Danny and Robin Greenspun

For Danny Greenspun, the Yiddish Book Center was the answer to a question he had long been asking. “When my kids were in high school, I wondered, how would I, as a secular Jew, pass on our culture to our kids?”

Danny, a Las Vegas native and Yiddish Book Center board member, had a long career in media starting with the Las Vegas Sun, a newspaper founded by his parents, Hank and Barbara Greenspun. As an early adopter of the Internet, he found a business opportunity buying and selling domain names (he is the current owner of Vegas.com) and thought he might help solve the problem of cultural transmission by buying Jewish domains. “I was going to corner the market on Jewish media,” he said. “I thought about my son, who was in his late teens at the time. If he wakes up and thinks, ‘I’m Jewish. Who do I see about that?’ the obvious answer was, you have to go online; that’s where you look up anything.”

Working with Jewish media organizations proved to be a frustrating experience, however, which is when Danny thought about the Yiddish Book Center. An alumnus of Hampshire College, Danny had once gone to school with Center founder Aaron Lansky, though as Danny notes, he was a “mathematics major who spoke no Yiddish.” Aaron had recently published his book Outwitting History and had been invited by Danny’s wife Robin to speak at a federation retreat in Aspen.

“Translating Yiddish books and making them available to the public free of charge—it was such a departure from everything else I’ve been involved with in the Jewish world,” Danny said. “I fell in love with the mission—it was a chance to save not just the language but the culture.”

Robin, a longtime film and television producer, felt similarly. “I feel the same way Danny does,” she said, noting that the couple had once owned a bookstore themselves. “We’re both very much involved with literature, with books. It was a natural progression for me. It’s just been a joyful time.”

Recently, the couple has become the first donors of cryptocurrency to the Center—another area in which they were early adopters. “I did it as a catalyst,” Danny said. “Somebody in a board meeting raised the idea of accepting cryptocurrency, and I said, if you figure out a way to accept cryptocurrency, I’ll be the first gift.”

As for the Center’s programs, the couple has been particularly impressed by Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music, which dovetails with Danny’s lifelong love of jazz. “Klezmer is one of the first expressions in my mind of good clarinet work in jazz and dance music,” Danny said. “Jewish culture and jazz are both intellectually stimulating and edifying, and if we could just get our children to know more about them, the world would be better off!”

If you would like more information about making a gift of cryptocurrency, please contact Zvi Jankelowitz, director of institutional advancement, at 413-256-4900, ext. 117, or email him directly at [email protected].