local
Former Journalist
Finds Calling Later
in Life — as a
Rabbi JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
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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



never saw it as some divine path toward becoming a
rabbi. As he put it, he just wanted to grow into a “well-ed-
ucated Jew.”
“My attitude was the world doesn’t need necessar-
ily another rabbi,” he said. “But what we do need is
Jews in the pews who know what’s going on.”
Th at attitude motivated him to sign up for a
prayer leadership training program called the Jewish
Renewal Movement. Led by Philadelphia-area rab-
bis Marcia Prager and Shawn Zevit, the program
included four one-week retreats over a two-year
period. Its goal was to “help people bring more spiri-
tuality into prayer practice,” Goodman said.

What Goodman got out of it was a series of “amaz-
ing prayer experiences,” as he described them. In
his AP days, he had covered church events and seen
Christians lose themselves in prayer. But he had
never really seen that among his own people.

Until the Jewish Renewal retreats.

“I said, ‘Th is is great.’ We need more of what they’re
having,” he recalled.

Goodman went on the retreats in 2011 and ’12,
around the same time that he was forced to consider
retiring from the AP or getting a new job, as his
pension would kick in at age 65. So when he asked
himself what he wanted to do next, the answer was
sitting there in his mind.

“I should apply to rabbinic school,” he said.

In 2015, Goodman loaded up his Ford and drove to
Philadelphia. During his seven years at the RRC, he
taught Hebrew at Kol Tzedek in West Philadelphia,
Rabbi David N. Goodman receives a round of applause from
classmates at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College’s May
22 graduation ceremony at Congregation Beth Or in Ambler.

Photo by Jordan Cassway
served as the student rabbi at West Chester University
and got hired as an intern at Nafshenu in 2020. He
also met his new wife, Pearl Raz, and they have been
married for 2½ years.

Goodman became full time at Nafshenu because
congregants just liked him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen the man not smile,”
said Rachael Blumer, 36, a synagogue member.

Lisa Lichtman, another Nafshenu congregant,
interviewed Goodman for his initial intern position.

“Going back aft er retiring, that says a lot about
somebody’s growth, right?” she said. JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 11