GERMAN ORTHODOXY CONFRONTS THE EAST

IN MID-1914 Weinberg travelled to Germany for medical treatment of some ailment, the nature of which is not known. Not long after he arrived in Berlin on August, the declaration of war against Russia and a general mobilization were proclaimed. Weinberg had journeyed alone on this first trip to Berlin, no doubt assuming that he would soon be able to return to Pilwishki. However, in the wake of the outbreak of war it was impossible to travel between Germany and Russia, and he was forced to remain in Berlin. As with the other ‘transition figures’ whom Hillel Goldberg has described, the journey from eastern Europe to Germany was to be pivotal in Weinberg's future intellectual development.

In the first days of the war Weinberg met Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook at a Berlin railway station. Kook, the rabbi of Jaffa and later chief rabbi of Palestine, had come to Germany in order to attend the Agudat Yisrael convention, which had to be cancelled because of the war. It was Kook who helped ease Weinberg's difficult financial situation, and a short time later he paid Weinberg a memorable visit at his apartment. Being a Russian national, Weinberg was not in an enviable position and was at first ordered to leave the country, although this order was soon cancelled. On 8 September Weinberg wrote to Kook, thanking him for his assistance and for ‘joining in my sorrow’. This letter is interesting both for the biographical details it supplies and also for the light it sheds on how Weinberg viewed the German Orthodox: