JTA — Most people spend their later years looking back. Harold Grinspoon has spent his reinventing himself.

The businessman became a philanthropist. The philanthropist discovered Jewish children’s books and created PJ Library. In his late 80s, he became a sculptor after a cherry tree fell in his yard.

Now, as he turns 97, Grinspoon is reflecting on the unexpected pivots that have defined both his life and his approach to Jewish giving.

Known for innovative programs like PJ Library, which engages young Jewish families with monthly deliveries of age-appropriate children’s books and music, Grinspoon and his eponymous foundation have focused on programs that, in the spirit of the real estate business that made his fortune, build Jewish habits, institutions and relationships that he hopes will outlast him.

“I was 10 years old in 1939 when the Holocaust began and the horrific news of what was occurring to the Jews in Europe over the ensuing years made a deep impression on me,” he recalled in a recent email interview. “I have spent my life reflecting on the inhumanity of the Holocaust and what small part I could play in helping to rebuild the Jewish community.”

That help is also coming from JCamp 180, a program that now supports over 175 Jewish day and overnight camps by providing strategic and organizational development, and Life and Legacy, which provides training and incentives for institutions to plan for their futures.

To date, with Life and Legacy’s assistance, $350 million has been placed into organizational endowments, and over $2.2 billion has been committed for the future of Jewish communities.

Visitors to the foundation headquarters in Western Massachusetts find a philanthropy that often runs like a think tank, looking for answers to out-of-the-box questions within the Jewish world and the local community. How can art be used to promote Jewish values? What’s the best way to help local farmers? What do the intimate, lay-led congregations known as havurot need to survive and thrive?

Many of these questions are posed by Grinspoon himself.

“That’s always struck me as the essence of who Harold is: curious, fearless, and determined to understand the things he supports from the inside out. He shows up, asks questions, listens, and follows through,” Jamie Simon, CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, wrote in an email.

Simon first met Grinspoon when she headed up Camp Towanga, the Jewish overnight camp near Yosemite National Park. She remembers how on a visit, he laced up his hiking boots for the steep hike down to the river, eager for an up-close look.

Curiosity and high energy drive Grinspoon, agrees Adrian Dion, COO of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.

Dion said Grinspoon likes to take his early-morning work meetings during his daily four-mile walk. Once, they encountered a flooded road.

“We took off our socks and shoes and walked through, then jumped in the back of a pickup to get back. That’s Harold. Roll with the punches but keep the work going,” she wrote about the avid outdoorsman.

In his wide-ranging email interview with JTA, Grinspoon reflected on his turning........

© The Times of Israel