Hanna Weinberg (nè Ruderman) was born in Germany in 1927 and grew up in Slobodka, then in Lithuania. In 1931, the Ruderman family moved to Cleveland, Ohio where her father, Rabbi Yaacov Yitzchok Ruderman, served as one of the teachers at the Yeshiva. After two years, the family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland where Rabbi Ruderman founded and headed a yeshiva named Ner Israel. From the age of six until the present day, Hanna Weinberg's life has been intimately intertwined with both Orthodoxy and Ner Israel Yeshiva.
During the early 1980s, Rebbetzin Weinberg became increasing concerned about the problem of domestic abuse in the Jewish community. Working behind the scenes on a local level, she established two safe houses for battered women. Coupled with an informal network of volunteers, these programs assisted with taking women to the hospital, picking children up from school, providing monetary aid to the abused woman, subsidizing legal support and providing career advice. On a national scale, Rebbetzin Weinberg raised the issue of domestic violence and abuse with other leading rabbis, sometimes in the face of disbelief, apathy and denial. In the same decade, she joined the Center for the Prevention of Sexual and Domestic Violence, founded by Rev. Marie Fortune, as an advisor on the Orthodox Jewish approach to domestic violence.
In addition to her advisory work on a national level, Rebbetzin Weinberg was also consulted on the formation of CHANA (Counseling Helpline and Aid Network for Abused Women) a project of The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore. While remaining active as a community educator on the problems of domestic violence, Rebbetzin Weinberg gained certification in geriatrics at Villa Julie College and went on to serve as Director of Volunteer Services at the Jewish Convalescent and Nursing Home. Her interest in the more fragile members of the Jewish community was extended to caring for all those in need through the group she created called Bikur Holim (visiting the sick). This comprehensive organization now boasts over 90 volunteers, whose services include visiting the sick in the hospital, providing transportation to medical appointments and hospitals, offering a mother-toddler and geriatric group that enables cross generational interaction, and giving financial aid for operations and an infertility group.
Hanna Weinberg is a mother of six, a grandmother of 44 and a great-grandmother to 26 children and counting!
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