A distinguished communal Rabbi for over 35 years, Rabbi Riskin continues to change the face of modern Orthodox Jewry in Israel and the Diaspora. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Rabbi Riskin graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude from Yeshiva University in 1960, where he majored in Greek, Latin and English literatures. He received his Smicha (rabbinical ordination) from the eminent Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Rabbi Riskin holds a Master’s Degree in Jewish History and was awarded his PhD from New York University’s department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature.
As a young rabbinical graduate, Rabbi Riskin became the founding rabbi of the Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan, internationally renowned for its outreach to the entire Jewish community, as well as for its educational and social action programs. He became a major spokesperson for Modern Orthodoxy by pioneering the first women’s Advanced Talmud Study program (Kollelet) and the first synagogue service conducted for women by women in the early 70’s.
In 1983, Rabbi Riskin left his thriving career in Manhattan and pioneered the city of Efrat in Israel’s West Bank. Beginning as a small settlement, Efrat now numbers over 11,000 people with 28 synagogues, and is a thriving community in the Gush Etzion bloc.
With hard work, determination, vision and love of the Jewish people and the land of Israel Rabbi Riskin founded the Ohr Torah High Schools for young men and women. Over the past two decades it has developed into an important network of high schools, colleges, graduate programs, a yeshiva, programs in Russia and Great Britain, a rabbinical seminary, a women’s college of advanced Torah studies and a school for women advocates. Not content with merely educating students, each year scores of rabbis and teachers are sent to North and South America, England, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Ohr Torah Stone Colleges and Graduate Programs educate over 3,000 students each year from Israel, the U.S., England, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Rabbi Riskin speaks in communities all over world. His innovative and creative ideology of an authentic Halachic Judaism that is inclusive of every Jew and is exquisitely sensitive to universal human concerns has made him an outstanding figure in the modern Orthodox world. He is the author of five books, “Torah Lights, Exodus Defines the Birth of a Nation”, “Women and Jewish Divorce” , “The New Passover Haggadah”, AAround The Family Table@, and ATorah Lights, Genesis Confronts Life, Love and Family”, scores of articles and monographs on Judaism and contemporary issues, as well as a weekly column which is syndicated worldwide. Given Rabbi Riskin’s illustrious career as rabbi and educator, city and institution builder, Rosh Yeshiva and public speaker, author and activist, he has been chronicled in major newspapers, magazines, and on TV and radio. He was described in a New York Times magazine feature article as, “teacher who cares… a charismatic speaker and widely respected Talmudic scholar: Rabbi Riskin sees as his major mission the preparation of a new generation of religious leaders, rooted in Judaism and secular learning, for Israel and the entire Jewish world.”
Rabbi Riskin has been married to Victoria since 1963; they have four married children and thirteen grandchildren all living in Efrat.