Scholars in Residence
Our group will have the pleasure of being accompanied by our Scholars-in-residence:
Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin and
Rabbi Benjamin Blech.
Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin
Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin was born in Brooklyn on May 28, 1940. He graduated as valedictorian, summa cum laude, from Yeshiva University in 1960, where he had majored in Greek, Latin and English literature, and received his Rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, his teacher and mentor, three years later. His Masters degree is in Jewish history, and in 1982 he was awarded his Ph.D. from New York University's department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature.
Rabbi Riskin served first as lecturer and then as Associate Professor of Bible and Talmud at Yeshiva University from 1963 - 1977, where he taught hundreds of college-age students with no prior Yeshiva background, many of whom have gone on to become lay leaders in the Jewish Community, Jewish educators and rabbis. He is the author of two books, "Women and Jewish Divorce" and "The New Passover Haggadah", as well as scores of seminal articles and monographs on Judaism and contemporary issues. His regular weekly columns on the Biblical portion-of-the-week appear in The Jerusalem Post as well as in some thirty Anglo-Jewish newspapers throughout the world.
As a young rabbinical graduate, Rabbi Riskin became the founding rabbi of the Lincoln Square Synagogue in Lincoln Center, Manhattan, internationally renowned for its outreach to the unaffiliated as well as for its educational and social action programs. Rabbi Riskin shepherded the development of this model synagogue, taking it from the venue of a three-day-a-year High Holiday hotel service to a major Orthodox institution, with a membership of more than 4000 and 1600 adult education participants. Lincoln Square Synagogue became the focal point for a return to Orthodoxy on the part of many young intellectuals and aspiring professionals, and its rabbi became a major spokesperson for Modern Orthodoxy by pioneering the first Advanced Talmud Study Program for women, as well as the first Synagogue service conducted for women by women, in 1971.
In the early 60's, Rabbi Riskin became one of the vocal leaders of the Soviet Jewry movement, serving as the chairman of the Center for Russian Jewry and organizing rallies and demonstrations from where his message was carried all over the world. He visited the Soviet Union in 1970 on a secret mission to establish four underground Houses of Study in Moscow, Leningrad, Riga and Vilna, and was instrumental in bringing out a tape which told the free world of the horrors of the Leningrad Trials and their aftermath.
In 1983, at the peak of his professional career in America, Rabbi Riskin left New York with his family to become the rabbi of the City of Efrat, a burgeoning settlement in Gush Etzion just seven miles south of Jerusalem, which he - together with Moshe Moshkowitz - had been working on establishing since 1976. Efrat now numbers close to 8000 residents, and is considered to be the central city of the Etzion Bloc. The decision was difficult; Rabbi Riskin loved his New York lifestyle and had professional gratification. However, he strongly believed that Israel was the place for Jews, and that especially in the post-Holocaust era, the Jewish future lay in Israel. In light of today's difficult circumstances, Rabbi Riskin's beliefs have only been reinforced.
While still in America, Rabbi Riskin established the Ohr Torah High Schools for young men and women, which has over the years developed into the Ohr Torah Stone network of high schools, colleges, graduate programs, seminaries and rabbinical schools which currently numbers close to 4000 students in Israel, educates hundreds of students from the United States, England, Australia and South Africa each year, and has sent scores of rabbis and teachers to North and South America, England, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Ohr Torah Stone is the practical expression of the Modern Orthodox philosophy about which Rabbi Riskin preaches and writes; the network of institutions is the practical manifestation of his vision, the reality of which has exceeded even his dreams.
Rabbi Benjamin Blech
Rabbi Benjamin Blech, a tenth-generation rabbi, is an internationally
recognized educator, religious leader, author, and lecturer. Associate Professor
of Talmud at Yeshiva University in New York City since 1966 and Rabbi Emeritus
of the Young Israel of Oceanside congregation in Oceanside, New York, he is the
author of "Understanding Judaism" and "If God Is Good, Why Is The World So Bad?"
amongst many other books. Rabbi Blech has appeared frequently on U.S. national
television and has written for a host of national magazines and scholarly
journals. A past president of both the National Council of Young Israel Rabbis,
as well as the International League for the Repatriation of Russian Jewry,
Rabbi Blech has also served as officer for the New York Board of Rabbis as
well as the Rabbinical Council of America. An unusually eloquent and gifted
speaker, as well as a profound contemporary theologian and religious spokesman
who has made a major impact on the many thousands of people he has addressed,
Rabbi Blech was ranked #16 in a listing of the fifty most influential Jews in
America and is a recipient of the American Educator of the Year Award. Born in
Zurich, Rabbi Blech lives in Manhattan with his wife Elaine.