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CLAL FacultyRabbi Irving Greenberg, Ph.D, President Emeritus
Rabbi Irving Greenberg is the President of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt
Foundation. JLN’s mission is to create new institutions and initiatives to
enrich the inner life (religious, cultural, institutional) of American
Jewry. Alongside Michael Steinhardt and his son, JJ Greenberg, zichrono
livracha, he played a founders role in the JLN initiated partnerships which
include such major projects as birthright israel which gives the gift of a
ten day educational first trip to Israel to Jews, 18-26 years old,
worldwide, the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) which
offers seed money and expertise to create new day schools, and MAKOR (now
Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y) which reaches out to Jews in
their 20's and 30's through cutting edge music, arts and Jewish educational
programs. Greenberg also served as Chairman of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Council from 2000-2002. He has written extensively on the theory
and practice of pluralism and on the theology of Jewish-Christian relations.
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, Living in the
Image of God: Jewish Teachings to Perfect the World, (1998) and For the Sake
of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter between Judaism and Christianity
(2004).
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.
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