J.J. Goldberg

J.J. Goldberg, senior columnist, is one of the leading voices in contemporary Jewish journalism. His column, Good Fences, appears weekly on the editorial page and his blog is posted here. Goldberg served as the Forward’s editor in chief from 2000 to 2007. Under his editorial leadership the Forward grew to become the most honored and authoritative Jewish newspaper in America.

He has served in the past as U.S. bureau chief of the Israeli newsmagazine The Jerusalem Report, as managing editor of The New York Jewish Week, as a nationally syndicated columnist, as editor in chief of the monthly Jewish Frontier, as world/national news editor of the daily Home News of New Brunswick, N.J., and as a metro/police-beat reporter for Hamevaker, a Hebrew-language newsweekly published for the Israeli émigré community in Los Angeles.

Goldberg is the author of “Jewish Power: Inside the American Jewish Establishment,” published in 1996 by Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. of Reading, Mass., which was named by The Philadelphia Inquirer as one of the “100 Most Important Books of 1996” and was described by The New York Times as a book that “can teach even the initiated a thing or two about American Jewish life in the postwar period.” His previous books include “Builders and Dreamers” (Cornwall Books, 1993) and “The Jewish Americans” (Bantam-Doubleday-Dell, 1992).

He has written numerous articles for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The New Republic, Salon, Beliefnet and many other journals. He appears frequently as a guest on NPR, BBC radio and television, CNN and other broadcast outlets, and he hosted his own interview program, “Inside the Issues with J.J. Goldberg,” on The Jewish Channel. He developed and taught a course in Jewish political studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religions, and he lectures regularly at colleges, synagogues and community centers across the country.

Goldberg’s writing has been honored repeatedly by the Rockower Awards of the American Jewish Press Association, the Better Newspaper Awards of the New York Press Association and the Ippy Awards of the Independent Press Association. In 2009 he was a finalist, along with Nathaniel Popper, in the Deadline Awards, public service category, of the Society of Professional Journalists-New York chapter, honoring the Forward’s coverage of the kosher food industry. In 1987 he won the prestigious Corporation for Public Broadcasting Award and the Ohio State Award for his radio documentary on Jewish popular music, “One People, Many Voices,” which was first broadcast nationally on National Public Radio in 1986. He earned a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in 1985 and a B.A. in Hebrew literature and Islamic studies at McGill University in 1972, along with certificates in film animation from the School of Visual Arts and in kibbutz supply purchasing from the Ruppin Institute.

Before entering journalism, Goldberg lived and worked in Israel through much of the 1970s. He served as an education specialist at the World Zionist Organization and was a founding member of Kibbutz Gezer, near Tel Aviv, serving a term as the kibbutz secretary-general. He has worked in the past as a taxi driver in New York City, a Jewish communal worker in Los Angeles and a construction laborer in Israel.

Goldberg has participated in numerous international colloquia on Israel-Diaspora relations and Jewish communal policy convened by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, the Office of the President of Israel, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and other agencies. He has served as a member of the central committees of the Ihud Kibbutz Federation, the Israel Labor Party Young Guard and Habonim, and was a sharpshooter in the Israel Border Police civil guard. He has been a member of the Pulitzer Prize jury and a board member of the Foundation for Jewish Journalism.

J.J. Goldberg can be reached at goldberg@forward.com