Joel Lurie Grishaver

Joel Lurie Grishaver is the son of two active lay leaders in the Reform movement. The first dramatic event in his Jewish education happened at Camp Alpine on Cape Cod, when he was two or three years old. His parents were serving as volunteer youth advisors to the New England Federation of Temple Youth summer conclave. Hank Skirball, then “one of the kids,” drove into town to borrow a sefer Torah and came back with it wrapped in a blanket. Joel saw Hank, asked questions, and then wound up on the blanket, on the lawn, examining that Torah.

Joel’s formal Jewish education at Temple Sinai in Brookline, Massachusetts, went less smoothly. Nevertheless, the story ended happily with his active involvement in a youth group, a job working in the religious school office, attendance at Hebrew high school, college credits earned towards a certificate at the Academy for Jewish Studies, and a year in Israel at the Institute for Jewish Youth Leaders from the Diaspora. Joel earned degrees from Boston University and the University of Chicago and did significant course work (but did not complete degrees) at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and the University of Southern California. Throughout his education Joel worked as a teacher in supplementary schools and day schools, at the Los Angeles Hebrew High School, and as a long-time staff member at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute and other Jewish camps. During this time, Joel also began a career as a creator of Jewish educational materials, starting with the “underground” textbook, the original and now well-known, Shema Is for Real. Joel was also a founding member of the Board of the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education.

In 1981 Joel and two partners, Alan Rowe and Jane Golub, created Torah Aura Productions. Since then he has written, edited, and designed more than 100 pieces of curriculum, participated in major collaborations with other authors, such as Victoria Kelman and Ron Wolfson, and created his own body of published work, which includes 40 Things You Can Do To Save The Jewish People. Learn Torah With, the first weekly Torah fax, epitomizes Joel’s work – conceived by his partner Alan Rowe, conceptualized in dialogue with Joel, Alan, and Jane Golub, and actualized by a whole team. Joel often creates through collaboration and always with a commitment to the polyphony of Torah.

Joel is a consultant to the Whizin Institute for Jewish Life. He co-edits four electronic weekly publications and maintains an electronic dialogue with students all over the world. He is still trying to share the wonder of that first look at a Torah on a blanket on Cape Cod.