Friedrich Weinreb

FRIEDRICH WEINREB (1910–1988) lived a life spanning cultures and continents. Born in what is now the Ukraine, during WWI his family fled from the Russians via Vienna to the Netherlands. From an early age he held professorships in economics in Holland, Indonesia, and Turkey. He worked in economic planning for India and for the UN in Switzerland, and was active in the Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Holland. He lived the life of an observant Orthodox Jew, but was also conversant with European civilization, and thus in a unique position to translate the wisdom of 3000 years of Jewish oral tradition into the vocabulary of modern Western thought. He lectured at the Academy of the Hebrew Language in Amsterdam and the Swiss Academy of Studies of Foundations. In all, he composed some fifty books, and left behind an extensive archive of recorded lectures. He was an innovator in his approach to the stories of the Bible, and a pioneer in widening access to the Kabbalah. For him, Judaism and Christianity are joined in creative union, Old and New Testaments forming one whole. His works, which border also upon other mystical traditions, offer a new spiritual vision based on a recovery of the “ancient” view underlying the Bible.