Rav Dovid Weiss

Rosh Yeshiva

As a Talmid of Rav Herschel Schachter, and Rav Aharon Kahn at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Dovid Weiss earned S’micha, a C.P.A. and a degree in computer programming. Rabbi Weiss also gained a love for Chassidus from his years of attending shiurim by Rav Moshe Weinberger. For many years Rabbi Weiss gave a shiur on Friday nights in Boro Park where a spectrum of participants from Rav Kook zionists to Satmar Chassidim sat side by side arguing the sugya. “It was more than a shiur,” he recalls, “we were a family that grew closer each week over the years.”

Rabbi Weiss tells of a life changing experience that happened to him in 1987. “I was just beginning my first year of learning in Eretz Yisrael. My Rebbe, approached a number of us and suggested that we go to the funeral of an 18 year old who was killed in a terrorist attack. Before I knew it, I found myself smack in the middle of the crying and shrieking; with the brother so distraught he threw himself into the grave. Of course it almost goes without saying that this was death, as I had never felt it. The sense of value the family placed on the life of their own son who had ultimately given his life for Klal Yisrael.”

He continues: “I returned to Yeshiva with a determination to take my learning even more seriously. And I never looked back after that, except for when I visit Eretz Yisrael now. Each time I go, I take a taxi to the young man’s kever and say Tehillim. I stand there quietly, as if it is 1987, and remember again how life is so precious.”