GREENSTONE, JULIUS HILLEL

GREENSTONE, JULIUS HILLEL (1873–1955), U.S. educator and author. Greenstone was born in Mariampol, Lithuania, and immigrated to the United States in 1894. He studied at the City College of New York and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained in 1900. In 1905 he joined the faculty of Gratz College, where he taught Jewish education and religion. He was principal of the college from 1933 to 1948. From 1902 on he maintained a modest Jewish bookshop in his home, toward which rabbis and everyone else interested in Jewish education gravitated to obtain books as well as advice and guidance. Greenstone was among the first American Jews to produce books of popular Jewish scholarship in English. His The Religion of Israel (1902) was later rewritten and expanded into The Jewish Religion (1920). The Messiah Idea in Jewish History (1906) was the first work in English to examine historically the messianic idea in Jewish literature. His commentaries on the biblical books Numbers and Proverbs appeared in the series Holy Scriptures with Commentary, published by the Jewish Publication Society (1939). He contributed articles to the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901). For some twenty years he contributed a popular though scholarly column to the Philadelphia weekly Jewish Exponent. Some of these essays were collected and republished in Jewish Feasts and Fasts (1945). (Shulamith Catane) GREENWALD (Grunwald), JEKUTHIEL JUDAH GREENWALD (Grunwald), JEKUTHIEL JUDAH (Yekusiel Yehudah; Leopold; 1889–1955), U.S. rabbi and scholar. Greenwald, born in Hungary, studied in yeshivot in that country and in Frankfurt on the Main under nehemiah nobel . In 1924 he settled in the United States, where he was the rabbi of Orthodox congregations in New York and of Congregation Beth Jacob in Columbus, Ohio, where he served for the last three decades of his life. Neither a great orator nor skilled pastor, Greenwald was a prolific writer and regarded as an authority on Jewish law and history. He wrote numerous monographs and articles in Hungarian, Yiddish, and Hebrew, was especially interested in rabbinic authorities and Jewish communities of Hungary, on which he wrote Ha-Yehudim be-Ungarya (1913) and Toyznt Yor Idish Lebn in Ungarn (1945). His work Le-Toledot ha-Reformaẓyon ha-Datit be-Germanyah uve-Ungarya (1948) is a history of the Reform movement in Germany and Hungary (this work contains a bibliography of Greenwald's work up to 1948 and an evaluation by C. Bloch, 1–28, second pagination). He also wrote works on the history of the Sanhedrin and biographies of leading rabbis, such as Joseph Caro and Moses Sofer. In the latter category are Beit Yehonatan (1908) about jonathan eybeschuetz , and Toledot Mishpaḥat Rosenthal (1920) about the Rosenthal family, which included several rabbis. Greenwald compiled an important manual of traditional laws and rites of mourning, Kol-Bo Avelut (3 vols., 1947–52). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: N. Katzburg, in: Sinai, 37 (1955), 277–81; 40 (1957), 313–4; Kressel, Leksikon, 1 (1965), 511–2; EẒD, 1 (1958), 589–96. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: M.L. Raphael, Jews and Judaism in a Midwestern Jewish Community: Columbus, Ohio 1840–1953 (1979). M.D. Sherman, Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1996). (Eisig Silberschlag / Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)