Tonight: Shloshim of Professor Herman Branover
The F.R.E.E. organization is organizing a Shloshim Memorial in memory of Professor Yirmiyahu Branover, tonight at F.R.E.E. of Brighton Beach • Read More, Details
The F.R.E.E. organization is organizing a Shloshim Memorial in memory of Professor Yirmiyahu Branover.
Wednesday, June 3rd @ 630 pm at F.R.E.E. of Brighton Beach, 2915 Brighton 6th Street, Brooklyn NY 11235
Speakers will include:
Rabbi Meir Okunov, Rabbi Shlomo Galperin, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Levin, Rabbi Hirshel Okunov and Dr. Arnie Gotfried.
Brief biography of Professor Branover
Yirmiyahu (Herman) Branover, of Blessed Memory
(1931-May 4, 2026)
A Tribute to a Devoted Chosid of the Rebbe and an Innovative Scientist
Professor Herman Branover is known in the Jewish communities of Israel, Russia, and the West as an inspiring author, translator, publisher, and educator. He is known in the world scientific community as a leading pioneer of the field of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). His research and development company Solmecs developed a non-conventional environmentally safe petroleum-free energy generator which has led to many useful spin-off technologies. His monumental work lives on after him.
Although his grandfather was a religious Jew, Branover grew up as an atheist, active in the Communist youth party. His father, Hertz, was an agronomist who directed an experimental farm for young Jews training to work the Land of Israel. When the Red Army retreated from the advancing Germans in World War II, Branover’s father was accidentally killed. His mother, Devorah, managed to escape with him and his sister to harsh conditions in Siberia for the duration of the war. After the war, Branover earned a PhD in hydro-energetics from the Leningrad Polytechnical Institute and a DSc in 1962 in magnetohydrodynamics from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Although he had wanted to study theoretical physics and had received the highest grades, because of Stalin’s infamous Doctor’s Plot Jews were not admitted then to the faculty of physics. This shock was actually a wake-up call.
As a young scientist in Riga, Latvia Branover wrote essays questioning atheism, dialectical materialism, and determinism. These struggles to free his mind and soul from Communist propaganda and persecution led to belief in G-d. The writings were secretly reproduced and distributed underground. His manuscripts were smuggled out and published in Russian, Hebrew, and English by the Israeli Ministry of Education. Only later did Branover discover the clandestine Chabad synagogue and learn how to fulfill his duty to keep the mitsvot, no matter how difficult the circumstances.
Branover became a leader of the Jewish revival movement in the Soviet Union. When he first applied for a visa to Israel, he was fired from the Latvian Academy of Sciences, where he had been a prestigious researcher and professor. Now that he did not have to worry any more about losing his job, he was free to live a full Jewish life, as much as possible in the dire Soviet reality. While a Refusenik, he initiated and directed a great number of underground activities advancing Jewish education and culture. Frequent arrests, interrogations, and harassment by the KGB did not stop him from teaching Jewish ethics, thought, and practice to many individuals and groups. Having learned Hebrew secretly at great peril while a student in Leningrad from books found in the library—until they were confiscated— Branover now had time to try to translate some of the fundamental books of Judaism into Russian. After a fifteen-year struggle, in 1973, he was the first Jew holding a Doctor of Science degree and the title of full professor to receive an exit visa to leave the USSR, thanks to explicit advice he received from the Rebbe, and the Rebbe’s blessings.
In Israel, Branover with his wife Fania and son Danny settled in Beersheva. At Ben-Gurion University he founded and directed the Center for Magnetohydrodynamic Studies, where he taught and created a laboratory for the development of an MHD generator to produce environmentally clean energy with no moving parts or need for petroleum. He published over 300 professional papers and textbooks and organized, and participated in numerous conferences, and did technological consultation in Israel and throughout the world. The Lubavitcher Rebbe arranged for Peter Kalms of London to establish Solmecs to market Branover’s MHD generator and its many spin-off by-products. Branover always showed his technological reports to the Rebbe, who made corrections, particularly in complex computation.
Professor Branover’s Jewish activism expanded significantly following his aliyah to Israel. With the encouragement and guidance of the Rebbe, he established SHAMIR (the Association of Religious Professionals from the USSR) in Jerusalem and served as Editor-in-Chief of its publishing house. He organized and trained teams of translators and editors to continue and expand the translation efforts he had begun in Latvia, making Jewish literature accessible to Russian-speaking Jews throughout the former Soviet Union and beyond.
F.R.E.E. of New York, which had been actively serving Russian-speaking Jewish communities since 1969 and recognized firsthand the critical need for Russian-language Jewish literature, began collaborating with Professor Branover and Shamir from the organization’s inception in the mid-1970s. Together, they partnered in the publication and distribution of these important works.
Publications published by Shamir & F.R.E.E. include most importantly the Pentateuch with commentaries, the Code of Jewish Life, prayer books, mishnayot, the Tanya, and writings of Maimonides and Yehuda Halevy, and also history, novels, and poetry. Over 450 titles of Russian-language Judaica published by SHAMIR & F.R.E.E. have helped thousands of Russian-speaking Jews regain their heritage that 70 years of Communist oppression had snuffed out.
Branover circled the globe answering invitations to speak at Chabad Houses, teach at seminars and conferences, responding to every personal plea for practical help and moral encouragement, and answering perturbing questions that people from all walks of life asked him. Jews and non-Jews were inspired to see and hear a fully observant Chabad Hasid who was also a world-class scientist.
In Branover’s extensive travels within Israel and throughout the United States, Europe, and Australia he saw rampant spiritual alienation. Whereas in the Soviet Union atheism was brutally enforced by the state, in the West a more subtle indoctrination has taken place. In both cases, people have been led to believe that science has disproved religion. To clarify the misunderstandings about science vis à vis religion, in 1981 Branover answered the Rebbe’s call to publish an international English-Hebrew periodical, the B’Or Ha’Torah Journal of Science, Life and Art (BHT). This refereed and illustrated journal discusses science, the humanities, and contemporary social and personal issues in the light of the Torah. Most of the articles for the first volumes were written by scientists such as Pentagon physicist Rabbi Dr. Naftali (Norman) Berg, NASA space biologist Professor Velvl Green, and Aristotelian philosopher Yitzchok (Irving) Block. Like Branover and other distinguished academics, they had participated in private and group discussions with the Rebbe. The Rebbe conducted seminars with them on topics such as geocentrism, uncertainty, and chaos theories. Major topics of BHT included: the philosophical implications of the indeterminism of contemporary physics; the nature and limitations of science versus those of religion; medical ethics, old age, dying, and euthanasia; the relationship between Divine Creation and human creativity; business ethics; ecology in Jewish law and tradition; family and community values; the dynamics of prayer and repentance. BHT also published creative kosher poetry and fiction, life stories, artwork, and nature photography.
The Rebbe matched up Rabbi Sholom Dovber Lipskar, OBM, of The Shul of Bal Harbour with Professor Branover and guided them to convene international conferences on Torah and science. From 1987 to 2021 fourteen international B’Or Ha’Torah conferences were held in Miami, Florida. The proceedings of these conferences were published in 26 volumes of B’Or Ha’Torah Journal of Science, Life and Art.
They can be ordered online at: https://www.jrbooks.org/product/bht/
When the Iron Curtain was still locked, in 1987 the Rebbe urged Branover to prepare housing and Research & Development centers in Israel for a mass influx of Jews from the USSR. Although this seemed impossible, as always, Branover acted on the Rebbe’s instruction and founded SATEC (Shamir Advanced Technology) and appointed his son Danny to chair the new bold venture. SATEC specialized in manufacturing power metering solutions such as power meters and power quality analyzers. Later, after Mikhail Gorbechev announced his policies on glasnost and perestroika and liberalized emigration, Israel absorbed over a million Russian-speaking immigrants. Branover pushed the Israeli government to finance more flexible R&D centers to utilize the expertise of Soviet immigrants. After great effort, the Branover plan was modified and adopted by the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991 the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences invited Branover to supervise an 8-volume Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry. Covering 1000 years, the encyclopedia details the contribution of Jews to Russian and world civilization. The late Sir Isaiah Berlin of Oxford was the first chief consultant of the encyclopedia, and the Israeli Ministry of Education helped support the project. Sir Martin Gilbert was the second chief consultant of the encyclopedia.
The Rebbe advocated the revival of Jewish religious life in Eastern Europe. Under Branover’s direction, Shamir established a well-accredited Jewish day school in Petersburg. Together with Rabbi Barkan and Professor Ruvin Ferber, Branover organized international conferences in Riga entitled “Jews in a Changing World.” This is the only forum in the world where Russian-speaking academics who had never before studied Jewish wisdom literature can discuss it and even apply it to their lives.
A recipient of the S.D. Bergman Prize for the development of new technology in Israel, Branover also received the Knesset Speaker’s Award in 1991 for his work with Russian immigrant absorption. He chaired the prime minister’s committee for solving immigrants’ professional employment problems. He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences in Moscow and the Latvian Academy of Sciences, and a member of the Moscow International Energy Club, and has received honorary doctorates from the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Technical University of St. Petersburg, Yeshiva University, and the Jerusalem College of Technology. In 2001 he won the Award of Honor of the Menachem Begin Prize for his outstanding contribution to the State of Israel and the Jewish People.
Branover’s autobiography Return, relates a life story of faith, fortitude, perseverance, and unbounded giving to others and to G‑d. Herman Branover inspired many thousands, of Jews to discover their spiritual heritage and to use it as a way of life and source of well-being.
In recent years, at Professor Branover’s request, Shamir merged with the FREE organization, to better serve and strengthen Jewish communities from the former Soviet Union around the world, ensuring the continued availability of vital Jewish publications in the Russian language.
After a prolonged illness, Branover passed away on Iyar 17, 5786 (May 4, 2026) at age 94. He was buried on the night of Lag B’Omer in the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem. His wife Fania predeceased him in 2012.
They are survived by their son Danny of Crown Heights.
Professor Branover, uniquely united scientific excellence with profound spiritual devotion, harmonizing academic scholarship with a life of Jewish commitment.
Wherever he went, Branover brought light and warmed people’s hearts.
May his memory be for a blessing.
His full biography, Return, can be found in Judaica Stores or order online at: www.jrbooks.org/product/return-english/
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