Southland Rabbi to Take Post in London

Rabbi Abner Weiss, a leading figure in Southern California’s Orthodox Jewish community and former president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis, is leaving his Beverly Hills congregation to accept a post in London.

Weiss, 61 and a native of South Africa, has been named principal of the London School of Jewish Studies. He will also serve as rabbi of the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London.

As senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Jacob, which is said to be the largest Orthodox synagogue west of Chicago, Weiss was an advocate of open dialogue with more liberal streams of Judaism. “I subscribe strongly to a united community working together,” he said when he assumed the post in September 1985.

In the broader community, Weiss attracted attention in 1987 when he declined an invitation to meet with Pope John Paul II at an inter-religious convocation during the pope’s Los Angeles visit.

Weiss said his decision was not a boycott but “an anguished expression of pain” at the pope’s decision to grant an audience to Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, whom Weiss called an unrepentant Nazi. Weiss said at the time he didn’t believe his decision would adversely affect overall Catholic--Jewish relations.