Early Life and Family
Weinberg was a scion of the Slonimer Hasidic dynasty. He was the great-great-grandson of Rabbi Avraham of Slonim, author of Yesod HaAvodah and founder of the dynasty, and the grandson of Rabbi Noah Weinberg of Slonim and Tiberias, whom the first Slonimer Rebbe had sent to Palestine to establish a Torah community in the late 19th century.
His father, Rabbi Yitzchak Mattisyahu Weinberg, a son of Rabbi Noah Weinberg, was married three times. His first wife died while giving birth to his son, Chaim Yosef David. His second wife also bore him a son, Avraham, before they divorced. Rabbi Yitzchak Mattisyahu married his third wife, Hinda Loberbaum, the daughter of Rabbi Avner Loberbaum of Safed, when he was in his thirties. They had four children at widely-spaced intervals. The first two, Moshe and Chava, were born in 1910 and a year or so later. During World War I, Rabbi Yitzchak Mattisyahu was forced to leave Palestine and move to America; he brought his family to join him in New York in 1921. His and Hinda's third child, Yaakov, was born in 1923. Their youngest child, Noah, was born in 1931.
In 1931 Hinda took her two youngest sons to visit her family in Palestine and ended up staying for three years. During that time, Yaakov Weinberg attended cheder in Tiberias and later learned in the Etz Chaim Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Upon their return to America, Weinberg attended Yeshiva Torah Vodaas and Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim, and later studied at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin under Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner. Weinberg was regarded as a top student and was assigned to weekend rabbinical duties at the age of 19. Rabbi Hutner gave him semicha in 1944 when he was 21.
Read more about this topic: Yaakov Weinberg
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“We [actors] are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was.... My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom.”
—Helen Hayes (1900–1993)
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)