Rabbi Shmuel

As Rav of one of the most prominent Anglo kehillos in Ramat Eshkol; Rosh Kollel and Maggid Shiur in two yeshivos and several kollelim; director of a kashrus organization; and go-to posek and counselor for Anglo couples throughout the country and across the world, it is no wonder that Rabbi Weiner has been described as one of the most influential people in the Anglo-Yerushalayim community.

Communal Rav and leader is not a role he imagined himself filling back when he was a bochur first entering Toras Moshe. A Lakewood native who had learned in the Yeshiva of Staten Island for high school under Rav Reuven Feinstein, Rabbi Weiner joined Toras Moshe in 1987. During his two years there, he developed a close kesher with the Rosh Yeshiva, the Mashgiach, and Rabbi Shurkin. (Later, while in the Mir, he learned with and became close to Rabbi Abramowitz.) He returned to the U.S., where he learned in the South Fallsburg and Lakewood yeshivos. Following his marriage to Racheli Rackovsky, the young couple came to Eretz Yisrael for what was supposed to be a year or two in the Mir. Then, he decided to try out Toras Moshe’s kollel—and is still there thirty years later.

He began learning with bochurim in the Rosh Yeshiva’s shiur, through which he became close to Rabbi Meiselman, shlit”a. This position grew into giving Gemara chaburos and eventually turned into his current position giving second seder shiur. Around the same time, in 2006, he joined Rabbi Senter’s newly opened yeshiva, Aderes HaTorah, becoming the yeshiva posek and morning seder Maggid Shiur. A few years later, he brought in an outside kollel to learn in the yeshiva, and today is a Rosh Kollel and also gives shiurim to the bochurim.

Life grew even busier when, in 2012, a new Ramat Eshkol shul, Zichron Nosson Tzvi (known as ZNT), hired Rabbi Weiner as their Mara D’Asra. Since then, Rabbi Weiner has built this pioneering kehillah—the first American shul in Ramat Eshkol—into a community uniquely designed to meet the needs of the young American couples starting off married life in Eretz Yisrael.

His kashrus organization, ZNT Kosher—today the go-to organization for Americans in Israel seeking kashrus standards they can trust—was formed in 2016 in response to one of those needs. The complex, multi-layered Israeli kashrus scene can be quite confusing to Americans in Israel; ZNT Kosher provides secondary hechsherim for eating establishments and home businesses to ensure their kashrus meets the standards American visitors are used to.

Rabbi Weiner was zocheh to relationships with several Gedolim over the course of his life, particularly in his training to become a posek. He counts among his early mentors Rav Reuven Feinstein and Rav Shurkin, from whom he received the halachic mesorah of Rav Moshe Feinstein. He spent several years doing shimush with Rabbi Yaakov Blau, Rabbi Isaac Kahana, and Rabbi Abish Eisen of the Eida Charedis, as well as Rabbi Moshe Yadler.

Yet underlying all his knowledge are the learning foundations he received at Toras Moshe, which, he says, influence the way he approaches halacha and psak, and also taught him to achieve a deeper understanding of hashkafa and life situations—a skill he uses today to guide his kehillah.

What is it like being a Maggid Shiur in the yeshiva he first came to as a seventeen-year-old bochur?

“There is a feeling of security,” Rabbi Weiner explains, “from still being part of my yeshiva and being connected to my rebbeim. I grew up through Toras Moshe,” he says. “I spent my main learning years there, as a bochur and a yungerman. And I’m still in their hands. What Toras Moshe had to offer me as a young bochur, it’s still offering me now and will continue to offer me.”