Rabbi Berel Wein zt”l, my personal “Renaissance man”

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 the 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 (desecration of G-d’s Name) 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 was 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 students 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 (overview lecture) on the more difficult and intricate topics that were going to be studied that semester to the Beis Midrash, and Jewish history to the high school boys.

3. But what 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, could 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.

At one point in my high school years, Rabbi Wein was constantly quoting Steven Hawking and explaining to us the latest discoveries and theories of physics and biology to prove a point about Hashem’s finely-tuned universe. He made kiruv seminars for you without you realizing he was doing kiruv.

As a result, one of his congregants, Louis Pollack, authored a 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 of 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 as a secular humanist English professor and ultimately came to be one of Rabbi Wein’s biggest chassidim.

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 (Torah and Secular Pursuits).

He was my Renaissance man.

Rabbi Wein constantly stressed balance and proportion in serving G-d. He was well aware of the tendency for intense Jewish observance and piety to foster unhealthy extremism, and he routinely 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 zealots because he simply knew too much Jewish history.

He knew too many towering Geonim and Rishonim and Achronim who shared his more balanced and accommodating outlook on Yiddishkeit to feel any insecurity in his religious path.

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 who “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.

In conclusion:

David Shulman recently posted about the various factors that make and keep people religious. One of the most crucial factors is “Ethos.”As he put it:

Whenever atheistic doubt creeps into my mind, I take solace in the fact that any atheist today doesn’t even know what levels a human being can reach. They don’t remember how the feeling can become as strong as anything we see and taste. “I’m personally not feeling it!” – yeah, but I kind of know what these greats meant when they say they did.

It is no exaggeration to say that I owe my basic connection to Yiddishkeit to Rabbi Wein because he single-handedly fashioned my entire ethos.

It was fashioned through his ability to communicate the greatness of G-d, His Torah and His creation in the most impactful way. He articulated the singular impact Torah and the Jewish people had on world civilization and on history’s most pivotal and consequential personalities. He skillfully conveyed the brilliance of Chazal, Rishonim and Achronim, as well as their greatness as human beings.

But the word “greatness” doesn’t do it justice. Rabbi Wein was able to convey how these people—and we have so many of them!—were on such a high spiritual level on the one hand, and yet were passionate about relating to the plight of other human beings on the other hand. They achieved dazzling feats of scholarship and insight and also sacrificed everything they had for Klal Yisroel, even humbling themselves before the simplest Jew and admiring their goodness and bringing out their greatness. (As I said earlier, the key to Yiddishkeit is balance, and Rabbi Wein proved it constantly with the life story of every great Jewish personality in our history.)

The greatness of G-d, the greatness of Torah, and the greatness of the Jewish people. This was Rabbi Wein’s gift to me, and I am eternally grateful.