Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Rabbi Bruce Goldman, 84, antiwar gadfly unafraid of flouting Jewish mainstream

Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman.

Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman. Image by Courtesy photo

.

(JTA) — Rabbi A. Bruce Goldman’s peak moment of notoriety came in 1968 when, as the Jewish chaplain at Columbia University, he supported campus antiwar protesters who had occupied administration buildings. Goldman lost his job at the university the following year, having assumed the post only in 1967, apparently over his role in antiwar activities.

The incident was just one of many in a career largely defined by his willingness to buck mainstream opinion — whether political or religious. Even before his short tenure at Columbia went south, Goldman had urged students to refuse to serve in the army if drafted and encouraged them to engage in “meaningful” premarital sex — a position that earned Goldman a rebuke from the Rabbinical Alliance of America, which called called the advice “a direct contravention of the teachings of Judaism.”

It would not be the last time that sort of accusation would be leveled at Goldman, who died April 2 of the coronavirus. He was 84.

The loss of his position at Columbia did little to chasten Goldman. In 1970, he disrupted a service at New York’s Temple Emanu-El in an effort to rouse the congregation against the Vietnam War. That incident led to charges of disorderly conduct that were eventually dropped.

During the 1969 trial of the Chicago Seven — which included Jewish radicals Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Lee Weiner — a group of antiwar Jews decided that the presiding judge, Julius Hoffman, had been possessed by a dybbuk, or malicious spirit, of the Spanish inquisitor Torqemada. The group planned to travel to Chicago to perform an exorcism, but when plans fell through, Goldman decided to do it in New York.

“He also arranged for it to be filmed, and the ceremony came through in an utterly awesome way,” Rabbi Arthur Waskow recalled. “Brilliant, but it didn’t exorcise Torquemada from Judge Hoffman. We thought it was too far away from the trial. But it was pure Bruce at his best. Drawing on Judaism to transform it, and to try to transform the world in the process.”

In the 1990s, Goldman gained national attention for his willingness to perform intermarriages at a time when no major rabbinical group was yet prepared to endorse the practice. He was even willing to perform marriage ceremonies in which neither spouse was Jewish. According to the New York Times, Goldman presided over the marriage of Pulitzer-prize winning author Frank McCourt, a Catholic, to his second wife Cheryl, a Southern Baptist.

“I will miss him,” Waskow wrote in a remembrance. “Many Jews may not consciously realize they miss him, but they will –- because Judaism will be poorer.”

The post Rabbi Bruce Goldman, 84, antiwar gadfly unafraid of flouting Jewish mainstream appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.