Avi Weiss


Avraham Haim Yosef haCohen Weiss is an American Open Orthodox ordained rabbi, author, teacher, lecturer, and activist who heads the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in The Bronx, New York, from which he retired in 2015. He is the founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a rabbinical seminary he refers to as "Open Orthodox", a term he coined to describe an offshoot of Orthodoxy, founder of Yeshivat Maharat for Open Orthodox women, co-founder of the International Rabbinical Fellowship, an Open Orthodox rabbinical association founded as a liberal alternative to the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, and founder of the grassroots organization Coalition for Jewish Concerns – Amcha.
He received his rabbinical ordination at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in 1968.
During the 1970s and 1980s Weiss was best known for his involvement in "1 2 3 4; Open up the Iron Door". Increasingly since 2000, his name is associated with a movement to open to women as rabbinical candidates for the "stream" of Judaism from which his own ordination came: Orthodox Judaism.
In the matter of conversion to Judaism, Weiss encountered difficulties with acceptability by the Israeli Rabbinate.
Ordination of women by Weiss' movement is a source of friction.

2000s

In 2013, Newsweek ranked him the 10th most prominent rabbi in the United States, climbing from number 11 in 2012 and number 12 in 2011, after being ranked number 18 in 2010.
On June 29, 2015, Weiss resigned from the Rabbinical Council of America. He resigned before he likely would have been removed as he was denounced as an apikores by many of the leading members of the rabbinate. The Traditional Orthodox communities view his movement as neo-conservative and far removed from orthodoxy.
On November 3, 2015, the Moetzes of Agudath Israel of America declared Open Orthodoxy, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Yeshivat Maharat and other affiliated entities to be similar to other dissident movements throughout Jewish history in having rejected basic tenets of Judaism.

Hebrew Institute of Riverdale

The Hebrew Institute of Riverdale was founded in 1971 in a boiler room of the Whitehall Building off the Henry Hudson Parkway by former members of the Hebrew Institute of University Heights in the Bronx who had moved to Riverdale. Weiss, who had finished his training at Yeshiva University a few years earlier, became the synagogue's rabbi in 1973. The congregation has grown to 850 families, and has served as a platform for Weiss's rabbinical advocacy. In October 2014, Weiss announced that he would step down from his pulpit effective mid-2015. In July 2015 Rabbi Steven Exler became HIR's senior rabbi and Rabbi Weiss continues on its staff.
The synagogue introduced one Friday night "the first woman to lead this service in an established Orthodox synagogue in front of a mixed congregation."

Open Orthodoxy

Weiss coined the term "Open Orthodoxy" in 1997. He contrasts it with Conservative Judaism,
noting that the latter "is generally not composed of ritually observant Jews."
Rabbis associated with Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America have opposed this approach. Although there are other critics, Weiss is not without defenders.

Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

In 1999 Weiss founded Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a rabbinic seminary in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx after resigning from Yeshiva University, where he had taught at Stern College for Women for decades. The school's graduates work as rabbis in synagogues, and schools, but the Rabbinical Council of America does not permit membership to the school's graduates unless they have also been ordained by a traditional Orthodox rabbinical school. In June 2013, Weiss handed over the presidency of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah to Chicago rabbi Asher Lopatin.

International Rabbinic Fellowship

With Marc D. Angel, Weiss co-founded International Rabbinic Fellowship ; it accepts YCT graduates.

Ordination of Women

In May 2009, Weiss announced the opening of Yeshivat Maharat, a new school to train women, using a title he created. Sara Hurwitz was appointed dean of Yeshivat Maharat.

Activism

Weiss has been vocal on many issues, including emigration and absorption of Soviet Jews, clemency for Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, opposing terrorism, supporting Israel, preserving Holocaust memorials, and exposing anti-semitism. In 1992 he founded Amcha – the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, a grassroots coalition engaging in pro-Jewish activism.

Soviet Jewry

Weiss was an early leader of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, founded in 1964. It was one of the first American organizations working to free Russian Jews, who were not allowed to emigrate during the Soviet era. The group used demonstrations, lobbying, and education to pressure the Soviet authorities into allowing Jews to leave the country. In 2015, he published his memoir detailing his efforts to liberate Soviet Jews, Open Up the Iron Door: Memoirs of a Soviet Jewry Activist. The book focuses on how grassroots activism and acts of civil disobedience led to important policy changes for the Soviet Jews.

Holocaust remembrance

A response to his "Holocaust Symbols or Objects of Worship" article in the March/April 2002 issue of Martyrdom and Resistance was printed in the September/October issue. The 2-section article acknowledged that "the most trustworthy guardian of the memory.. is to be found in Judaism itself, in its liturgy and its religious calendar." The closing challenged Weiss to accept her idea of wearing a "yellow six-sided star... for a few moments every year."

In the United States

Weiss was an official emissary of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Weiss has served as personal rabbi to Jonathan Pollard, an American who spied for Israel sentenced to life in prison in 1987. In 1992 Weiss was one of the signators to a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the release of Pollard.
In 1989 Weiss conducted a "freedom Seder" in front of the prison where Pollard was incarcerated.
At a speech at New York City Hall in 2001 Weiss criticized President George W. Bush for not making a clearer distinction between Arab acts of terrorism and Israeli acts of self-defense. "The trap that he's falling into is that he's drawn a moral equivalency between cold-blooded murder and acts of self-defense," Weiss said.
In April 2002 Weiss organized a pro-Israel rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and a boycott of several large newspapers perceived as having an anti-Israeli bias.
In 2006 Weiss organized a protest in front of Syria's UN mission to denounce a Hezbollah offensive in the Middle East.
In September 2011, Weiss was arrested in front of the U.N. building in New York while protesting the Palestinian statehood bid.
In a July 15, 2015, Haaretz opinion piece, Weiss applauded the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, which he saw as a part of maintaining the separation of church and state and protecting his right to refuse to perform gay weddings. He stated that he would not participate in same-sex weddings, because doing so would run contrary to his religious commitments, but that he had met countless gay individuals and couples, some of whom were members of his synagogue, who lived loving, exemplary lives. "If I welcome with open arms those who do not observe Sabbath, Kashrut or family purity laws, I must welcome, even more so, homosexual Jews, as they are born with their orientation."

In Europe

Weiss has travelled worldwide as an activist in various causes. In 1989 Weiss and others protested at a Carmelite convent that had been established at Auschwitz. The group—dressed in concentration camp clothing—scaled the walls of the convent, blew a shofar, and screamed anti-Nazi slogans. Workers evicted them from the site. In 1993 Pope John Paul II ordered the closure of the convent, which had been located in a converted building that had stored Zyklon B gas used to kill prisoners at the camp during World War II.
He protested President Ronald Reagan's visit to an SS cemetery in 1985. He was arrested in 1990 while protesting Kurt Waldheim's visit to the Salzburg Festival, and again in 1994, when he protested in Oslo, Norway, when PLO chief Yasser Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Along with Rosa Sacharin of Glasgow, Scotland, Weiss sued the American Jewish Committee in New York state court in 2003 to stop the construction of a path through the Belzec extermination camp in Poland. They were concerned that mass graves at the site would be disturbed by the work.

Organizations

;Articles in Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility: