Harold Grinspoon
Image by Courtesy of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation
Philanthropist Harold Grinspoon is living proof of the Talmud’s dictum that one’s 80s are a time for renewed vigor. In May 2012, shortly before his 83rd birthday, he was in New Jersey to hand deliver his PJ Library’s three-millionth Jewish-themed children’s book. The program, founded in 2005 and funded jointly by Grinspoon and local communities, sends age-specific books and CDs for free each month to 100,000 Jewish kids ranging in age from 6 months to 8 years.
Like the larger Taglit-Birthright Israel, it’s meant to show Jews a caring side to their community. There’s little follow-up research — understandably, since the oldest “graduates” are barely 15 — but an internal survey and anecdotal information suggest it spurs families’ Jewish interest.
PJ Library is part of Grinspoon’s outside-the-box approach to Jewish education. He was a pioneer in expanding and upgrading Jewish summer camping. He’s a major backer of Jewish day schools, both at home in western Massachusetts and nationally as a co-founder of the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education.
PJ Library keeps growing, distributing Hebrew-language children’s books in Israel in 2009 and to Israeli-American families in 2011. And in August 2012 Grinspoon launched Voices & Visions, which will produce and give away decorative posters, each featuring a classic Jewish ethical maxim illustrated by a noted contemporary Jewish artist. In addition to Jewish philanthropy, he supports youth programs in Cambodia and in Massachusetts. Values guide him professionally too; he built his nine-figure fortune developing and managing middle-income rental apartment communities nationwide. What drives him? Growing up outside Boston in the 1930s, Grinspoon told a Springfield newspaper, he suffered from anti-Semitism and dyslexia-based reading difficulties. Now he’s fighting back against both.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
