Chona Menachem Mendel (Mendel) Weinbach (September 24, 1933 – December 11, 2012) was an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, educator, author, and speaker. As the co-founder and dean of Ohr Somayach Institutions, a Jerusalem-based yeshiva for newly-observant Jewish men, he was considered one of the fathers of the modern-day baal teshuva movement. Early life Chona Menachem Mendel Weinbach was born in Kańczuga, Galicia, to Yechezkel Shraga and Tshezye Genendel Weinbach. At the age of 4 he immigrated with his parents to America and settled in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he grew up. At age 12 he left home to learn in Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, where he studied under Rabbis Yaakov Kamenetsky and Gedalia Schorr. He received rabbinic ordination at Torah Vodaath. In 1953 Weinbach was one of 10 Torah Vodaath students recruited by Rabbi Simcha Wasserman to open a Beth midrash in Los Angeles to generate interest among parents in Wasserman's proposal to open a mesivta high school in that city. At the end of the summer, he went to study at Beis Medrash Elyon in Monsey, New York. In 1960 he married Sylvie (Sheindel) Lamm (b. 1941), a Belgian war orphan who had come to New York at the age of 5. She and her parents, Abraham Israel and Rachel Lamm, had been interned in the Mechelen transit camp in 1942. She had been liberated on 13 January 1944 and sent to a Jewish orphanage; her parents were deported to Auschwitz two days later. She was raised by her uncle and aunt in New York City. In 1962 the couple decided to settle in Israel, becoming one of the first American Orthodox Jewish families to do so. They were one of the first families to settle in the new neighborhood of Kiryat Mattersdorf in northern Jerusalem, where they raised 12 children. Teaching career In his early years in Israel, Weinbach studied in the Mir yeshiva and opened a kollel. He also established yeshivas in Givat Ada and Netanya, and became involved with American P'eylim, which was opening yeshivas and Talmud Torahs for new immigrants. He was a member of a group of avreichim (married Torah students) from the Mir, Brisk, Hebron and other yeshivas who volunteered to study with new immigrants who did not fit into regular Israeli yeshivas. Around 1965 Weinbach decided to open a yeshiva for baalei teshuva together with Rabbi Meir Schuster. Rabbis in the yeshiva, located in the