Irving Greenberg

Abstract Irving Greenberg was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. His father was the rabbi of the Chevra Shas (a talmudic study group) in Boro Park. As a child, he received an Orthodox day school education that was enriched by active involvement in the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hadati (known today as Bnai Akiva). He continued his Jewish education at the Beth Joseph Rabbinical Seminary and his secular education at Brooklyn College. In 1953, he received his B.A. in history from Brooklyn College and continued on to a doctoral program in intellectual history at Harvard. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1960. Eschewing an academic career, he became a communal rabbi in Boston where he came under the influence of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. This encounter caused a change of career plans, and Greenberg began to teach Jewish history at Yeshiva University in New York City. In 1961-1962, he was a Fulbright scholar at Tel Aviv University and while in Israel turned to deep reading about both the Holocaust and the State of lsrael. Upon his return to the United States, he became involved in Holocaust education which, in turn, led him to leave Yeshiva University in 1965 in order to accept a rabbinical position in Riverdale, New York. After seven years in this post, he once again entered academic life, accepting the chairmanship of the Department of Jewish Studies at the City University of New York. In 1979 he made another turn, leaving the university to become the director of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, an organization that aimed to bring intense, advanced, Jewish education to the wider Jewish community. During the 1970s, Greenberg also teamed with Elie Wiesel and others to create the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and from 2000 to 2002 he served as chairman of the museum’s council.