Akiva vineyard

Akiva Weingarten 2019 in the Jewish community in Dresden

Akiva Weingarten (born December 23, 1984 in Monsey, New York ) is an American rabbi who describes his religious orientation as liberal - Hasidic . He heads the Jewish communities in Dresden and Basel .

Life

Weingarten grew up in the Hasidic Satmar community in New York as the oldest of eleven siblings. His mother tongue is Yiddish . His ancestors on the paternal side come from Hungary and on the maternal side from Lithuania .

At the age of 17 he received his first smicha , a year later he went to Israel and lived for ten years in the predominantly ultra-Orthodox city ​​of Bnei Brak . He was engaged at the age of 19 and married at 20. Two years later he was the father of two children. In Israel he was ordained a rabbi twice .

In 2014 Weingarten left Israel and the ultra-Orthodox community and went to Germany. He studied Jewish studies at the Abraham Geiger College and at the University of Potsdam until he was called to Dresden as a rabbi in 2019.

Akiva Weingarten has been rabbi of the "Migwan" community in Basel and the Jewish community in Dresden since August 2019 . There he took over the office of his predecessor Alexander Nachama. Weingarten now supports Jewish dropouts from ultra-Orthodox communities in integrating outside the strictly religious environment. In 2017, for example, he founded the Liberal Hasidic Congregation Besht-Berlin, where Kabalat- Shabat services, kiddush and joint study groups took place regularly .

Weingarten is the only liberal rabbi who wears Hasidic clothes - such as Schtreimel and caftan - on Shabbat . He frequently uses Hasidic stories and explanations of the Torah in his sermons , along with a liberal and contemporary interpretation. He describes himself as Liberal Hasidic.

Web links

• Rabbi Akiva Weingarten , personal website
• Jewish Community Dresden , website of the community
• Migwan - Jewish Community Basel , website of the community
• Rabbi Akiva Weingarten , on Facebook

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chatzkaleh Kofer: Akiva's Story. In: Off the Derech. July 13, 2018, accessed April 21, 2020 (American English). 
2. ↑ mdr.de: Akiva Weingarten - the new rabbi for Dresden | MDR.DE. Retrieved April 21, 2020 . 
3. ↑ Jérôme Lombard: "I have arrived". September 28, 2019, accessed April 21, 2020 . 
4. ^ Peter Bollag: Akiva Weingarten: An orthodox Jew became a liberal rabbi . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . ( nzz.ch [accessed on April 21, 2020]).
5. ↑ Dresden's new rabbi: Independent thinker with a sense of tradition. Retrieved April 21, 2020 . 
6. ^ New Dresden rabbi counts on the youth. Retrieved April 21, 2020 . 
7. ↑ DER SPIEGEL | Online news. Retrieved April 21, 2020 . 
8. ↑ Home | BESHT Berlin. Retrieved April 21, 2020 . 
9. ↑ About me -. Retrieved on May 6, 2020 (German).