Yitzchak Ginsburgh

In April 2014, after the confiscation of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshivah complex by the IDF, Gershon Mesika, then head of the Shomron Council, visited Rabbi Ginsburgh in his home in Kfar Chabad together with a group of rabbis headed by the Chief Rabbi of the Shomron Elyakim Levanon. During the visit, Ginsburgh expressed his opposition to causing any harm to IDF soldiers.

In April 2014, Ginsburgh called price-tag acts of vandalism, "unsupervised acts" and stated that there is no need to use hands-on tactics. Instead, he suggested achieving goals by power of word alone, speaking out firmly but calmly to transmit the message.

In May 2014, the Shin Bet claimed that the price-tag acts were the handiwork of about 100 individuals who were inspired by Ginsburgh's ideas. Tzvi Sukkot, self-identified as a prior "hill top youth", says that it was Rabbi Ginsburgh who convinced him to stop his violent activities against Arabs and find more legitimate ways to express his frustration. "Ginsburgh spoke out very clearly against violence. He said that we should act... within the framework of the law."

Since December 2012, Ginsburgh has been a lead speaker at an annual gala evening commemorating the Chassidic festival 19 Kislev. The event includes performance of many of his musical compositions. In 2015, the event was held at Culture Palace in Tel Aviv, with an audience of approximately 3000 people.

In 2010, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called Ginsburgh "a well known radical on his views on Israel Arab public." A former head of the Shin Bet, Carmi Gillon, told The Forward in 2016 that, in his view, "[Ginsburgh's] words count as incitement and he should have faced charges a long time ago."

In his 2007 book Kabbalah and Meditation for the Nations Ginsburgh writes, "Ours is the first generation in modern times to understand the truly universal human condition and to seek to bring all peoples of the earth together in peace and harmony."

In 2003, Ginsburgh was indicted on charges of encouraging racism against Arabs in his booklet "Tsav Hasha'a – Tipul Shoresh" (טִיפּוּל שׁוֹרֶשׁ, "Order of the Day – Root Treatment"). The charges were dropped after he issued a clarification letter.

On March 10 1996, Ginsburgh was arrested for administrative detention for 60 days for his pronouncements that the state should take action against Arabs in response to the recent wave of terror attacks. An article in the Jewish Week stated that the detention was "an attempt to stifle Rabbi Ginsburgh's teaching and lectures to his followers. After an appeal against the detention, on March 28 Ginsburgh was released without charge. The judge declared that the accusations were baseless and that Ginsburgh was not a danger to the public. Prior to the court ruling, the government had circulated to all its embassies abroad a statement that Ginsburgh had "a long record of incitement to violence, inflammatory rhetoric, and has developed a theology of revenge whose tenets he spreads wherever he can." Following his release, Ginsburgh wrote, "The court recognized that my arrest entailed not only a violation of freedom of speech, but an attack against teaching Torah in general and Chassidic philosophy in particular."

In 1994, Ginsburgh received widespread criticism for his article "Baruch Hagever" in which he defended Baruch Goldstein who had massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. Rabbi Ginsburgh wrote that it is possible to view Baruch Goldstein's act as either following or defying five Halachic principles, namely "sanctification of God's name", "saving life" (referring to allegations that Goldstein had received prior warning from the IDF regarding a planned Arab massacre of Jews), "revenge", "eradication of the seed of Amalek" and "war". The conclusion to the article is that Goldstein's act emanated from the super-rational powers of his soul, therefore one cannot rely on logical reasoning to determine whether the act was worthy or condemnable.

Ginsburgh's teachings form a methodical ideology that covers three major areas: the individual, society and the Jewish national state. He has also developed a social and economical renewal strategy based on Torah teachings, called "The Dynamic Corporation." One of his seminars was recognized by the Israeli Ministry of Education as a supplementary teachers' training course. His books are published by the not-for-profit Gal Einai Institute, founded by Ginsburgh in 1991. The Hebrew name Gal Einai is taken from Psalms 119:18, meaning "Open my eyes."

In 1989, following the arrest of seven of his students after the shooting of an Arab girl during a settler rampage through the Palestinian West Bank village of Kifl Haris (in response to rock-throwing by the Arab villagers), Ginsburgh reportedly "offered biblical justification for the view that the spilling of non-Jewish blood was a lesser offense than the spilling of Jewish blood." He stated that threatening to kill Jews comes under the ruling, 'He who comes to kill you, you should kill him first.' The Ashkenazi chief rabbi Avraham Shapira criticized Ginsburgh's views.

Ginsburgh served as the Rosh Yeshivah of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshivah (then located at Joseph's Tomb) from 1987 until the retreat of the IDF from the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus during the Al-Aqsa Intifada (2001). He also served as the head of a Kollel in the Menuchah Rachel Synagogue in Hebron and as the head of a Kollel in the ancient Shalom Al Yisrael Synagogue in Jericho. He currently serves as the president of a number of educational institutes run by his students, including the Torat Chaim elementary school for boys (Jerusalem), the Ya'alat Chen elementary school for girls (Jerusalem), Ma'ale Levonah high school for girls, and the Tom Vada'at Yeshivah in Jerusalem. He is also president of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshivah since its relocation to Yitzhar. In addition, he is the dean of the Torat Hanefesh School of Chassidic Psychology, founded and run by his students.

Ginsburgh founded the Chabad house in the Yamit settlement in Sinai, where he lived during the last few weeks before the settlement's destruction by the Israeli government in 1982.

In 1982, Ginsburgh returned to Kfar Chabad, and was asked by Jerusalem rabbi and philanthropist Yosef Eliyahu Deutch to serve as head of the Shuva Yisra'el Yeshivah on Yo'el Street. Rabbi Ginsburgh gave frequent classes on a wide variety of subjects, from the exoteric to the esoteric parts of the Torah. Many were taped and form a large part of the 15,000 lecture archive of his classes.

In the 1980s, a group of ba'alei teshuvah crystallized around him, some of whom were inspired to found the Bat Ayin settlement in Gush Etzion. Following the death of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, another group of students joined him from the Merkaz Harav yeshivah. They sought to fill the gap left by their rabbi's death by heading for new spiritual horizons in Kabbalah and Chassidut. They founded the original Od Yosef Chai yeshivah at Joseph's Tomb, and sought a significant spiritual leader in these spiritual fields to serve as their head. Ginsburgh later conceded to their request to join them as their rosh yeshivah.

In 1973, at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, under instruction from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Ginsburgh visited the warfront to transmit the Rebbe's blessing to officer Ariel Sharon, who later became 11th Prime Minister of Israel. The next morning, after a successful battle, Ginsburgh presented Sharon with a lulav and etrog.

In 1971, following an instruction from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he moved with his wife and growing family to Kfar Chabad.

In the summer of 1967, he went to the Torat Emet Chabad yeshivah in Jerusalem, where he studied the Chabad school of Chassidus in depth. That year he visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and remained in Crown Heights, Brooklyn for several months. There, he was accepted for private audience with the Rebbe, whose guidance became his leading influence.

In 1965, he returned to Israel and studied at the Yeshivah of Kamenitz in Jerusalem. He spent 1966 through 1967 at the Slonim shul in Tiberias. After the Six-Day War, Ginsburgh went to Jerusalem and was one of the first to move into the old Jewish quarter. There, together with his future father-in-law, Rabbi Moshe Zvi Segal, he began renovating the ruins, sleeping at night in the Tzemach Tzedek synagogue.

Yitzchak Feivish Ginsburgh (Hebrew: יצחק פייוויש גינזבורג; born 14 November 1944) sometimes referred to as "the Malakh" (lit. 'the angel') is an American-born Israeli rabbi affiliated with the Chabad movement. In 1996 he was regarded as one of Chabad's leading authorities on Jewish mysticism. He is the leader of the Derech Chaim Movement and founder of the Gal Einai Institute, which publishes his written works. His students include Charedim, religious Zionists, and Chabad Chassidim, as well as ba'alei teshuvah. He is currently the president of a number of educational institutions, including the Od Yosef Chai yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar in the West Bank. Ginsburgh has lectured in various countries, and throughout Israel. His teachings cover subjects including science, psychology, marital harmony and monarchy in Israel. He has published over 100 books in Hebrew and English, most of which are edited by his students.

Ginsburgh was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1944, the only child of Shimshon Ya'akov and Bryna Malka (nee Dunie) Ginsburgh. He was considered a child prodigy in music and mathematics. Both of his grandfathers were Chabad chassidim. His parents had a great affinity to their Jewish roots and a love of the Land of Israel. His father immigrated to Israel as a young man, where he was one of the founders of the City of Ra'anana, but returned to the USA to complete his higher education. His return to Israel was delayed when the Second World War broke out and he remained in the USA, where he married Ginsburgh's mother. His father held a PhD in education and served as principal of a number of Jewish schools. The family later moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Ginsburgh grew up until the age of 14, when his parents spent a year in Israel while his father wrote his doctorate on teaching the Hebrew language.