Goldin, Judah
GOLDIN, JUDAH
GOLDIN, JUDAH (1914–1998), U.S. scholar and teacher. Goldin was born in New York City. He received his B.S.S. from the City College of New York and his B.H.L. from the Seminary College of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1934). He received his M.A. in English literature from Columbia University and an M.H.L. and D.H.L. from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Ordained by the jts in 1939, he was also dean and professor of aggadah.
He then taught religion, Jewish literature, and history at several institutions. He held faculty positions at Duke University and the University of Iowa before moving on in 1958 to a 15-year stint at Yale University, teaching classical Judaica. Then, for an even longer period, he was professor of post-biblical Hebrew literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Upon his retirement in 1985, he became professor emeritus there.
Goldin was a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and chairman of the Yale Judaica Research Committee. He was also a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fulbright Research Scholar and served as a consultant on Judaica to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Goldin's particular scholarly concern was rabbinic Judaism, and he was a skillful and graceful translator. For many years he served as editor of the Yale Judaica Series and he edited The Jewish Expression (1970) and Shirta: The Song at the Sea Midrash (1971), among other books. In 1988 the Jewish Publication Society inaugurated its Scholars of Distinction series with Goldin's book of collected essays, Judah Goldin: Studies in Midrash and Related Literature. In 1996 he received the National Foundation for Jewish Culture's Jewish Cultural Achievement Award for Textual Scholarship.
Among Goldin's works are The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan (1955), an annotated translation; The Living Talmud (1957), a compendium of medieval commentaries on Pirkei Avot; and "The Period of the Talmud" (in L. Finkelstein (ed.), The Jews…, 1 (19603), 115–215).
[Jack Reimer /
Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)]