By Manya Brachear Pashman, RNA president 2015-2018

It’s rare for a reporter, even a religion reporter, to say he considers the Talmud as an important guide for his work. But Ari Goldman, a Modern Orthodox Jewish journalist and longtime professor of journalism at Columbia University, has used the Jewish text as his professional – and personal – compass for decades.

Just as the biblical tales of Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel and Moses are not simple, neither are a journalist’s subjects.  

“I never thought of storytelling as only telling positive stories. What makes it interesting is telling the complexities, the failures, the struggles, the sins and the recovery from sin,” Goldman, 70, said in a recent interview. “From the Talmud, I learned that there are many sides to an issue. The Talmud is the great discussion. I see journalism as that too.”

After two decades at The New York Times, Goldman has spent the last quarter century teaching the craft of covering religion to hundreds of aspiring religion reporters, taking nearly 20 classes on study tours of Israel, Jordan, Italy, Ireland, India, and Russia. In doing so, he has expanded and enriched the roster of the Religion News Association for decades and helped shape today’s membership.  

To honor his contributions to the religion beat, and his dedication to the profession, Goldman will receive the 2020 William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award at RNA’s first ever virtual convention. The annual prize is presented to individuals who demonstrate exceptional long-term commitment and service to RNA and its members, and to the field of religion reporting.  

A 1971 graduate of Yeshiva University, Goldman launched his journalism career at the campus newspaper and eventually became a college stringer for The New York Times, phoning in sports scores and dispatches about campus demonstrations. After graduation, he became a copy boy, then a clerk at The Times before taking a year off to earn a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia. He returned to The Times and became a reporter in 1975 for a weekly suburban section on Long Island.

He eventually covered education and transportation in New York City and spent two winters in Albany to cover sessions of the New York state legislature. When a post opened in Africa shortly after he was married, he tried out and discovered the foreign correspondent’s life wasn’t a good fit, especially given his religious observance.

Instead, in 1985, Goldman signed up for the religion beat, thinking his deep knowledge of Judaism would serve him well. It did and it didn’t. While it instilled a deep appreciation and respect for religious devotion, he realized knowing one tradition isn’t the same as knowing them all.

Just as foreign correspondents learn languages and cultures to prepare for overseas posts, Goldman made a case to his editors for immersing himself in world religions. The New York Times sent him to Harvard Divinity School for a year that changed his life.

“I learned to ask the right questions,” he said.

As a transportation reporter, Goldman had fielded daily complaints from editors about potholes, taxis, and trains. As a religion reporter, he learned what many on the beat have experienced: colleagues pulled him aside for private conversations, as if he were a newsroom pastor.

On the beat, Goldman covered debates about gay marriage and gay clergy in various Christian and Jewish denominations. He also got a taste of being a war correspondent when, in 1991, he covered  the Crown Heights riots where Black residents turned on Orthodox Jewish neighbors after a car in the motorcade of Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson had struck two children, killing one of them.

While on the religion beat, Goldman started most of his Sunday mornings at St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, where the charismatic Cardinal John O’Connor held forth on current events, including condom distribution and education at the height of the AIDS crisis.

On weekends and vacations, Goldman was writing and re-writing The Search for God at Harvard, a memoir of his spiritual journey in Cambridge inspired by a Times piece. He encourages aspiring authors by confessing he wrote three drafts of the book before he got it right. He has since written three other books: Being Jewish, about Jewish traditions in the 21st Century; Living a Year of Kaddish, about the importance of mourning with a community; and The Late Starters Orchestra, about taking up the cello as an adult.

Sam Freedman, a colleague at Columbia who also worked at The Times, said Goldman was one of a handful of religion reporters who transformed the beat and set a standard for the industry. When Goldman left the newspaper to join Freedman on Columbia’s faculty in 1993, he began imparting those high standards to a generation of reporters, convincing the school’s skeptical dean to offer a class in religion reporting.

That class has since become a crown jewel in the journalism school’s catalog. Since 1999, students who have secured one of the coveted seats have been whisked away on free trips to Israel, India, Italy, Ireland and Russia with financial support from the Scripps Howard Foundation. “Goldman graduates” have gone on to cover religion at major news outlets including the Chicago Tribune, the Miami Herald, the Raleigh News & Observer, Religion News Service and CNN.

A few have stayed an extra year at Columbia to earn a master’s in religious studies — a dual degree program Goldman created in 2002.

“For me, going to an RNA convention is like a J-school reunion,” Goldman said.

Mustafa Hameed, a 2013 “Goldman grad,” traveled to Rome with the Covering Religions class in 2013.

“Professor Goldman taught us the importance of covering people in a way that they would recognize themselves in the reporting and to never be a tourist in other people’s cultures and religions,” said Hameed, a former producer for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Mariam Fam, who traveled to Russia with Goldman’s class in 2003, said he has continued to be generous with his guidance and time, often sharing job opportunities with his students.

A few years ago, Fam bumped into Goldman during a summer visit to Columbia’s campus and the two later met for coffee.

“He made my day when he, so thoughtfully, showed up carrying his large, framed photo of my class’s study-tour covering religion in Moscow and Kazan,” said Fam, who now reports for the global religion desk at the Associated Press. “It really was very nice of him and it felt great to see all those faces from the trip.”

But don’t be fooled, Freedman said. Goldman’s accessibility and kindness belies his fearlessness. During the Second Intifada in 2000, the two professors launched a joint book tour to promote Freedman’s new book, Jew vs. Jew, and Goldman’s book, Being Jewish. Freedman recalls the moment an audience booed the mention of the then-Jerusalem bureau chief for The Times. Goldman delivered a passionate defense of his fellow journalist at the risk of alienating his own community.

“To defend a reporter in a setting like that would run the risk of being seen as a traitor,” Freedman said. “He was totally unfazed by that kind of criticism. Because of Ari’s genial, easygoing, ‘nothing throws me too much’ personality, it’s easy to miss what a firm backbone he has. … When he’s ready to take a stand he is fearless, not confrontational, fearless.”

Author and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has sat in the same pew as Goldman for decades at Congregation Ramath Orah, an Orthodox shul in Manhattan. He has always admired Goldman’s combination of chutzpah and warmth. Telushkin said that even when covering people of faith with very different points of view, Goldman writes in a way that affirms others’ experiences.

“Ari could appreciate sincerity and appreciate love of God and when he found that sincerity and love of God in other people, he could establish a relationship with them,” Telushkin said. “He could maintain journalistic objectivity, but he could also communicate a real affection for people he wrote about. He encouraged people to open up and go deeper.”

Likewise, writing about others has affirmed Goldman’s endeavor to balance the demands of daily journalism with the obligations of his own religious faith. He has discovered that an Orthodox Jewish newsman like himself has a lot in common with the Sikh bus driver who won’t cut his beard and the Catholic woman advocating for female ordination.

“I’ve learned so much from others engaged in that struggle,” he said.
“I’m lucky. I’ve found a way to live both dreams – journalism and Judaism,” he added. “You have to live your life. You have to live your dreams. You have to live to your full potential, and, to me, that meant living in both of these worlds.”

Manya Brachear Pashman is a proud “Goldman grad” who traveled to Russia and Ukraine with the Covering Religion class in 2002. She returned as Goldman’s teaching assistant in 2003. She was the first graduate to complete Columbia’s dual degree program in religion and journalism and covered religion at the Chicago Tribune for 15 years.

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