Isaac Shiner | WJW Intern
“I’m always happy to write a letter, join a call, go visit my congresspeople,” Rabbi Lizz Goldstein said, reflecting on her commitment to social justice as a pulpit rabbi.
Since her ordination from the Academy of Jewish Religion in 2016, Goldstein has served as the rabbi at Congregation Ner Shalom, a synagogue made up of about 70 households, in Prince William County. As the synagogue’s sole rabbi, she leads educational programs for both youth and adults, as well as a variety of social justice programs. Fittingly, as we spoke over Zoom, she was crafting a blanket, part of an initiative to provide warmth to homeless people.
Goldstein first felt called to the rabbinate as a teenager at the URJ Kutz Camp. Growing up in an interfaith Reform Jewish family in Connecticut, she attended school where there was often only one Jewish student per class. It was at camp, surrounded by like-minded, social justice-driven peers, that she realized she wanted to channel her passion for justice into the rabbinate.
Before her ordination, Goldstein earned her undergraduate degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she concentrated in genocide studies. She later received a master’s degree in Jewish Studies from Gratz College.
Today, she lives in Vienna, Virginia, with her husband and their cat.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
I was born and raised in the Reform Movement. I grew up in Connecticut. We belonged to a small Reform synagogue in Chester, Connecticut, which is a very small community in the woods. A pretty typical Reform family, we went to Shabbat fairly regularly, but didn’t keep kosher at home or anything. I spent the holidays with my family. I have an interfaith family; my mom’s side of the family is Christian. We always had a mixed group for all the holidays. We had all the Jewish holidays at our house for a lot of my childhood, but also Christmas at our house, and there was the same group of Christians and Jews — both sides of the family came to both sets of holidays.
What inspired you to be a rabbi?
The real reason is the URJ Kutz camp, which is no more, and that was a big mistake, I think, on the URJ’s part to close those doors. I know it was financial. They had fewer participants in more recent years than when I was a kid. It was the Reform leadership camp, so it was for teens. I never went to any camp, let alone Jewish camp, as a young kid. So, at 16, I had my first real experience, and it was incredibly inspiring to be around other kids like me.
Where I grew up, my high school had maybe one Jewish kid per class, if that. I wasn’t the only one in my school, but there weren’t many. Being around so many other Jewish kids who cared about social justice was amazing. That’s such a big facet of Reform Judaism and our programming. We did things like working at a food pantry and writing Amnesty letters, the kinds of things I really cared about. And other teenagers thought I was weird for it in my hometown. So, I just felt like I really met my people and wanted to really commit myself to that world.
What is your favorite part of being a pulpit rabbi?
I love the diversity of it. When I went to rabbinical school, actually, being that my call to the rabbinate was at Jewish summer camp and with teen programming, I really thought that I would do more education-based work, like camp, Hillel, maybe a Jewish day school, working more specifically with young people. And I kind of fell into this job because it was what was available when I was ordained. But it’s been so great. It’s been so much fun. Ner Shalom is a small congregation, so I am the only rabbi, so I do still spend a lot of time with the teens and the young adults, but I also get to do adult education and, in some ways, learn as well. That’s true for every person. You learn and you teach at the same time. The range of life stages and backgrounds I get to engage with keeps it never boring.
What areas of advocacy are most important to you?
A range. Our youth group is handing out blankets and coats to the homeless. And so they made a bunch already, but there was one that was left not quite finished, so I’m finishing it now as we speak, so that it can be part of the collection that we hand out tomorrow, which isn’t quite the advocacy, per se, but, social justice oriented.
And then we have a significant population in our congregation of LGBTQ folks, so that’s a big focus. For me, there are so many social justice issues that are interconnected, so any opportunity to advocate, particularly with a Jewish group, with the Reform Movement, the Religious Action Center, T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights — I’m a member of T’ruah. So there’s different opportunities for immigrant justice, workers’ rights, LGBTQ, reproductive rights. I’ve done some advocacy with the National Council of Jewish Women. They’re all important because they all affect each other, but I tend to focus on the needs of my community the most. So right now, that’s the trans rights, which are really pressing this week, but also, that’s a big portion of my community. So protecting them is very important.
What’s one Jewish text or teaching that has shaped your outlook on Judaism and justice?
It’s hard to pick just one, but probably the quote in my bio from Leviticus, “love your neighbor as yourself.” For a long time, especially while I was focusing more on youth work, while I was still in school, that was a huge guideline for me. With young people going through life, self-esteem gets so hard in those middle school years, and using that as a principle for you to care for others, but also to love someone as yourself means you have to love yourself also. And so that double-sided, the double-edged meaning to that has been really important.
How do you spend your time outside of work?
Home watching movies with my husband, or when the weather’s nice, we like to go hiking. I’m a wimp about the cold, so we don’t go this time of year, but in the fall and in the spring, we do a lot of hiking.
The Opinions need to be better screened. Lizz Goldstein cares about other people, but not Jews. She blames American Jews for the war between Palestinians and Israeli Jews because she blames all American Jews for Israel receiving American Arms. She accepts Palestinian propaganda and hasn’t researched enough to know that the Kibbutzim in the south were where many of the Peaceniks lived, prior to their massacre, constantly helping Palestinians and taking them into Israel for health care. People need to learn about history in depth before saying things and participating in rallies that helped turn many,many people, including other Jews against all Jewish people in our country and around the world. The lack of historical knowledge means that another holocaust is imminent, which I have been saying since before the massacre in Israel and the daily attacks in the U.S. It is completely immoral in my opinion to do things that cause additional Jewish deaths.