(Leading American Modern Orthodox Rabbi, 1903-1993). Autograph Letter Signed, in Hebrew on personal letterhead <<written to Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg.>>

<<IMPORTANT LETTER REUNITING TWO OF THE GREAT TORAH SCHOLARS OF THE 20th CENTURY IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE HOLOCAUST.>> R. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg (1884-1966) was the renowned rector of the Hildesheimer Seminary of Berlin and author of the multi-volumed responsa “Seridei Esh.” One of the very great Torah scholars of his generation, he developed a close relationship with a wide variety of the religious scholars who resided in Berlin in pursuit of their university studies. Joseph B. Soloveitchik was among those who attended R. Weinberg’s lectures - along with other disparate luminaries such as R. Yitzchak Hutner and R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the future Lubavitcher Rebbe. As Nazism grew, Weinberg’s Seminary was forced closed in 1938. Eventually deported and later trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto, R. Weinberg nonetheless survived the War and after lengthy hospitalization in Germany settled in Montreux, Switzerland in the summer of 1946 where he lived out the rest of his life. R. Soloveitchik was evidently close to R. Weinberg and in the present letter writes to him with the greatest respect and honor, extending assistance for all possible need. He apologizes for not reaching him until now, as he did not know where R. Weinberg could be found. “Thank God, I can now correspond directly. How do you feel? What are your desires and needs? …Please inform me of every detail. I am ready to serve you with compassion and faithful love.” A year after Hitlerism was eradicated in Europe, this letter reunites two highly significant modern Jewish thinkers. In retrospect it is striking to compare how very differently the two Rabbis respectively negotiated the tremendous challenges that faced the Orthodox world following the ravages of the Holocaust and the destruction of the traditional bastions of learning in Europe. Although both advocated an approach that synthesized Torah and Western scholarship, it was R. Soloveitchik who met with broad public success. In contrast, despite being an extraordinary tower of learning, R. Weinberg was less able to reorient himself within the Orthodox world post-war and its direction toward a more narrowly scoped communal and religious particularism. For despite visitors and much correspondence, R. Weinberg’s weltanschauung left him intensely isolated. Indeed for the final two decades left of his life he remained secluded in his home alongside Lake Geneva and visited neither Israel nor the United States, the two new major grow-centers of post-war world Jewry. For a full biographical treatment of the Seridei Esh, see M. B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg (1999).