Writer, translator, ethnographer, researcher of East European Jewish culture. Born in 1959 in Leningrad. Graduated from the Leningrad Technological Institute, where he defended his doctoral dissertation. Research fellow at the Interfaculty Center "Petersburg Judaica" at the European University in Saint Petersburg. Author of over 200 publications on Judaic studies. Member of the editorial boards of the journals The People of the Book in the World of Books, Judaic-Slavic Journal, and Yiddishland. In 2021, Ivan Limbakh Publishing House released Valery Dymshits's book From Venice.