Journalist and author Mark I. Pinsky was born in Miami, Florida, in 1947, and raised in the southern New Jersey suburbs, in a Conservative Jewish home, where he was active in United Synagogue Youth. In 1967 he was a civilian volunteer with the Israel Defense Force in and around El Arish, Sinai, immediately following the Six Day War, where he helped to salvage captured Egyptian army tanks, trucks, and armored personnel carriers from the desert.