PJ Library Founder Honored for Philanthropy
Jewish philanthropist Harold Grinspoon, a real estate entrepreneur and founder of the PJ Library program, was honored May 29 at the by the Council of Jewish Émigré Community Organizations for his commitment to the Russian-speaking Jewish community. The event, entitled “Building the Future,” marked COJECO’s 10th anniversary and took place at The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Grinspoon, 82, founded the Harold Grinspoon Foundation in 1993 to promote Jewish life among young people, adults and families in western Massachusetts, North America and Israel. The Institute for Jewish Philanthropy, a program of that foundation, has catalyzed 85 Jewish overnight camps to raise more than $70 million dollars with matching grants and consultation.
Grinspoon and his wife, Diane Troderman, are the creators of a micro-finance program for women in Russia. They have also been active philanthropists in the Russian Jewish community through organizations such as Project Kesher, the Jewish Community Development Fund, Hillel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). It is for this work that Grinspoon was presented with the COJECO award.
Click here to read the Forward’s article about PJ Library, Grinspoon’s program to send free Jewish children’s books close to 100,000 children each month.
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