Yitzchok Yaakov Weiss

Rabbi Weiss died of a heart attack at Bikur Cholim Hospital, on 14 June 1989, at the age of 87. An estimated 30,000 people turned out for his funeral. He was survived by a son, Berish, of Manchester.

Rabbi Weiss remained in Manchester until 1970. At the suggestion of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, he joined the Edah HaChareidis in Jerusalem. However, this was only after his retirement as head of the Manchester Beth Din. Rabbi Weiss became the Edah Charedis head in 1979 with the death of Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum.

In 1951, a deputation led by Rabbi Brodie went to Manchester in an effort to persuade Rabbi Weiss to become a dayan of the London Beth Din but he decided to decline the invitation and decided to remain with the northern community where his piety and scholarship were greatly revered. Rabbi Weiss did much to enhance the spiritual life of the community, promoting the establishment of a new and modern mikveh and the creation of a kollel for young scholars.

Around 1949, Rabbi Weiss emigrated to Manchester, England, where he was soon appointed Dayan and Av Beth Din. His appointment was hailed as an important event in the religious life of English Jewry. The then-Chief Rabbi Sir Israel Brodie and his successor Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits (then-Chief Rabbi of Ireland), were in attendance at Rabbi Weiss's induction in the Manchester Great Synagogue.

Rabbi Weiss then served as the Av Beth Din in Grosswardein, Romania, before World War II. When Grosswardein was ceded to Hungary as a result of the Vienna Award, he fled to Romania in 1944, where his wife died after contracting an illness. He and his family managed to escape the deportation of Jews during the Nazi occupation of the area by hiding in bunkers and attics.

Weiss was born in the town of Dolyna in Galicia, Austria-Hungary, the son of a distinguished Chassid, Rabbi Yosef Yehuda Weiss, later spiritual leader of the Hungarian Jewish community in Munkacs. He had frequent encounters with the Ziditchover Rebbe, Rabbi Yehuda Zvi Eichenstein, until the age of seven when the latter died. However, with the onset of World War I in 1914, he moved with his parents to Munkacs in Hungary, where his father had lived before marrying. In 1918, the region was under the rule of independent Czechoslovakia.

Rabbi Yitzchok Yaakov Weiss (15 February 1902 – 14 June 1989), commonly known as the Minchas Yitzchak after the Responsa he authored, was the rabbi of the Edah HaChareidis in Jerusalem] at the time of his death, but his halakhic influence extended well beyond the borders of his community as prominent posek (Halachic decisor), and Talmudic scholar. He was a world-renowned expert on Jewish law and his rulings are frequently cited and relied upon by rabbinic courts and scholars.