Golinkin, Noah
GOLINKIN, NOAH
GOLINKIN, NOAH (1914–2003), U.S. rabbi. After studying at various yeshivot and earning a law degree in Vilna, Noah Golinkin emigrated from his native Poland to the United States in 1938. He earned a master's degree in American history at Clark University before enrolling as a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.
In late 1942, Golinkin and fellow jts students Jerome Lipnick and Moshe "Buddy" Sachs, Golinkin established the "European Committee of the Student Body of the Jewish Theological Seminary," to publicize the plight of Europe's Jews. Their first public program was a Jewish-Christian inter-seminary conference on European Jewry, in February 1943. Several hundred students and faculty, including representatives of eleven Christian seminaries, attended the sessions, which alternated between jts and the nearby Union Theological Seminary. Speakers included prominent Jewish and Christian leaders and relief experts.
In a series of letters and articles in the spring of 1943, Golinkin and his colleagues took American Jewry to task for not actively pressing the Roosevelt administration to rescue Jews from Hitler. Their words of rebuke made a strong impression on the Synagogue Council of America, the national umbrella group for Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform synagogues. Shortly after meeting with Golinkin, Lipnick, and Sachs, the Synagogue Council established an emergency committee to raise Jewish and Christian awareness of the Nazi genocide and urge Allied intervention.
Closely following suggestions made by the students, the Synagogue Council undertook a nationwide campaign to coincide with the traditional seven weeks of semi-mourning between Passover and Shavuot. Numerous synagogues adopted the proposals to recite special prayers for European Jewry, limit "occasions of amusement," observe partial fast days and moments of silence, write letters to political officials and Christian religious leaders, hold memorial rallies, and wear black armbands.
The rallies, held around the country on May 2, 1943, in many instances were jointly sponsored by Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbis. The Federal Council of Churches organized memorial assemblies at churches in a number of cities on the same day, although Christian participation overall was modest. The gatherings received significant media coverage and increased public awareness of the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry.
After the war, Golinkin held pulpits in Virginia, Maryland, and elsewhere, and was the founding director of the Board of Jewish Education of Greater Washington, d.c. Fearing that the Hebrew language would become as little known to American Jews as Latin is to most Catholics, Golinkin created the Hebrew Literacy Campaign in 1963. In twelve weeks, every adult in the synagogue could read the prayer book, and the synagogue won the Solomon Schechter Award. He later expanded his efforts and convinced the National Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs to adopt the program. Golinkin's textbook Shalom Aleichem (1978) has sold over 100,000 copies, and the 1981 sequel, Ein Keloheinu, which teaches the Shabbat morning service, has been translated into Russian and Hungarian. His 1987 book, While Standing on One Foot, used in conjunction with a program he called the Hebrew Reading Marathon, teaches adults how to read Hebrew in one day. This book has been used by over 700 synagogues in 45 states, Canada, and Australia. It is estimated that more than 150,000 Jewish adults have learned how to read Hebrew in the two Golinkin programs since the 1960s.
Golinkin was also the originator, in 1989, of the custom, observed by a number of synagogues and Jewish organizations, to plant yellow tulips on Holocaust Remembrance Day as a reminder of the yellow star that Jews were forced by the Nazis to wear on their clothing.
bibliography:
N. Golinkin et al, "The Holocaust Period," in: The Reconstructionist, 9:2 (March 5, 1943), 19–21; R. Medoff, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 11:2 (Fall 1997); N. Golinkin, "The Hebrew Programs" in: Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly, 39 (1977), 62–67; 41 (1979), 193–196; 49 (1987), 226–230; T he Washington Post (March 8, 2003), b7; D. Golinkin, Insight Israel: The View from Schechter (2003), 157–67.