Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg

An influential thinker and posek (decisor) in the world of modern Orthodoxy, Yehiel Yaakov Weinberg was trained in a Lithuanian yeshiva but moved to Germany before World War I and received a university education. He identified with the Berlin school of modern Orthodoxy (Torah im Derekh Erets) and headed the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin until 1939, when he fled to Warsaw. During the Nazi years he became modern Orthodoxy’s most prominent halakhic authority in the face of mounting persecution. The core of his approach during that difficult period and after the war was that insisting on increasing stringency in matters of halakhah would drive Jews away rather than keep them within the traditional fold. He survived the war and settled in Switzerland, where he continued to issue important responsa.