Since his retirement 12 years ago, Steven Goode has geared up for annual 3,000-mile motorcycle trips with his wife, which often span months.
The Illinois biker has used some of these motorcycle trips for charitable causes and wanted to do more. But his wife had other ideas: “‘You’re done. No more two-and-a-half month trips for the entire summer.’”
“I was thinking, ‘What can I do that involves Judaism and motorcycles and combine [the two], but I don’t have to be gone all summer?’” Goode recalled.
That’s when he thought up the idea for the North American Holocaust Museum Tour.
The Jewish Motorcyclists Alliance holds an annual Ride to Remember (R2R) dedicated to Holocaust education and remembrance, said Goode, who’s been a member of JMA since 2005.
Goode’s idea, a motorcycle tour of 21 Holocaust museums across the United States and Canada, is an offshoot of the R2R, which took place in early June this year.
Each group of riders completed one leg of the 10,000-mile tour, ending on Wednesday at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The goal is to raise awareness and funds for Holocaust museums in North America.
JMA members bought a steel “Circle of Chai” art piece that was passed from group to group to the museum in the next city, akin to an Olympic torch. The groups gifted each museum a replica.
The “Circle of Chai” represents the “Jewish people’s struggles over the last 5,700 years,” Goode said. “That circle represents the diaspora of the Jewish people around the world … and how we’ve been tested but never broken our faith over the 5,700 years between the pogroms and the Holocaust.”
“As you can see, the circle is cracked, but it is never broken,” the NAHMT website reads.
“It’s about the symbolism more than anything,” Courtney Talmoud, a D.C.-area representative of JMA, said.
The motorcycle tour began in North Carolina, then headed south before going west and looping back through the Midwest to end in D.C. A group of riders from the New York area rode the more than 200 miles from Manhattan’s Museum of Jewish Heritage to the USHMM.
They arrived in the nation’s capital on Tuesday night and presented the “Circle of Chai” the following morning.
“It was incredibly meaningful; that’s for sure,” Talmoud, who lives in Silver Spring, said.
Goode and Talmoud said they hope to emphasize the importance of Holocaust education through the tour.
“A lot of us have had family members who were in the Holocaust,” Talmoud said. “The JMA is able to continue Holocaust education and expand on it,” she added, referencing the annual R2R.
“You gotta give back to the community,” Goode said. “With the rise of antisemitism really getting so ramped up in the U.S. and across Europe, it’s important that [people receive] education, especially the young people who don’t even know about the Holocaust.”
The “ultimate goal” of the tour is to recognize the efforts of Holocaust museums and their missions, according to Goode.
“Given what’s going on in the world today with antisemitism and the amount of hatred that we see on a daily basis … the Holocaust museum provides education to those who might not be aware of what the Holocaust was,” Talmoud said.
In a conversation with Goode, the executive director of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond said, “You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t even know we exist.”
Goode said that media coverage of the tour will help raise this necessary awareness. Aside from the mission, it’s also fun for the bikers.
“The beauty of it is it’s bringing together Jewish riders from around the country,” Goode said.
“It’s really important for our kids to see Jewish people doing normal, fun things,” Talmoud said. “My husband rides almost every Sunday, and he has a group of Jewish friends that he rides with. It’s not always the norm for Jews to ride motorcycles, right? But we’ve normalized it and [JMA is] just an amazing organization.”
