Kinot: The Weinreb translation

This year, it is once again my honor to bring to your attention another work of great scholarship by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb — his beautiful translation of the Kinot liturgy for Tisha B’Av, published BY OU Press and Koren Publishers. The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinot is a work of gifted scholarship.

In his introduction to this work, Rabbi Simon Posner relates his perspective on Rabbi Weinreb’s role in this liturgical effort:

“The English translation of the Kinot by Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, the executive vice president emeritus of the Orthodox Union, was commissioned especially for this edition of the Kinot. I was delighted that Rabbi Weinreb accepted the challenging task of composing the Kinot translation, and the Jewish community is indebted to him for a lucid, literate and inspiring rendering of the Kinot in English.

“Over the years, Rabbi Weinreb’s Tisha B’Av Kinot learning sessions, and more recently his Tisha B’Av webcasts, have been an inspiration to the Jewish community worldwide. It is most fitting that this translation of Kinot for this edition was undertaken by Rabbi Weinreb, who has made the annual Tisha B’Av presentations one of his signature educational efforts.”

Rabbi Weinreb received rabbinic ordination from the Yeshiva Rabbi Jacob Joseph, and after teaching there for a few years he assumed the spiritual leadership of Congregation Shomrei Emunah in Baltimore before his appointment at the OU. He holds a Ph.D in Clinical Psychology from the University of Maryland and has served for many years as a practicing psychotherapist. For over twenty years, he has presented an annual Tisha B’Av webcast that reaches thousands of people.

This year’s special program is planned to focus on the following:

1. The significance of the Temple and its destruction

2. The moral failures leading to its destruction, as we learn from discussions in Masechet Gittin

3. Other historic catastrophes, including the Crusades, the Inquisition, pogroms, contemporary tragedies including terror, and the deaths of great men and women including Rabbi Shteinman and Rabbi Hadari, as well as noteworthy personalities like Charles Krauthammer and the distinguished historian Dr. David Wyman.

4. Special focus will be cast upon the Holocaust, with material drawn from diaries of victims and survivors.

Throughout these sessions, the liturgical focus will center upon Rabbi Weinreb’s translation of the Kinot, which will serve as the primary liturgical backdrop to the day’s proceedings.

There will be a special focus on the recitation of Holocaust Kinot, featured exclusively in the OU Press/Koren edition.

The program, “Generations of Tears: An Eternity of Hope,” will be broadcast live from the OU Israel Center at 22 Keren Hayesod in Jerusalem, starting at 9 am New York time, at OU.org/TishaBAv.

Listen and be inspired.