Rabbi Steven Weil – Future Leader Of The Orthodox Union

Bozoer Rebbe emails:

Luke,

In your page on R. Weil you made the following statement:

 

As he did in Detroit (creating much controversy), Rabbi Weil immediately started kicking people out of Beth Jacob to create a safe community.

Though I’ve never been a member of Young Israel of Oak Park, my grandparents were members of that shul and my older brother was a member for many years before making aliyah a couple of years ago, and I’ve davined there many times and knew R. Weil from both his position there and as one of my kids’ teachers – he taught at Yeshivat Akiva the first year or two he was in Detroit. While I’m not an insider, I don’t recall him "creating much controversy" and if he did start kicking people out of YIOP, it’s not something generally known in the larger frum community.

I’ve known all the rabbis that served at YIOP and its antecedent congregations since the 1960s, and R. Weil was certainly an improvement over the previous rabbi, Reuven Drucker, who left for a more chareidi pulpit in suburban NYC. Drucker had no personal skills at all and so alienated my brother that he stopped being a member there, only rejoining after Weil was hired. In two separate incidents during shloshim for our father, a’h', my brother and I were both publicly humiliated and dressed down by the gabbai for davining from the amud, a privilege apparently reserved for members. When I complained to R. Drucker about his gabbai publicly embarrassing an orphan, rather than criticize his gabbai, he told me that I made an honest mistake by going up to the amud.

As a divorced man I’m certainly concerned about your allegations that R. Weil has a problem with single divorced men, but then as far as frum Jews are concerned, divorced men are invisible. As long as the mothers stay frum and keep the kids in yeshivas the frum community doesn’t care what happens to the fathers. Still, I’d be more comfortable if you cited some source for your account of R. Weil’s stay in Detroit. I’m pretty sure that he was popular with most of the members of YIOP. I do know they were not happy that he left for California – though since Weil and the late R. Feivel Wagner went from YIOP to very prominent pulpits (R. Wagner, z’t'l, went to YI or Forest Hills in NY) YIOP will have no problem finding a replacement for R. Reuven Spolter who replaced Weil and is now making aliyah.

I  should’ve been more exact in my language. Rabbi Weil said in a speech I heard in June 2001 that he kicked people out of his shul in Detroit to  insure a safe community.