local
Former Journalist
Finds Calling Later
in Life — as a
Rabbi JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
Honor those at rest by
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Jewish cemetery.

Volunteer Tasks:
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• Picking up trash
• Clipping overgrown vines
Cleanup Dates:
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Har Nebo – 6061 Oxford Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19149
Sunday, July 24 | 9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.

Har Jehuda – 8400 Lansdowne Ave, Upper Darby, PA 19082
Register: jewishphilly.org/cemeterycleanup
10 JUNE 9, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
W hat if you found your call-
ing aft er your fi rst career
ended — when you were
already passing middle age?
Would you pursue it? Or would you
just say forget it, I’m too old?
David N. Goodman, 69, decided to
pursue it.

Th e Elkins Park resident became a
rabbi on May 22 when he graduated
from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College in Wyncote. He did so aft er
spending seven years in his 60s studying
to become one.

But it’s not just the near-de-
cade in school that stands out about
Goodman’s story. Rabbinical school
required him to uproot his previous
life. Th e new rabbi spent the previous
30-plus years as an Associated Press
reporter in Detroit. He moved to the
Philadelphia area to enroll at the RRC.

Th is summer, as he celebrates his
graduation, he will continue serving as
spiritual leader of Nafshenu, a Cherry
Hill, New Jersey, congregation of about
36 families.

“I look in the mirror, and I know I’m
69. But for seven years, I was in class
with people half my age,” Goodman
said. “I feel younger than when I
started. I feel an excitement and a new-
ness about what I’m doing.”
Goodman offi cially became a Jewish
leader on May 22. But really, he had
served as one for many years.

In his previous life as a journalist,
he joined Congregation T’chiyah, a
bottom-up synagogue that depended
on members to lead services. It was
1988, and the 35-year-old had not been
involved in Jewish life since his teenage
years in NFTY, the national Reform
movement that engages teens in Jewish
activity. But he had a son who was 6 and a
Rabbi David N. Goodman
Photo by Jordan Cassway
daughter who was 1 at the time. He also
had vivid memories of going by himself
to the campus Hillel at the University
of Missouri, where his dad was a phys-
ics professor.

As Goodman explained, Judaism
was in him. He just needed to redis-
cover it.

At T’chiyah in Ferndale, Michigan,
a small city in the Detroit metro area,
he did.

One of the requirements at the bot-
tom-up temple was that congregants
had to take turns leading services.

Goodman got in the rotation and grew
to love it.

As he explained, the experience
became an outlet for “an aspect of
my personality that I hadn’t really
explored.” He sang; he discussed the
weekly Torah portion; he guided dis-
cussions among fellow members.

He was good at all of it.

“I enjoy the ritual parts of Jewish
life,” the rabbi said.

Goodman began to keep kosher, too,
and pray regularly. But as he went
about his Jewish journey, the journalist