Share the Light

There’s prime real estate, and then there’s the rosh yeshivah’s office in Aish HaTorah. The breathtaking panorama of the Har Habayis spreads out below, while Har Hazeisim gleams as a white mosaic of graves. Down below at the Kosel plaza, small black figures mingle with multicolored ones, testament to every shade of Jew drawn here.

This is the Jewish People’s Ground Zero. It was from this room that Rav Noah Weinberg led a global revolution, transforming countless lives and communities from L.A. to London with the outreach movement known simply as “Aish.”

But even though the “Western Wall on Friday night” is still the “first time ever there” for many of the millions of Jews who visit, something has changed. The long-haired backpackers of the ’70s and ’80s captured in Mordechai Ben David’s iconic song are gone. Today’s equivalent are more likely to snap a selfie and continue unchanged rather than begin a journey to discover the meaning of life. Millions of Jews are still drifting away, and different tools — a new revolution — are required to reach them.

That task has brought a new occupant to this storied room. Sitting behind the wide oak desk is famed posek and rosh kollel Rav Yitzchak Berkovits. To his new task of rosh yeshivah of Aish HaTorah, he brings a passion for Torah and the Jewish People that finds expression in his trademark beaming smile.