Rav Moshe Weinberger still holds tight to his father’s tefillin and simple faith
Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab, Family archives
One Shabbos about a year ago, I joined Seudah Shlishis at Yeshiva Ateres Shimon in Far Rockaway, an extraordinary place bursting with young men who maybe didn’t have an easy time of it, who’d fallen or been nudged out of the system. The yeshivah has welcomed them, reassured them, restored them, and there, in a darkened room, the Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Mordechai Yehuda Groner, was speaking to the boys lining both sides of a long table.
He was talking about the eternity of the neshamah, of its essential purity, and he suddenly cried out, “You guys saw the tefillin. You saw them. You know that those are your tefillin too.”