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:
“[In early adolescence] she becomes acutely aware of herself as a being perceived by others, judged by others, though she herself is the harshest judge, quick to list her physical flaws, quick to undervalue and under-rate herself not only in terms of physical appearance but across a wide range of talents, capacities and even social status, whereas boys of the same age will cite their abilities, their talents and their social status pretty accurately.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call FELICITY; I mean Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life it self is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Faeroe, no more than without Sense.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)
“The family: I believe more unhappiness comes from this source than from any other—I mean the attempt to prolong family connection unduly, and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)