Mikhail Grinberg

Mikhail Grinberg
Михаил Львович Гринберг
Grinberg in 2008
Born	(1951-09-02) September 2, 1951 Troitsk, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Soviet Union
Citizenship	Israeli
Education	Moscow Correspondence Pedagogical Institute
Occupation(s)	Publisher, Jewish community public figure, historian
Known for	Jewish publishing, cultural preservation
Spouse	Berta Grinberg
Children	2

Mikhail Lvovich Grinberg (Russian: Михаил Львович Гринберг; born 2 September 1951) is an Israeli publisher, Jewish community public figure, and historian.

He was born into a traditional Jewish family in the Soviet Union. Due to his observance of Jewish traditions, he was expelled from the Komsomol and later from university, but eventually completed his degree in history. He worked as a teacher and served in the Soviet army. In 1988, he immigrated to Israel and has since lived in Efrat, Judea (West Bank) →.

Since the late 1970s, Grinberg has been actively involved in reviving Jewish life in the USSR, including the restoration of a synagogue and communal life in the settlement of Malakhovka. At the request of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he organized the reburial of Rabbi Mordehai Dubin and restored the graves of several prominent rabbis. In 1990, he participated in the religious revival of the Jewish community in Lviv →.

Grinberg earned a candidate degree in history (equivalent to a PhD) and published a number of scholarly works, including a study of Bishop Andrei (Ukhtomsky). He also taught Jewish history in underground study groups, and later in Israel, the United States, and Canada. In 1992, he became the first rector of the Jewish University in Moscow and launched the first academic journal on Jewish studies in the Russian language →.

In 1990, Grinberg founded the publishing house Gesharim / Bridging Cultures, which became one of the leading centers of Russian-language Jewish studies in Israel and the post-Soviet space. Under his leadership, more than 600 books have been published. He later launched a new publishing project titled the "Mikhail Grinberg Library" →.

Grinberg was born into a Jewish family that observed core religious traditions. His father was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, serving as a communications company commander.^[1] From his school years, Grinberg developed a passion for reading.^[2]

Due to his religious convictions, Grinberg was expelled from the Komsomol in 1970. In 1973, four months before completing his degree, he was also expelled from the Ryazan Pedagogical Institute, where he studied at the Faculty of History, following an official report about his traditional Jewish wedding (chuppah). He then worked as a teacher at an evening school in the city of Lytkarino near Moscow. A year and a half later, he enrolled at the Moscow Correspondence Pedagogical Institute, completed his studies, and received his diploma.^[1][3]

After completing his studies, Grinberg was drafted into the Soviet Armed Forces, where he served his compulsory military term in the missile troops. During his service, he received 19 commendations, two of which were awarded personally by Defense Minister Andrei Grechko—one for preparing missiles for a test range, and the other for preparing for a parade on Red Square.^[1]

In 1988, Grinberg made aliyah to Israel.^[1][3] He resides in the settlement of Efrat in Judea (West Bank).^[4]

Since the late 1970s, Grinberg became actively involved in the life of the Jewish community in the settlement of Malakhovka near Moscow. In order to provide kosher food, he became a shochet.^[1][3] The head of the Chabad community in Moscow, Rebbe Geiche, tasked Grinberg with reviving the nearly abandoned synagogue in Malakhovka. Grinberg organized a major renovation of the building, installed new furnishings, and restored Jewish religious life, including regular prayers, holiday celebrations, and classes.^[1][5]

In 1986, following a personal directive from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Grinberg organized the transfer of the remains of Mordehai Dubin — a rabbi and Hasid of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe — from a cemetery in Tula that was slated for demolition, to the Jewish cemetery in Malakhovka. After the successful reburial of Dubin’s remains, Grinberg was entrusted with the restoration of graves of prominent tzaddiks (righteous persons). He surveyed over 25 cemeteries and discovered several forgotten burial sites, including those of rabbis Pinchas of Koretz, Aharon of Karlin, and others. He arranged for the repair and restoration of the graves of a number of revered rabbis, including Baal Shem Tov, Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev, and the founders of the Ruzhin, Belz, and Lubavitch Hasidic dynasties. In 1987–1988, Grinberg accompanied the first groups of pilgrims from Israel and the United States visiting these restored sacred sites.^[1]

In 1990, at the request of the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Immanuel Jakobovits, one of the Jewish communities in London took patronage over the Jewish community of Lviv. Mikhail Grinberg was sent there and took part in restoring Jewish religious and cultural life.^[1]

Grinberg defended a candidate dissertation on the history of socio-political movements in Russian Orthodoxy and the Old Believers. He published a number of studies in academic collections of the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, in the newspaper Literaturnaya Rossiya, in the journal Moskva, and in the Almanac of the Bibliophile. His works were also published in Old Believer periodicals and in the official journal of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.^[1]

In 1981, Grinberg completed a historical study that resulted in the book "Bishop Andrei, Prince Ukhtomsky", dedicated to the Russian Orthodox thinker and figure of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The book circulated as samizdat^[6] and gained popularity, attracting interest in church circles. A decade later, in 1991, the publishing house Terra released the work in a print run of 50,000 copies, and the book quickly sold out, generating significant public response.^[1][7]

At the same time, as part of underground Jewish educational activity, Mikhail Grinberg gave lectures on Jewish history in religious-Zionist study groups that met in private apartments.^[1]

Since the late 1980s, Grinberg has lectured in Israel, the United States, and Canada, speaking about the restoration of Jewish sacred sites, the history of Hasidism, and pilgrimages to places associated with tzaddiks. Using the materials he had collected, he published a bilingual photo book entitled "Graves of Tzaddikim in Russia", showing the condition of the graves before and after restoration.^[1][3] Grinberg also taught a course on Jewish history at the yeshiva Ohr Somayach.^[1]

In 1992, at the suggestion of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Grinberg took part in establishing the Jewish University in Moscow and became its first rector. He launched the publication of the Bulletin of the Moscow Jewish University — at that time, the only academic journal in the Russian language dedicated to Jewish studies. He later stepped down from his position as rector to focus on publishing work.^[1][2]

Shortly after arriving in Israel, Grinberg briefly worked at the publishing house Shamir. He also participated in a number of joint publishing projects with the Vil’tis printing house (formerly known as the “Widow and Brothers Romm Printing House”) and with the publishing house Terra.^[8]

In 1990, Grinberg founded the publishing house Gesharim / Bridging Cultures, operating in both Israel and Russia, which focused on publishing literature in the field of Jewish studies.^[1] The publishing house played a significant role in the development of Jewish publishing in post-Soviet Russia and the Jewish diaspora, becoming an intellectual and educational center aimed at restoring the lost cultural and academic infrastructure of Russian-language Judaica.^[2] From 2002 to 2005, Gesharim published a periodical titled "Jewish Book Peddler", edited by philologist Leonid Katsis, and focused on reviews of Jewish literature. Literary scholar Roman Timenchik contributed a regular column to the publication, titled “The Russian Word in the Land of Israel.” From 2006 to 2011, the project was integrated into the journal Lechaim.^[9]

Literary scholar Velvl Chernin described Gesharim as one of the leading Jewish publishing houses in the post-Soviet space.^[10] Professor Roman Katsman called it the largest Russian-Israeli publishing house specializing in Jewish fiction and popular scholarly literature.^[11] In its first 30 years of operation, Gesharim released over 500 titles on Jewish topics in various genres, with a total circulation of approximately 2 million copies.^[10] By 2021, the number of published titles had reached 600.^[12]

Grinberg later headed a new publishing project titled the Mikhail Grinberg Library.^[7][11]

• Pushkin Medal — awarded for significant contributions to the preservation and development of Russian culture abroad (Russia, 30 September 2012).^[13]
• Certificate of Honour from the Government Commission of the Russian Federation for Compatriots Living Abroad (2008).^[14]
• Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia "Person of the Year" award (2004).^[15]

• Grinberg, Mikhail. Graves of Tzaddikim in Russia. Jerusalem: Shamir, 1989.
• Grinberg, Mikhail. Restoration of Jewish holy sites in Ukraine in 1988 // Vozrozhdenie, Jerusalem, 1990, no. 12, pp. 154–170 (in Russian).
• Grinberg, Mordechai; Grinberg, Mikhail. (2011). Asceticism and Holiness // Wisdom — Righteousness — Holiness in the Slavic and Jewish Cultural Tradition. Moscow: Centre Sefer, Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, pp. 41–54 (in Russian).
• Zelenogorsky, M. L.^[a] (1991). The Life and Works of Archbishop Andrei (Prince Ukhtomsky). Moscow: Terra (in Russian).
• Zelenogorsky, M. L. (2011). The Life and Works of Archbishop Andrei (Prince Ukhtomsky), 2nd expanded ed. Jerusalem–Moscow: Bridging Cultures (in Russian).

• Shabbat Songs (Hebrew: זמירות שבת). Compiled by Mikhail L. Grinberg. 2nd ed., expanded. Jerusalem: Gesharim; St. Petersburg: Rosprint, 1992 (in Russian and Hebrew).
• Ryabushinsky, Vladimir. Old Belief and the Russian Religious Feeling. Compiled and with an introductory essay and commentary by V. V. Nekhotin, V. N. Anisimova, and M. L. Grinberg. Moscow: Bridging Cultures, 2010 (in Russian).