Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg הרב יחיאל יעקב וויינברג

A native of Ciechanowiec (5645), trained at Mir and at Slabodka—under Rabbi Nathan Zvi Finkel—he was rabbi of Pilvishok for seven years, and then went to Germany and took a doctorate at Giessen, on the Targum. In Berlin he taught at the Hildesheimer rabbinical seminary and became its head. Among his students was the future Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Torah im derech eretz. In his youth he did not accept this German way—Torah together with general learning—holding it, in the Lithuanian manner, a concession. Having lived in Germany for years he changed his mind and became its strongest defender. This is a rare thing: a great rabbi who publicly changed his view on the chief argument of his time.

The war. He fled Germany in 5699 and was caught in Warsaw—in the ghetto, where he was among those people came to for a ruling. His Russian citizenship saved him: the Germans held him not in a death camp but among prisoners of war.

Montreux. After the war a student brought him to Switzerland, to Montreux, and there he stayed: posts were offered him and he took none. He wrote. Seridei Esh—"Remnants of the Fire"—is four volumes of responsa, and the title is not about the book but about him and his world. The questions in them are new: technology, medicine, the education of girls, the general school, what may and may not be done in a country where a Jew lives among everyone. He died in 5726.

Only the year of his birth in the common reckoning is firmly attested—1884; in the Hebrew reckoning that falls either in 5644 or in 5645. 5645 stands here, marked as approximate: one may not invent a day.