{"id":12091,"date":"2009-10-22T15:33:24","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T23:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=12091"},"modified":"2009-10-23T16:58:41","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T00:58:41","slug":"how-is-rabbi-weil-doing-with-the-orthodox-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=12091","title":{"rendered":"How Is Rabbi Weil Doing With The Orthodox Union?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Rabbi Steven Weil ran <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bethjacob.org\">Beth Jacob<\/a> for nine years. The shul members who hired him thought he&#8217;d stick around longer than that.<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Weil&#8217;s fundraising abilities helped the shul turn its finances around. He also brought in new members, many of them young couples.<\/p>\n<p>This summer, Rabbi Weil took over as the CEO of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ou.org\">Orthodox Union<\/a>. So far he&#8217;s getting good reviews.<\/p>\n<p>I wonder what will be next for Rabbi Weil? Will he run <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yu.edu\">Yeshiva University<\/a>? Run for Congress? For U.S. President?<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Weil still lives in Pico-Robertson (in Dennis Prager&#8217;s former home). His wife and family did not want to move to New York.<\/p>\n<p>I think this is the first time that the Orthodox Union is not being run by a resident of New York.<\/p>\n<p>Rabbi Weil commutes to New York almost every Sunday night and returns almost every Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;His family is settled here,&quot; says a source. &quot;Everyone is happy here. Moving teenage kids is very disruptive. They&#8217;re doing the right thing by staying here. They are happy here and they have good friends here.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Over the High Holidays, Rabbi Weil spoke at Beth Jacob (mainly in Michael Berkow&#8217;s minyan at Harkham Hillel across the street). He spent much of Sukkot at a private minyan in a home in Beverlywood.<\/p>\n<p>On a typical Shabbos morning, he davens different places. He&#8217;ll often go to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bethjacob.org\/ourminyanim\/downstairs.html\">Benny&#8217;s Minyan at Beth Jacob<\/a>. He doesn&#8217;t have a lot of choices about where to daven if he wants to stay within Modern Orthodoxy because during his time in the hood he alienated his fellow rabbis at Bnai David-Judea and Young Israel of Century City.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ou.org\/news\/article\/rabbi_kalinsky_ou_west_coast_director_fine_tunes_his_kashrut_skills_at_ask_\">Rabbi Alan Kalinsky<\/a>, West Coast director of the OU, also davens in different shuls.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t imagine that the Orthodox Union hired him with the understanding that he would keep his residence in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n<p>Where you live is much less important today than ten years ago, and certainly less important than 40 years ago, thanks to things like online conferencing, email, etc.<\/p>\n<p>The OU&#8217;s largest division is kashrut. Much of what they supervise come from California&#8217;s central Valley. Perhaps their head of kashrut should live in Sacramento?<\/p>\n<p>A FRIEND CALLS: &quot;Why is Rabbi Weil not welcome at Beth Jacob, Bnai David, YICC? <A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/profiles\/profiles\/steven_weil.htm\">Are they afraid he&#8217;s going to hit somebody<\/a>?&quot;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rabbi Steven Weil ran Beth Jacob for nine years. The shul members who hired him thought he&#8217;d stick around longer than that. Rabbi Weil&#8217;s fundraising abilities helped the shul turn its finances around. He also brought in new members, many &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=12091\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2082,120],"tags":[29867,692,29761,19591,30356,8443,1875,30021],"class_list":["post-12091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-orthodox-union","category-steven-weil","tag-beth-jacob","tag-beverlywood","tag-dennis-prager","tag-michael-berkow","tag-orthodox-union","tag-shabbos-morning","tag-young-couples","tag-young-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12185,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12091\/revisions\/12185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}