Matias Libedinsky

Rabbi Matias Libedinsky was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1976. From early childhood he showed a special interest in a variety of scientific fields. During high school, he won several awards in mathematics and physics competitions at both national and international levels. In his university entrance examination, he obtained the highest marks of his generation. In 1998, Rabbi Libedinsky earned the Licenciado en Fisica (Bachelor of Science in Physics) at the University of Chile. Afterwards, he traveled to the United States, where in the year 2000 he earned an M.S. in Physics at the California Institute of Technology, Caltech. During his university years, Libedinsky discarded an agnosticism bordering on atheism for a more spiritual vision of the world. Later, he began his formal Jewish education at the Darche Noam Yeshiva (center for higher Jewish education) in Jerusalem, where he studied from 2000 to 2002. In 2001 he married Jana, with whom he currently has five daughters. From 2002 through 2006, Rabbi Libedinsky continued his rabbinic studies in the kollel (post-yeshiva institute) of the Beis Israel Yeshiva directed by Rabbi Nosson Weisz, afterwards returning to Chile to form, together with a group of rabbis, the Morasha Institute, which is today the most successful entity devoted to the teaching of Judaism to university-age youths in Chile.