This fall marks three milestones in the life of Ross Pinsky, a professor of mathematics at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology: He is celebrating his 70th birthday, 43rd wedding anniversary, and 42nd year at the Technion.
Pinsky arrived in 1984 with his wife, Jeanette, and their 13-month-old son after he’d accepted a one-year postdoc position at the Technion. This led to a rewarding career for which he won a Yanai Prize for Excellence in Academic Education in 2016.
For the past 11 years, he has been the academic adviser in a special Technion program for exceptionally bright and motivated haredi students who have only a fifth-grade education in secular studies.
“They do a five-month preparatory course in the basics, and then a nine-month preparatory program that covers high school physics, mathematics, and English language. Those who obtain high grades are accepted to the regular Technion undergraduate program in engineering or science,” Pinsky said.
“I enjoy teaching, but mainly I like doing research,” he said. “When you discover some new phenomenon – what we call a ‘result’ in math – and finally understand how to prove it and everything falls into place like a perfect puzzle, you see how mathematics connects with the beauty of the world. Everything has an order, and you just have to discover it.”
Pinsky was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Washington, DC. He attended public schools and went to a Reform Hebrew school twice a week. His parents were strong supporters of Israel (“I still recall how worried my mother was during the Six Day War”), and his father participated in protests at the Soviet Embassy on behalf of Russian Jewry.
“We have a picture of my father demonstrating in front of the French embassy in Washington in 1981 with a placard condemning France’s release of Abu Daoud, one of the masterminds of the Munich massacre [at the 1972 Olympic Games]. Israel and West Germany had requested Daoud’s extradition, but France released him and he was flown to Algeria.”
France, at it again
At the University of Pennsylvania, most of Pinsky’s friends were Jewish, but he didn’t get involved in Jewish activities on campus. “In the fall of 1978, shortly after arriving in New York for grad school at New York University, I saw a mini-series on TV titled Holocaust. That really affected me and led me to take more interest in Israel, and before too long to think about making aliyah one day,” he said.
“This led me to start learning Hebrew seriously, and then I thought I ought to know more about the religious underpinnings of Judaism, of which I was quite ignorant. After all, if not for those underpinnings, there would be no Israel and no Judaism. I started attending the Beginners’ Minyan at Lincoln Square Synagogue, run by the very approachable Rabbi Efraim Buchwald.”
In the spring of 1980, Pinsky saw an ad in the NYU student newspaper for an aliyah meeting at the Jewish National Fund headquarters sponsored by a group called Telem. This is where he met his wife-to-be, Jeanette Lipschik.
Girl with long black hair
“In one of the workshop rooms, I took notice of a striking girl with long black hair wearing a long maroon skirt,” he said, describing the beginnings of their courtship. “When the workshop ended, we had several choices for the next one, and I decided to choose whatever that girl was going to choose. So, I followed her into another room and took a seat next to her.
“Before long, we were talking, and at the next break I went over to the refreshment table and brought her back some Stella D’Oro Swiss Fudge cookies,” he recounted. “When the afternoon was over, we took the Lexington Avenue subway downtown. I got off in the East Village, and she continued on to Brooklyn. I asked for her number.”
Pinsky obtained his Ph.D in mathematics at NYU in 1982 and moved to Los Angeles for a postdoc at The Unoversity of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He returned to New York for a long weekend in November to get married; the officiant was Lincoln Square’s Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who would help establish the Gush Etzion town of Efrat in 1983.
When the Pinskys made aliyah in 1984, they were not yet fluent in Hebrew. Like most new immigrants, they made some memorable bloopers.
Shortly after their arrival, they were invited to a Technion colleague’s house one night and hired a babysitter.
“We got lost on the way home. I wanted to explain to the babysitter why we were late, and I knew that "le’abed" means ‘to lose,’ so I said, 'Slicha sh’anahnu icharnu [sorry we’re late], aval hitabadnu ba’derech' – which I thought meant 'but we got lost on the way.’" That gave the sitter a good laugh because it turns out what they said was: “Sorry we’re late, but we committed suicide on the way!”
Ahuza, Haifa
The couple raised their four children in the Ahuza neighborhood of Haifa and are blessed with 11 grandchildren so far. They still live in Ahuza, where Pinsky stays in shape by running, swimming, or biking four or five times a week.
When their children were growing up, Ross and Jeanette often opened their home on Shabbat to foreign high school students in the Na’aleh program. Additionally, the Pinskys have long served as a support/host family for soldiers in the IDF’s Nativ conversion program.
“Another volunteer project we have been involved in is sponsored by Tzohar, the organization of Religious Zionist rabbis that offers a variety of services to non-religious Israelis in a more accommodating and sensitive way than what is provided by the government’s rabbinate,” he said.
“Every woman in Israel who wants to marry officially must have a meeting with a woman affiliated with the rabbinate to learn the laws of family purity: taharat hamishpacha. Tzohar offers an alternative program where Jeanette and I together meet with the bride and the groom,” Pinsky said. “We get acquainted, learn together a section from the Torah on the creation of man, and give them pointers on leading a life together. At the end, I exit, and Jeanette outlines to them the basic laws of family purity.”
Though he moved far from his parents and brothers in Washington – the Pinsky family recently rendezvoused in France to celebrate his mother’s 100th birthday – he said he is very happy that he made aliyah
“I feel that life has more meaning in Israel. You may be a small cog, but you’re a larger small cog here than in the States, and you have more influence,” he said. “Society needs your contributions more."