Toby Klein Greenwald has founded, co-founded or directed more than 12 theater companies or educational theater projects in the last 20 years. She is the artistic director and co-founder of Raise Your Spirits Theatre (RaiseYourSpirits.org), in which capacity she has co-authored or authored and/or directed 10 biblical musicals (including three revivals). Other theater projects include the Na’na Playback Dance Theater, the Brothers Troupe (2005), the Gush Etzion Playback troupe, and Dor L’Dor Theater Troupe, which grew out of WholeFamily.com, a site featuring online dramas that she co-founded
in 1996. She lectured in Playback Theater in the Institute for Expressive Art Therapists in Jerusalem College for Women and created a new method called Biblio-Playback (Playback Midrash).
Toby has created or co-directed theater projects for “at risk” youth, both Israeli and Anglo, and for students living with trauma, including from Gush Katif and Sederot. She taught drama to students in Sfat who were survivors of the 1974 Maalot terror attack. She is also a journalist, a poet, a photographer, a scriptwriter for promotional projects and short documentaries, and a teacher of Tanach (Bible), Jewish philosophy, Creative Writing and English Literature. She is the translator of In the Land of Prayer, the co-author, of a marital self-help novel (in Hebrew), and the initiator and editor of Listening to God, by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin.
She is the recipient of the Yaakov Egerest Memorial Award for Jewish Culture, of the Torah Culture Department of Israel’s Ministry of Education, of the Ohr Torah Stone Ulpanat Shavei Rachel award for Leadership in Jewish Education, and has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement award by ATARA, an organization for Torah and the Arts. She was honored to be one of the torch lighters in the Efrat Independence Day ceremony, in 2019, in recognition of her work in Raise Your Spirits Theatre. She also received, in 2019 and 2020, American Jewish Press Association Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism.
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She is a graduate of Jerusalem College for Women (Michlala), of Hebrew University and of Bar Ilan (M.A.). She has presented at workshops and conferences in Israel and abroad, and is a board member of Raise Your Spirits Theatre, of ATARA, and of the Alliance for Jewish Theatre. She lives in Efrat, Gush Etzion, with her husband, and their children and grandchildren live throughout the land of Israel.