness.
Israel Noah Weinberg was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His businessman father, Yitzchok Mattisyahu Weinberg, was a grandson of the first Chasidic Rebbe of Slonim, Abraham Weinberg.
The young Noah studied in Yeshivah Rabbi Chaim Berlin of Brooklyn and Yeshivah Ner Yisroel of Baltimore where his older brother, Yaakov, later became principal. He graduated in psychology at John Hopkins University and took his master’s at Loyola Graduate School. His academic training stood him in good stead as the pre-eminent rabbi of intellectual, university-educated Jews.
In 1958 he married New York-born Denah Goldman, daughter of Rabbi Elchanan Goldman, and settled in Jerusalem. Observing the high rate of assimilation and lack of Jewish knowledge among Western youth, he reacted by moving into Jewish outreach.
He opened his first yeshivah for assimilated young men in 1966. It was short-lived, as were another three attempts before he co-founded Ohr Sameach (Joyful Light) in 1970.
He left over a violent dispute in educational philosophy. Despite his own years of immersion in Jewish study, he believed that the “times of war” called for “outreach soldiers” who, after relatively few years of intensive yeshivah education, would be sent out to give introductory classes to young people at risk of assimilation and intermarriage.
In 1974 he established Aish Hatorah (Fire of the Torah) with five students in a small flat in Jerusalem’s Old City. His wife later established a girls’ seminary that resulted in dozens of marriages between the two sets of students.
Aish Hatorah became the flagship of the blossoming ba’al teshuvah movement. He bought the site for its headquarters, facing the Western Wall, from the government for one shekel after Polish-born prime minister Menachem Begin became convinced that assimilation was the greatest threat to world Jewry and Israel’s Jewishness.
Unusually for a strictly Orthodox yeshivah head, Rabbi Weinberg encouraged his Israeli students to serve in the IDF. His most famous student, former entertainer Uri Zohar, spread the movement amongst Israelis.
The first Aish branch outside Israel was opened in St Louis, Missouri, in 1979. It became a prototype for outreach programmes in major Jewish communities, including London and Manchester. In the next 30 years, a network of 27 branches was built across the world.
In 1985 a British student, Dr Yaakov Wise, helped Rabbi Weinberg launch the Discovery Seminar, putting Judaism on a rational footing. The Jerusalem Fellowships, a short tour and study programme bringing 20,000 young students to Israel, also started then.
In 1986 Aish took its first steps in England. It was formally launched under Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt in 1992.
In 2005 Rabbi Weinberg received the “Treasured of Jerusalem” award. His final months were devoted to the £30 million expansion of the Aish Hatorah Western Wall Building.
He is survived by his wife, eight sons, four daughters, and over 100 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Rabbi Naftali Schiff, executive director of Aish UK, writes: Rabbi Weinberg changed the trajectory of the Jewish people. A Mori survey of the 2003 fellowship programme graduates from Britain showed a 97% Jewish marriage rate — probably the highest accolade for Aish UK.