Blu Greenberg

Blu Greenberg (; born January 21, 1936, Seattle) is an American Orthodox Jewish writer specializing in modern Judaism and women's issues. Her most noted books are On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition, and Black Bread: Poems, After the Holocaust (1994). Greenberg has worked to bridge Orthodox Judaism and feminism.

Early life and education Bluma Genauer was born in Seattle to Rabbi Samuel and Sylvia Genauer (nee Genser). Samuel Genauer was born in Czernovitz, Austro-Hungary, and had immigrated to the U.S. at age two. Sylvia Genser was born on the Lower East Side. The couple moved to Seattle following Samuel's rabbinical ordination in 1933. Bluma was the second of three daughters; her older sister, Judy, was born in 1934, and her younger sister, Rena, was born in 1938. Blu grew up in a traditional and loving Orthodox Jewish household. Her father was invested in her and her sister's Jewish studies, and she received "a fine Jewish education, the best a girl could have," learning everything except Talmud studies, as per community tradition.

She has a B.A. in political science from Brooklyn College (1957), a B.A. in religious education from Yeshiva University's Teacher's Institute (1958), an MA in clinical psychology from the City University of New York (1967), and an MS in Jewish history from Yeshiva University's Bernard Revel Graduate School.

Career and activism After earning her master's degree, she taught at the College of Mount St. Vincent beginning in 1969. She took a sabbatical during the 1974-1975 school year, which she spent as a lecturer at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem. She left Mount St. Vincent after 1976. The 1970s also marked the start of Greenberg's advocacy for agunot. The quote, which argues that halakha is not objective, but interpreted based on social norms and needs, became a source of criticism from its first appearance.

In the 2010s, Greenberg helped develop the International Beit Din (IBD), a United States-based beth din (religious court) which aims to find halakhic solutions to the problems of agunot. As of 2021, the IBD had helped more than 180 women to secure a divorce.

Personal life Blu married Irving Greenberg in 1957. Greenberg is also a well-known author and professor. The couple had five children, all born in the 1960s.

Born Bluma, she later legally changed her first name to Blu.

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