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J E R U S A L E M I T E S

An occasional series of interviews with notable veteran olim

who make their homes in Jerusalem.

David Olivestone

MATTHEW MILLER

Since Matthew Miller bought Koren Publishers Jerusalem
in 2007, he has turned it into one of today’s most
successful and well-known Jewish publishing houses, with
a particular niche in the Religious Zionist world. Urbane,
witty and self-deprecating, he is lanky, with a domed
intellectual forehead, and could easily be mistaken for the
professor he once aspired to become. Matthew and his
wife Renée live in Jerusalem’s Greek Colony neighborhood.

You and your company have had a and I remember when I submitted my first Were you religiously observant by this
profound influence on the Religious essay, it was written American-style, full point?
Zionist / Modern Orthodox world. Was of quotes from eminent thinkers. My tutor
insisted that I tell him not what others
this something that evolved from your thought, but what I knew and what I Renée was already quite observant, as she
background? thought, and no one had ever told me had grown up in Lincoln Square Synagogue
in Manhattan, under the influence of
No, not at all. Growing up, my family was that before. At the end of my two years at Rabbi Shlomo Riskin. But I believe I would
Reform, at best. My grandparents, who all Oxford I had my degree, but I found poring not have become frum myself if we had
came to the USA before World War I, were over things like medieval Latin texts very remained in America, where there are so
either Bundists or Socialists. At university boring, and I realized that I wasn’t cut out many highly fragmented streams. Before
I was studying Thomas Aquinas before I for a career in academia. joining a shul you have to define yourself as
had even heard of the Rambam, on whose Reform or Conservative or Egalitarian or
trailblazing work a century previously So you went into the family business? Modern Orthodox or Charedi, or whatever.
Aquinas based much of his work. So no, If you want to move from this to that,
Judaism was something that came into Yes, my father had started the business you have to, in effect, reject where you
my life as an adult. in the early 1950s, and we manufactured are coming from. But in England in the
some industrial machinery. After a few 1980s, almost all the shuls were Orthodox,
What did you want to become as you years based in the US, I took over the and you had some very frum and learned
grew up? manufacturing and sales operations in people there, and you also had people who
Europe. So in 1981, when Renée and I were would drive there on Shabbat and leave
A history professor. When I was younger married, we moved to England, ostensibly the car parked around the corner. Renée
and still had a functioning brain, I skipped for six months, but we ended up living in encouraged me to find my own religious
a couple of grades, so I was only 20 when Leeds for ten years and then in London level. I consider myself a very rational
I graduated college. I was accepted into a for eight years until we sold the European person, but I took some courses with a
master’s program at Oxford University, business. rabbi who challenged me to think about

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