STEVEN GOLDSTEIN
okaurh ignku vajt tk iuhm ignk yueat tk
For the sake of Zion I will not be silent / For the sake of Jerusalem I will not be still.
~ Isaiah 62:1
In 2014, Hollywood filmmakers interviewed me for Freeheld, in which Steve Carell would play me. I had founded Garden State Equality, which mobilized thousands to win marriage equality in New Jersey before it became law nationwide.
Mid-interview, I stopped everything.“ You’ re not getting it,” I said.“ The core of who I am is being Jewish, and this movie has got to show it.”
Voila! Steve Carell wore my kippot throughout the film. He recited kiddush at Shabbat dinner. And on his office door was the flag of Israel that had been on mine.
I’ ve been in love with Judaism my entire life. In 1969, at age 7, I sat in our family’ s Mercury Comet and declared I would become a rabbi.
I also took on other dreams, and to my astonished joy, I’ ve lived them. I’ ve been a lawyer for the U. S. House and Senate and a television producer for two networks and Oprah Winfrey. Somehow I won 10 Emmys. I really am a lucky guy.
But I never forgot my original dream, and today it is coming true.
This is happiness!
I thank my mom Carole, my brother Richie— you’ ll hear more about him today— and Loretta Weinberg, Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum, Cantor Lois Kittner, Peggie Hannan, Jim Hannan z” l, Helen Heeren, Carol Sirot, Liz Sak, Yoav Sivan, Leah Binder, Raymond Lesniak, Salena
Lesniak z” l, Valerie Vainieri Huttle, Marsha Shapiro, Louise Walpin, Fay Sheppard, Elaine Braffman, Linda Cedarbaum, Craig Savel, Marion Stein, Carin Savel, Lily Lucey, Joseph Berrios, Rabbi Cantor Jerry Blum, Rabbi Robert Green, Rabbi Dr. Renana Brooks, Rabbi Sara Birnbaum, Rabbi Lori Shapiro, Andrea Packer, Lisa Goldberg, Aliza Bloom, Bari Alyse Rudin, Heidi Block Barishman, Cheryl Appel Rosenfeld, Hetty Rosenstein, and Julia Sweig.
My journey as a first-generation college graduate has carried me to degrees I once could not have imagined— from Brandeis, the Harvard Kennedy School, Columbia Journalism School, and Columbia Law School— and most recently to teaching at The Wharton School at Penn. But the teachers who have shaped me the most are here at AJR. I am grateful to you.
A passionate Zionist, I honor my courageous friends with whom I’ ve advocated for Israel: Talia Werber, Dina Kwasnicki, Rabbi Kanaan Goldstein, and Rabbi Rebecca Van Wagner.
Always in my heart, of blessed memory, are my grandparents Sam and Frances Ray and Herman Goldstein, and my aunt Adele Leimsider.
I now turn to Isaiah, whose Hebrew name, Yeshayahu, is mine as well.
“ Here I am,” he told God.“ Send me.”
AJR 2026 9