Avi Weiss

In 1999 Weiss founded Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT), a rabbinic seminary in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx after resigning from Yeshiva University, where he had taught at Stern College for Women for decades.[27] The school's graduates work as rabbis in synagogues, college Hillels and schools,[28] but the Rabbinical Council of America does not permit membership to the school's graduates unless they have also been ordained by a traditional Orthodox rabbinical school.[29] In June 2013, Weiss handed over the presidency of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah to Chicago rabbi Asher Lopatin.[28]

With Marc D. Angel, Weiss co-founded International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF); it accepts YCT graduates.[30]

In May 2009, Weiss announced the opening of Yeshivat Maharat, a new school to train women, using a title he created.[31][32] Sara Hurwitz was appointed dean of Yeshivat Maharat.[33][34]

Weiss was an early leader of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, founded in 1964. It was one of the first American organizations working to free Russian Jews, who were not allowed to emigrate during the Soviet era. The group used demonstrations, lobbying, and education[36] to pressure the Soviet authorities into allowing Jews to leave the country.[37][38] In 2015, he published his memoir detailing his efforts to liberate Soviet Jews, Open Up the Iron Door: Memoirs of a Soviet Jewry Activist. The book focuses on how grassroots activism and acts of civil disobedience led to important policy changes for the Soviet Jews.[39]

A response to his "Holocaust Symbols or Objects of Worship" article in the March/April 2002 issue of Martyrdom and Resistance was printed in the September/October issue. The 2-section article acknowledged that "the most trustworthy guardian of the memory .. is to be found in Judaism itself, in its liturgy and its religious calendar." The closing challenged Weiss to accept her idea of wearing a "yellow six-sided star ... for a few moments every year."[40]

Weiss was an official emissary of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.[35]

Weiss has served as personal rabbi to Jonathan Pollard,[41] an American who spied for Israel sentenced to life in prison in 1987.[35] In 1992 Weiss was one of the signators to a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the release of Pollard.[42] In 1989 Weiss conducted a "freedom Seder" in front of the prison where Pollard was incarcerated.[43]

At a speech at New York City Hall in 2001 Weiss criticized President George W. Bush for not making a clearer distinction between Arab acts of terrorism and Israeli acts of self-defense. "The trap that he's falling into is that he's drawn a moral equivalency between cold-blooded murder and acts of self-defense," Weiss said. [44]

In April 2002 Weiss organized a pro-Israel rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.[45] and a boycott of several large newspapers perceived as having an anti-Israeli bias.[46]

In 2006 Weiss organized a protest in front of Syria's UN mission to denounce a Hezbollah offensive in the Middle East.[47]

In September 2011, Weiss was arrested in front of the U.N. building in New York while protesting the Palestinian statehood bid.[12]

In a July 15, 2015, Haaretz opinion piece, Weiss applauded the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, which he saw as a part of maintaining the separation of church and state and protecting his right to refuse to perform gay weddings. He stated that he would not participate in same-sex weddings, because doing so would run contrary to his religious commitments, but that he had met countless gay individuals and couples, some of whom were members of his synagogue, who lived loving, exemplary lives. "If I welcome with open arms those who do not observe Sabbath, Kashrut or family purity laws, I must welcome, even more so, homosexual Jews, as they are born with their orientation."[48]

Weiss has travelled worldwide as an activist in various causes.[49] In 1989 Weiss and others protested at a Carmelite convent that had been established at Auschwitz. The group—dressed in concentration camp clothing—scaled the walls of the convent, blew a shofar, and screamed anti-Nazi slogans. Workers evicted them from the site.[50] In 1993 Pope John Paul II ordered the closure of the convent, which had been located in a converted building that had stored Zyklon B gas used to kill prisoners at the camp during World War II.[51]

He protested President Ronald Reagan's visit to an SS cemetery in 1985.[35] He was arrested in 1990 while protesting Kurt Waldheim's visit to the Salzburg Festival,[52] and again in 1994, when he protested in Oslo, Norway, when PLO chief Yasser Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize.[53]

Along with Rosa Sacharin of Glasgow, Scotland, Weiss sued the American Jewish Committee in New York state court in 2003 to stop the construction of a path through the Belzec extermination camp in Poland. They were concerned that mass graves at the site would be disturbed by the work.[54]