Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu attended the funeral of his attorney and friend Dr. Yaakov Weinroth tonight, and eulogized him in the Netanya cemetery where he was laid to rest.
"This morning we received the bitter news, our beloved friend Yaakov, our friend for 20 years, one of the greatest judges of the Jewish People, who died during the night. Sara and I are shocked and grieved. Many of the Israeli public feel a great man has left us, a jurist who in some ways there never was and never will be one like him," said Netanyahu.
"We'd sit in his office and he'd bring some children and some grandchildren, proudly show me them, redheads, little Weinroths, so proud of them. You also saw their pride in him," said Netanyahu.
"The Weinroth family went through so much grief in one year, one thing after another. The cursed disease overcame the daughter-in-law, the brother, the brother-in-law, and we came to comfort Yaakov and I thought what he was thinking - he had the same disease. With his huge heart, he knew what I was thinking. This cursed disease has now taken him away from us. We embrace the family and take them into our hearts."
The son, Rabbi Yechiel Weinroth, eulogized his father earlier, "Forgive me, dear father, and may all those gathered here forgive me that the obituary will be short. I find it difficult to find the words that can contain the scope of the personage, the meaning, the images that pass before me in no order.
"The role of everyone in the world is to strive to achieve high aspirations, to strive for the highest. On the other hand, don't forget to see the other, the sharing. Combine these two. This is the description most suitable for you, Father. When it all started you said a few times that you're not so afraid of death itself. You were afraid the disease would take away your humanity. I want to tell you that not only did it not take human dignity from you, it multiplied it a lot more. We've all been privileged to see a model of sensitivity to others is in the most difficult situations."
Tel Aviv-Jaffa Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau eulogized: "Many years ago, a 17-year-old boy entered the home of my father-in-law, Rabbi Yitzchak Frankel zt"l, in the Florentine neighborhood. He came as a young man in Ponevezh to be examined on Shulchan Aruch to receive rabbinical ordination. Rabbi Frenkel would sit with such young men for half-hour or an hour.
"They sat in the library for three hours. After that the young man came out and my mother-in-law the Rebbetzin asked the rabbi, 'Yitzhak, what was it that you spent so long with this young man?' He told her, 'Mark my words: From this room a true genius emerged.'
"Everyone knows about Yaakov Weinroth, the great lawyer, but not many people know about the chavruta learning with the head of the Ponevezh yeshiva, and they don't know about Yaakov Weinroth as a secret provider to institutions and organizations. It's hard to know what precedes what: The brilliant mind that had no match or the mighty heart that was compassionate and merciful. Weinroth was a righteous man and a great man."