Six students of Rebbetzin Denah Weinberg reminisce about this great woman and the transformational impact she had on their lives

Facilitated by Ariella Schiller

Born in Far Rockaway in 1936 to Albert and Esther Goldman, Denah stood out among the other Jewish children in that New York City neighborhood as a tzanuah and a determined shomeres Torah u’mitzvos. She married Rav Noach ztz”l in 1958, and they set out together to change the world, moving to Kiryat Sanz in Yerushalayim.

Rav Weinberg, born in the Lower East Side, was a great-grandson of the Yesod Ha’avodah, the first Slonimer Rebbe, as well as Rav Yaakov Loeberbaum, the Nesivos Hamishpat. His two siblings were Rav Yaakov ztz”l, the rosh yeshivah of Ner Yisroel in Baltimore, and Chava (Helene), the mother of Rav Shimshon Pincus ztz”l.

Rav Noach made eight attempts at kiruv, all of which failed to take off. Each time he accepted the loss and went straight back to the beis medrash. He knew his learning would bring him the clarity he sought. It was his ninth venture — Aish HaTorah, which he opened in 1974 — that stuck.

And it was Rebbetzin Denah who gave him the courage to not give up along the way.

“My father told me clearly,” Rav Hillel Weinberg stated, “that until he married my mother, he wasn’t able to accomplish his vision. She would tell him constantly, ‘Continue, continue, continue.’ From that emerged Aish HaTorah. This was her mesirus nefesh for Torah, and this is what she taught her children and students — Torah, Torah, Torah.”

After giving weekly Torah classes to women in her Kiryat Sanz apartment for several years, in 1984, with seed money from Aish HaTorah, she opened the EYAHT college in two ground-floor apartments located across the street from her home. She named the college “EYAHT” by creating an acronym for the phrase, Ishah Yiras Hashem Hi Tis’hallel.

The class for which she achieved acclaim was “The 48 Ways to Wisdom,” a curriculum developed by her husband based on Pirkei Avos. She also developed her own popular class on the beauty and meaning of Shabbos. She placed a strong emphasis on the role of the Jewish woman in her family and community, with special classes on shalom bayis and chinuch habanim.

She worked opposite her husband, and alongside her husband. And like her husband, Rebbetzin Weinberg passionately believed in the greatness of every human being.

Andrea Eller

NO one but Rebbetzin Denah Weinberg was THE Rebbetzin for thousands of talmidos and talmidim. The Rebbetzin’s influence rippled through all of our lives.

The Rebbetzin walked as a queen would. She unflaggingly attended to her subjects, while bearing the burden as if she’d been born into royalty. Her crown — her signature tichel — suited her. She gave the impression she was quite tall; she wasn’t. By simply entering a room, her presence would impart chashivus, importance, to any matter at hand.

I was a student at the Rebbetzin’s seminary, EYAHT, living in what could be called a dormitory. It was an apartment, one of four on Rechov Imrei Binah in Jerusalem, a few steps from the school. To say the apartment my four roommates and I occupied was spartan was putting it mildly… no heat except for one of those exposed, electric coil things we dragged around on rotation from room to room, iffy plumbing, cracked sinks and tiles in the bathroom and kitchen, just enough hot water for two women preparing for Shabbos in an apartment of five women....

And yet it was perfect. Perfect. Books, clothes, bed… that was it. All we had to do was to learn Torah. We wanted for nothing.

It must have been something close to perfect; not one of EYAHT’s students left Israel during the Gulf War. Some joked it was because the Rebbetzin confiscated our passports. During the war, the Rebbetzin had all of us live in the school building. There were gasmasks, plastic taped over the windows, curfews, taut nerves... and ruchnyius. Early Shabbos morning for the weeks we lived in the school, the Rebbetzin would enter each room crammed with sleeping students, clapping her hands loudly enough to wake us in time for shul. It wasn’t a favorite pastime of ours given the state of the ezras nashim in those days. But the Rebbetzin would brook no objections.

She was right, of course. It was an experience to daven with a minyan in the midst of a war.