Pinchas Polonsky

Pinchas Polonsky was born in 1958 in Moscow

Polonsky was born in Moscow on 11 February 1958 to a secular, assimilated Jewish family. He attended a special school focused on math and physics. After finishing school in 1975, he decided to leave the Soviet Union for Israel and began studying Hebrew, then Torah, in a secret group.

From 1975 to 1980 he studied mathematics at the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. In 1979 he helped found Machanaim, an underground network for Torah study in Moscow, and took part in Samizdat publishing of Jewish guides. He applied to emigrate in 1980, was refused, and spent 7 years as a refusenik before immigrating in 1987.

In Israel he helped found the Israeli branch of Machanaim and served as its editor-in-chief until 2012. He studied at yeshivas in Jerusalem and earned an MA in Talmudic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, then a PhD in Sociology of Religion in 2002 with a thesis on Rav Kook. He taught at Bar-Ilan from 1991 to 2012 and was a senior fellow at Ariel University from 2012 to 2013.

He published a Russian prayer book with commentary, a study of Rav Kook's life and teaching, and the Torah commentary series "Bible Dynamics". He also initiated EJWiki, an academic encyclopedia on Jewish and Israeli topics. He lived in Beit El from 1991 and in Jerusalem from 2022, and in 2026 announced a move to Karmiel.