BRONX, N.Y. (RNS) As other Jewish leaders worked diplomatic channels and wrote letters to the editor protesting the establishment of a convent at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Rabbi Avi Weiss donned the striped uniform its inmates had worn during the Holocaust.
In 1989, with six others who felt the convent insulted the memory of Auschwitz’s overwhelmingly Jewish victims, Weiss scaled the gates of the building that once housed the Zyklon B poison gas used to kill the Jews, and began to pray.
The first consequence of his protest: a severe beating from Polish workers.
It’s just one Avi Weiss story being told as news spreads in the Jewish community that after 42 years, he will step down this year as senior rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, an Orthodox synagogue that, like Weiss, is not often bound by notions of convention.
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“It is the power of his pastoral work with every congregant in the congregation, whether it’s a sick parent or a kid who’s in trouble,” Gurock said.
Sometimes that pastoral work transpired over an international phone call. But yes, Weiss said, the congregation’s 850 families come first, and they made his activism possible.
“I have never signed a contract. I have never asked for a salary. I have never asked for a raise,” Weiss said.
“Never once in 42 years did anyone in the synagogue leadership say, ‘You know, Avi, you’ve been traveling too much. How about being here on Shabbat?’”
