A distinguished scholar, lecturer, and author of many popular works of Jewish history, Rabbi Berel Wein helped shape the Orthodox Jewish community of America as we know it today. After an illustrious career in the American rabbinate, Rabbi Wein moved to Israel in 1997 and has since served as the Rav of Bet Knesset Hanasi in Rechavia, Jerusalem. In this interview, Rabbi Aron White engages Rabbi Wein in a thought-provoking discussion on the current state of Israel and America, and the future of the Jewish people.

 

I wanted to start from the very beginning, in terms of your upbringing in Chicago. One thing I only learned recently, that might be particularly interesting to our readers, is that your father received semicha from Rav Kook, here in Yerushalayim. Could you tell me about that, and about those people who had an impact on you while growing up in Chicago.

Yes, my father received semicha from Rav Kook and I have a copy of it! Our relationship with Rav Kook goes back to Volozhin. My grandfather, Chaim Tzvi HaLevi Rubenshtein, was a colleague of his in Volozhin. When Rav Kook came to Eretz Yisrael, my grandfather also came to Eretz Yisrael, and he came to Yafo, where Rav Kook was the rabbi. My grandfather was the rosh yeshiva of the yeshiva ‘Sha’arei Torah’ in Yafo. The building is a landmark, you can still see it today. Then my grandfather came to Yerushalayim, and Rav Kook came to Yerushalayim as well. Later, my grandfather was sent to America to raise money, the usual advice on how to survive, and in 1911 he came to Chicago. The people in Chicago insisted that he stay – they said, “You have to stay, we don’t have a rabbi.” And that’s how we came to Chicago. That’s from my grandfather’s side, on my mother’s side. 

My father was a student of Rav Shimon Shkop, in the Grodno Yeshiva. My father had an outstanding memory – he knew everything by heart. In fact, later Rav Kook would say that my father was his bookcase.

In 1923, the Alter from Slabodka moved part of the Slabodka Yeshiva to Eretz Yisrael, first to Yerushalayim, and later to Chevron, where it became the Chevron Yeshiva, and today it is the Chevron Yeshiva in Yerushalayim. My father had brothers already in Eretz Yisrael. One was in the Chevron Yeshiva. He also had an older brother who was a socialist, an original kibbutznik, who helped pave the streets of Tel Aviv by hand. So, my father came, and in 1925, Rav Kook founded the yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, which at its origin was only for geniuses, for outstanding students. My father was there from 1925 to 1929. He was very good friends with Rav She’ar Yashuv Cohen and with the Nazir. My father had a photographic memory – he knew everything. He knew the name of every sefer there ever was, and the name of every rabbi. But my father was a very reticent person; you never heard him reveal himself. Except, I was his only son, so I knew him very well, and he really was my main teacher in life, from the time I was three years old. When I was nine years old, he was already studying Ketzos HaChoshen with me.

In 1929, Rav Shimon Shkop came to New York to deliver shiurim in Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan, invited by Dr. Revel. Rav Shimon sent a letter to all his former talmidim. Rav Shimon was a “chacham adif minavi, a wise man is more than a prophet.” So in 1929, he told my father, “Europe is ale geshfilt gays, Europe is all played out,” meaning, we have no future there. The future is in the United States and Israel. He said, “I’m going to try to build a cadre of students in the United States who will spread Torah in America. Come join me.” So my father came in 1929, at the same time as Dr. Belkin, who was a great scholar from the Radin Yeshiva, the Chofetz Chaim’s yeshiva. My father knew him very well.

There was a Jew in New York by the name of Israel Rokeach, who had a business selling kosher soap – every Jewish house had it. Half the soap was red, and half the soap was blue, so you broke it in half for milchigs and fleishigs. Rokeach came from Kovno, and his original soap had a hechsher from Rav Yitzchak Elchanan. Every year, Rokeach gave a prize of $500 to the outstanding student in the beit midrash of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan, and my father won the prize in 1930. 

Dr. Revel knew every rabbi in America, and my father was still not married, so he told my father that there was a rabbi in Chicago by the name of Rubinshtein, and he had three daughters. He said, “Go to Chicago, you’ll like one of them!” And that’s exactly what happened. My father went to Chicago with his few hundred dollars that he won – a few hundred dollars then was a lot of money! – and he married my mother, who was the middle daughter, Esther. He became a Rav in Chicago, and he was a Rav for over 60 years. He was my main teacher in everything. I would come home from school every day at three o’clock, and my mother would give me a glass of milk and cookies, and then at 3:30pm my father sat down to learn. We didn’t know any better, so it worked.

I know that after you received semicha from Hebrew Theological College (HTC), you studied law and became a lawyer. When and why did you decide to become a rabbi?

I always wanted to be a rabbi. My father had told me that we were seven generations of rabbonim. But when I received my semicha at 21 years old, the Orthodox rabbinate in Chicago collapsed. The neighborhood changed. Out of 42 Orthodox synagogues, only six survived. Many of them became Conservative. In fact, my father’s synagogue collapsed, and he was offered a very lucrative position in a synagogue without a mechitza, where men and women would sit together. They said to him, “This rabbi is doing it, and that rabbi is doing it,” but he said, “I saw Rav Shimon Shkop; I can’t do it.” Eventually, he found a position in East Rogers Park in Chicago, and he was there until he was 90.

When I finished yeshiva at Hebrew Theological College, I got married young at 21. My father-in-law was a great rabbi in Detroit, Rabbi Levin, and my brothers-in-law were later roshei yeshiva of Telz in America. But I had to make a living; it was a time when fathers and fathers-in-law could not support you – you had to make your own way. My father had a landsman, someone from the same town, who was a lawyer in Chicago. My father arranged with him that if I went to law school and passed the bar, he would take me on as a law clerk in his office. I got a three-year scholarship to law school in Chicago, passed the bar on the first try, and went to work as a lawyer. After a year or two, I went out on my own. But all the time I was a lawyer, I wanted to be a rabbi. In fact, I had a non-paying position as a rabbi for a small group of people for a Shabbat minyan.

I was in law for eight or nine years. I had, Baruch Hashem, a family – four children – and a home in Chicago. We thought that was it; that was the trajectory. Then a very dear friend, Rabbi Aryeh Ratner, who was a rabbi in Miami Beach, came to visit me, with the backing of my rosh yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim Kreiswirth, who always told me, “We have enough Jewish lawyers; we need a good rabbi.” Rabbi Ratner told me he was leaving Miami Beach and wanted me to be his successor, and that Rabbi Kreiswirth insisted on it. By that time, I already owned a business, a small manufacturing business. It’s complicated to move, especially with little children in school. But they put a lot of pressure on me, so I finally agreed to be a candidate. My wife said, “If the Ribono Shel Olam wants it, you’ll get it, and if it’s not for us, it won’t be for us.” Anyway, I was elected by the overwhelming vote of 21 to 19. Within a month, I had sold everything I owned in Chicago. I didn’t feel that a rabbi should have the baggage of business with him. The first year I was a rabbi, my salary was less than the income tax I had paid the last year before I became a rabbi!

So we moved to Miami Beach. That was the greatest move; it was min hashamayim. It was a wonderful congregation. When I came, there were 39 members in the shul, and when I left, there were over 250. We built a magnificent building, we built a mikvah, and I gave a shiur in the Miami Mesivta. I got to meet all of the great Jews of the world who all came to Miami Beach in the winter. I was a driver, a chauffeur for the Ponevezh Rav and for many other great rabbanim. The L-rd put me in Miami Beach, and there I met all these great people. If I had been in a different community, I would never have had any contact with these people. I had Rav Soloveitchik, I had Rav Ya’akov Kamenetsky, I had the Satmar Rav, I had Chassidic rabbis, the Tetcher Rebbe from Toronto. 

I was young then, 32 or 33. They looked at me like I was their child, so they took care of me; they taught me. When you learn things from great people, a lot of it goes easy. Rav Soloveitchik didn’t teach me directly, but he was the example of how to give a lecture. Nobody would fall asleep in the middle! The Ponevezh Rav taught me how to collect money, and Rav Ya’akov Kamenetsky taught me how to read a pasuk in the Chumash. The Satmar Rav taught me how to care for the Jewish people. That’s immeasurable – there’s no way to measure what that’s worth, but that’s what made me. We were in Miami Beach for nine years. My children grew up; it was a different world then. We never locked the front door, we never locked our car. There were 300 days a year that the sun shone, our kids were outside every day. We never worried about anything. It was healthy, beyond belief. Then I worked in New York; it was a different universe.

You’ve held various rabbinic roles, but your teaching of Jewish history brought you international recognition. When did that come on your horizon?

Well, what happened was, I was the head of Kashrut for the OU (Orthodox Union) for five years, which was very challenging, and in many respects very rewarding. But it was not something I wanted to do permanently. We were living in a relatively new neighborhood in Monsey, New York. On Shabbat, I would give shiurim in the minyan we davened in, and eventually that minyan turned into a shul. The shul was wonderful, with wonderful people. I’ve had a very easy ride with the rabbanus (rabbinate). When I was in Miami Beach, I developed a lecture series in Jewish history for women. When I came to Monsey, it was also for women. After a period of time, the husbands came to me and said, “It’s embarrassing, my wife knows all these things, and I don’t know anything. So you have to give a class for us.” So I said yes, but for the men’s class, everyone should pay a $50 registration fee, and the money would go to the local yeshiva. About 30 people signed up, among them a number of physicians. We had a wonderful shul – we had 25 doctors in shul; every disease known to man was in our shul. After a few weeks, some of the doctors came and said, “We paid the $50, but we’re on call, we have to be in the hospital. Why don’t you record the lecture and give us the recording?” And they came back two or three weeks later and said, “In the hospital, everybody comes to hear your recording! You should do something with it.” And that’s how it started.

I remember I had a rebbe in yeshiva who said to me, “You can learn anything in university, but don’t learn Judaism, because if you start reading professors, it can challenge you.” Did you ever find it challenging when you read Jewish history academically?

First of all, every historian has a bias. And if you’re not an observant Jew, then your bias is obviously against observance by nature. The people who wrote the history books were not personally observant and did not believe that Torah was the main folklore in Jewish life. However, all of them had bibliographies in their books, and most of the bibliographies were from great rabbanim. You want to know Jewish history? Look at the rabbinic responsa of the time – they’re telling you what happened there. They phrase it halachically; they’re not there to tell you stories, but the story is there if you figure it out. That was my main source of history: the rabbinic responsa. Everyone studies the Rambam’s Yad HaChazakah, but the Teshuvot HaRambam is even more revealing – you can see the person from it. And then I had the idea that we should make films. So we made three large biographical films: Rashi, the Rambam, and the Abarbanel. Tens of thousands have seen them, and they’re in many schools throughout the world. When the internet came, I created a foundation. We have a platform called ‘Jewish Destiny.’ I always said, “Our job is to tell the story of the Jewish people to the Jewish people.”

Why? If you are talking to people who do see Torah as the folklore of Jewish history, who are observant, what is the need to learn Jewish history?

Because if you don’t know how we got here, you’ll have no idea what to do now. You’ll have no perspective. History is perspective. Many times there are problems that are insoluble, and they’ve been insoluble for 2,000 years. So you have to know that’s the kind of problem you’re dealing with, and you’re not going to solve it. You have to learn to live with it. And then there are problems that we have solved, but they reappear. So what do we do now? And history tells us that all of the non-traditional, non-orthodox streams eventually disappear: the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Christians, the Frankists – all of them. They’re around for a while, but they don’t last. In 1960, it was all about Reform and Conservative being the future of the Jewish people. Nobody says that today – they don’t even say it! 

In that context, I’d like to ask about American Jewry. As a non-American, I remember my first visit to America – it felt distinct from other Jewish communities in the Diaspora. 

I grew up in a time when there was antisemitism, but it was on the wane. You could be an Orthodox Jew without penalty. An Orthodox Jew could be nominated and run for Vice President of the United States. And the guy who was running for president was a Shabbos goy. That time is gone – that was a false spring. I grew up in a time when support for the State of Israel in the Jewish community was almost complete, and there was very strong support from the non-Jewish community too. That also has changed. The very success of the State of Israel has contributed to this. And the influence of the survivors of the Holocaust was immense. They were driven people. We don’t have that anymore. 

In those days, the entire Orthodox spectrum, from Mizrachi to Satmar, the common denominator was that they were going to rebuild the Jewish people. They didn’t have that much time to fight amongst themselves. But now that the Jewish people have been ‘rebuilt,’ now we have time for all of this. We exist inside political parties in the State of Israel. It’s a deterrent to the coming of the Messiah. If I had to do it all over again, I never would have had a religious party.

That immediately allows the majority of the Jewish people to say, “Well, that’s not for me. I don’t have to put on tefillin, because I don’t vote for this group.” And that’s a killer. On the other hand, my colleagues have told me many times that if there had never been religious parties, there never would have been any religious Jews left in the State of Israel. They have a point on that too. But overall, I think there’s more negative than positive. But who am I?

Historically, internal divisions were common during the time of the ancient Jewish state. Now that we once again have a Jewish state, do you think we are reliving those same divisions today?

It’s funny. Both Temples were destroyed from within, not from without. And they were great people – we’re not talking about idiots! But human beings are born with egos. In fact, I think the main purpose of the Torah is to try and control your ego. That was Chassidus, that was the mussar movement. Now, none of those movements are really around and vital anymore. So ego is rampant. Great people have great egos.

How have you seen Religious Zionism change in your lifetime, and how do you see its role today? 

I still think it’s looking for its way. I still think it took a detour when it put its entire emphasis on the settlements. In fact, Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook said at the end that we made a mistake – we concentrated on the land and not on the people. So I think that was a detour, and in some way, we can’t get out of it because how can you abandon those yishuvim now? History teaches us that change is necessary, and it takes a long time. I think it takes 40 nautical miles to turn around an aircraft carrier at sea. Religious Zionism has become much more religious and much more Torah-centered, with a great network of yeshivot. These are sea changes, but we don’t know where it’s going to end up. So, is Chardal (Charedi-nationalist) the future? Maybe.

I want to ask about the non-Zionist Orthodox community, both in Israel and outside of Israel. Beyond ideological debates, practically, we’ve now had the State of Israel for 76 years. How long can you continue to have a non-Zionist community while living within the reality of a Zionist nation?

I don’t understand those people. What do you think is going to happen without the State of Israel? The boss in my old law firm used to have a sign on his desk that said, “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up.” That’s it. Their minds are made up. They don’t know anything – they don’t know how the state was founded, they don’t know the story 100 years before the state, they don’t know anything. They just know that they don’t want to identify with it, even though the state is the greatest supporter of Torah. Financially and socially, the country has become much more traditional. I’ve been here for 30 years, and I can tell you the difference – you can’t recognize it.

In the country at large, where do you see it?

I see it in the political leaders, who are now giving some respect to Shabbat. I see it in the growth of yeshivot – it’s an explosion. I see it in women’s education, which never existed before. I think that if the politicians left it alone and stayed away from it, I think you would easily have thousands of Charedim that would volunteer to serve in the army. But if you pass a law, they’re not going. “You’re not going to tell me!”

Interesting, because of that tension with the wider society.

That’s right. And I think there has to be a recognition in Jewish society that there always were two alternate governments. There’s the government, and then there’s an alternate government, which are the rabbis, talmidei chachamim, the Sanhedrin, tradition. That’s an alternate government.

As a modern democratic state, how could we do that?

That’s the job – to make it work. But that is exactly how we’ve always been. During the Bayit Sheni (Second Temple) era, the Hasmoneans were the kings, but people listened to the Perushim (Pharisees). It even brought a civil war.

To think of it that way, it’s remarkable that’s a pattern – we’ve done exactly the same thing in the past.

We’re better off. That’s part of the problem – you don’t realize you’re better off. I’ll tell you the story the Ponevezh Rav told me. He flies the Israeli flag from the roof of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak on Yom HaAtzma’ut. He said the morals squad came to visit him. And they said, “In Bnei Brak, how can you fly the Israeli flag?” He said he told them, “In Lithuania, on Lithuanian Independence Day, I flew the Lithuanian flag on the roof of the yeshiva.” He said, “It’s not worse here.” That was his attitude, “It’s not worse here.” That puts it into perspective. So we’ll see what’ll happen. The aircraft carrier is slowly, slowly trying to turn around.

I wanted to ask about your own personal Aliyah. Community leaders often feel more pressure to stay with their community. What do you counsel when rabbis ask you about that? Also, for people looking for Diaspora-style communities here, how do you see those developing?

First of all, I don’t counsel people on their own personal decisions, “שֶׁאֵין אַתָּה יוֹדֵעַ בְּצַעֲרָם שֶׁל תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים” – you don’t know the situation, you don’t know what’s involved. So everybody has to make their own decisions because we’re all independent people. Nobody can tell you, “Go. Don’t go. Do this. Do that.” Secondly, I think there are windows in life when people can do things, and there are times when those windows are not open. It’s enormously difficult to make Aliyah when you have children between the ages of 11 and 17, as opposed to when you have children who are 1 and 4. And many times in life, you are not an independent contractor. What does your wife say? What does your family say? The older I have become, the less judgmental I have become about people and events. 

The L-rd has helped me land on my feet, so I find myself in a wonderful congregation in Rechavia. They still allow me to play-act as one of the rabbis. I think it’s very important that there be Anglo-style synagogues and Anglo-style rabbis. But eventually, I think being an Anglo in Israel is a recessive gene – it’s not going to last long-term. You know, either you become Israeli, or it’s a one-generation, two-generation thing, and then they become Israeli. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Rabbi Wein, thank you!