Mark S. Golub

Mark S. Golub (born May 10, 1945) is an American rabbi, media entrepreneur, personality and educator. He created the first Russian language television channel produced in America, RTN (The Russian Television Network of America) and the first "PBS-Style" Jewish Television Channel, Shalom TV. Golub is the rabbi of two small congregations in Connecticut, Chavurah Aytz Chayim (Stamford, CT) and Chavurah Deevray Torah (Greenwich, CT), but is most well known as the host of L'Chayim, an interview talk show he created in 1979 in which he discusses "issues of importance to the Jewish community" with prominent Jewish figures.

Early life

Golub was born in New York City to Jewish parents Dr. Leo J. Golub, a dentist (Columbia Dental School) and Rebecca Newman Golub, (Columbia Law School). He has one younger brother, David Golub, a prominent attorney in Stamford, CT.

The family moved from New York to Connecticut when Dr. Golub joined the United States Public Health Service in 1952 and was stationed at the Groton, Connecticut Submarine Base.

When Dr. Golub was transferred to the Federal Prison in Danbury, Connecticut, the family resided in Danbury where Golub attended elementary school and junior high. When his father completed his service, he opened the first dental practice in Trumbull, Connecticut which is where Golub completed middle school and attended high school.

After high school, Golub attended Columbia College where he was president of the Jewish organization on campus, Seixas Menorah, and served as general manager of the campus radio station, WKCR-FM & AM. At WKCR, he produced and hosted the longest running interview program in the college station's history, "Approaches To Religious Concepts," in which Protestant, Catholic and Jewish leaders engaged in discussion.

In cooperation with Planned Parenthood of NYC, Golub also produced and hosted the first sex-education series to be broadcast on New York Radio, "The Biology Of Love," a series subsequently used for training by the New York City Board of Education.

Career

Rabbi

Golub explains that he is an "eclectic" Jew, favoring Midrashic or Rabbinic approaches to the Tradition over labeling himself "Reform" or "Reconstructionist." Since 1979 he has been the rabbi of Chavurah Aytz Chayim (Stamford, CT) and Chavurah Deevray Torah (Greenwich, CT). Golub credits the various streams of Judaism which characterized his family's Jewish experience for this eclectic embrace of Jewish life.

His maternal grandfather, Ben Newman, was an Orthodox rabbi with smichah from the Slobodka Yeshiva of Lithuania. His paternal grandfather, Dr. Jacob S. Golub, was a pioneer in American Jewish education and his paternal grandmother, Rose W. Golub, wrote "Down Holiday Lane" with a comprehensive teacher's companion. Jacob Golub was also a colleague of Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan, helping Dr. Kaplan found the Reconstructionist Movement, its home synagogue in New York (Society For The Advancement of Judaism-SAJ). Jacob Golub was also an original contributing editor of "The Reconstructionist" magazine.

Golub's family was mainstream Conservative (Congregation Rodef Shalom in Bridgeport, Ct) and his parents helped found the first Conservative Synagogue of Trumbull, Connecticut where Golub helped his father lead services as chazan when the student rabbi from JTS was not there. And when he graduated Columbia College (BA '67), Golub chose to study for the rabbinate at the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City (BHL, DHL, Rabbinic Ordination '72). As a result, Golub has had the unique opportunity to experience and appreciate the strengths of all four major movements of American Jewish life—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist.

During his rabbinic studies at HUC-JIR, Golub was invited by his mentor, Dr. Eugene B. Borowitz, to join him in the creation of "Sh'ma Magazine: A journal of Jewish responsibility," which was one of the first publications to provide a forum in which Jews from every sector of the Jewish community could engage in written dialogue on the Jewish and secular issues of the day. Golub became Sh'ma's founding assistant editor.

After his ordination in 1972, Golub was invited by R. Peter Straus, the president of WMCA Radio in New York City, to become the telephone-talk station's Editorial Director and Director of Public Affairs. In addition to writing WMCA's editorials and writing WMCA's FCC License Renewal Applications, Golub worked with the station's pioneering ombudsman organization, "Call For Action," also was the substitute host for talk-show legends Barry Gray and Barry Farber, and hosted his own weekly talk-show.

Also in 1972, Golub became the founding rabbi of a chavurah in Stamford, CT, called Chavurat Aytz Chayim, with an emphasis on adult study and family participation. Reflecting Golub's eclectic approach to Judaism, the chavurah has a traditional feel with a liberal egalitarian style.^[1] In 1973, a similar group of families in neighboring Greenwich, Connecticut, Chavurat Deevray Torah, asked Golub to become their founding rabbi on alternating weekends. The two congregations, which have merged over time for most activities, are among the longest, continually running chavurot in the country.^[2]

Golub's rabbinic focus of study has always been on the genius of traditional rabbinic midrash which elucidates the meaning and applications of Torah. While profoundly committed to the rabbinic tradition, Rabbi Golub emphasizes the extent to which the rabbinic tradition rejected all forms of literal, fundamentalist understandings of Judaism and rejected the notion of supernatural miracles. Stressing the RAMBAM's teaching that the Torah is poetic metaphor, Golub centers his Jewish theology on the midrashic character of Nachshon, whom the rabbis credit for being the Jew to plunge into the Red Sea causing the sea to split. Golub's teaching centers on the notion that a Jew is a member of a "family," the Jewish People; and that Torah is best understood as the Jewish People's unique embrace of life in a response to their sense of the Divine in the universe.^[3]

Media

In 1979, Golub merged his two professional interests, Judaism and broadcasting, to create the 501c3 organization, Jewish Education in Media, Inc (JEM). JEM's first production was a weekly radio-magazine Golub produced and hosted called "L'Chayim," which premiered on the first Sunday of February 1979 and which since then has never missed a Sunday. “Highlighting the people, issues and events of importance to the Jewish community," L'Chayim did on radio what Sh'ma magazine had done in print; it created a forum for dialogue among Jews from every sector of the Jewish community. The program premiered on WMCA Radio, moved to WOR Radio, and in 1990 premiered on television as well. L'Chayim is currently seen weeknights as the flagship program of Shalom TV.

In 1991, after Chavurot Aytz Chayim sponsored Jewish families from the former Soviet Union immigrating to America during Operation Exodus, Golub teamed up with immigrant Michael Pravin, to create the first Russian-language television channel in the United States to serve the needs of thousands of Jews from the FSU who could not speak English. Calling it The Russian Television Network of America, RTN premiered as a channel on Cablevision in October 1992.^[4] RTN was enthusiastically received by the Russian-speaking communities of Brooklyn and the Bronx, and soon was soon a topic of conversation in Russian communities across the country. Golub speaks almost no Russian but he developed a presence on the channel as the president and a friend to all, and over time he established a devoted following and is now beloved among the Russian Jewish community, especially in Brighton Beach and other Russian-populated parts of Brooklyn and the surrounding areas. Golub has received multiple honors for his work as the creator of RTN.

Golub and Pravin ran RTN out of Stamford, Connecticut until they sold their company to a competitor in 1997. When in 2000, the purchasing company filed bankruptcy, Golub and his brother David Golub, an attorney with his own law firm in Stamford, CT and Mark's partner in his business and Broadway endeavors, purchased the Russian assets from the New Jersey Bankruptcy Court. He has remained the President as well as the face of RTN.

In 2005, Bradford Hammer and David Brugnone invited Mark to fulfill his lifelong dream of creating the first Jewish television network in America by becoming the president and CEO of Shalom TV.^[5] In 2008, Shalom TV premiered nationally on the nation's largest cable system, Comcast, as the first Jewish network ever to be offered by a television provider to its customer base. By 2010, Shalom TV was a free VOD service on virtually every American terrestrial television provider and was available in more than 40 million American homes.^[6][7][8] In 2011, Golub premiered the Shalom TV Channel, a 24/7 "linear" channel with PBS-style Jewish programming (news and public affairs, education, daily children's programming, movies, cultural and entertainment programming).^[9]

Golub is dedicated to being "the host" of Shalom TV, being seen in several of the channel's signature series including L'Chayim, Jewish 101, From the Aleph Bet, In the News as well as public affairs coverage. All programming on the channel strongly reflects his distinct embrace of the Jewish Tradition and of his position on Israel, as he aims to engage and educate Jews about "all things Jewish", champion pro-Israel causes and fight the BDS movement through his television work.^[10][11]

Golub holds an honorary doctorate from HUC-JIR, and was honored to be one of Newsweek Magazine's top 50 most influential rabbis in America in 2009.^[12][13]

Personal life

Golub was married in 1967 to Zola Stevens. Together they had one daughter, Sarit, now Dr. Sarit Golub Greenberg, a professor of Psychology at Hunter College in New York City where she is also the Director of the Hunter AIDS Research Team (HART).

Golub divorced Stevens and later married Ruth Ellen Gelman in 1979. Ruth had two children from a prior marriage.

Mark and Ruth have two children. Darah Golub, lives in New York City and serves as Associate Director of Shalom TV, and sings in the band Lily & The Parlour Tricks. Ari Golub also lives in New York City and works for Mark43 as a software engineer.

Aside from Jewish interests, he cares about theater. With his brother David, he has produced several Broadway plays including The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (Tony Award), Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike (Tony Award), Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf (Tony Award), Best Man (Tony Nomination), and Glenn Gary Glen Ross with Al Pacino. His most recent production starred Kelli O'Hara in The Bridges of Madison County with an original score by Jason Robert Brown. Golub also enjoys baseball.

References