Greenberg, Irving

Rabbi Irving Greenberg is the President of Jewish Life Network (JLN), a Judy and Michael Steinhardt Foundation. JLN’s mission is to create new institutions and initiatives to enrich the inner life (religious, cultural, institutional) of American Jewry. Amongst initial projects are The Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education; MAKOR, a center for Jews in their 20's and 30's and Birthright Israel, a worldwide program to enable diaspora Jewish youth to visit and study in Israel. He also serves as Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. The Council is charged with responsibility for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the Mall in Washington, D.C. and the tasks of preserving the memory and drawing the lessons of the Holocaust on behalf of the United States government and the American people. An ordained Orthodox rabbi, a Harvard Ph.D. and scholar, Rabbi Greenberg has been a seminal thinker in confronting the Holocaust as an historical transforming event and Israel as the Jewish assumption of power and the beginning of a third era in Jewish history. In the book, Interpreters of Judaism in the Late Twentieth Century, Professor Steven T. Katz wrote, 'No Jewish thinker has had a greater impact on the American Jewish community in the last two decades than Irving (Yitz) Greenberg.' Rabbi Greenberg has published numerous articles and monographs on Jewish thought and religion, including The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays (1988), a philosophy of Judaism based on an analysis of the Sabbath and holidays and Living in the Image of God: Jewish Teachings to Perfect the World, (1998). From 1974 through 1997, he served as founding President of CLAL - The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a pioneering institution in the development of adult and leadership education in the Jewish community and the leading organization in intra-Jewish dialogue and the work of Jewish unity. Before CLAL was founded, he served as Rabbi of the Riverdale Jewish Center, as Associate Professor of History at Yeshiva University, and as founder, chairman and Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies of City College of the City University of New York.