GOLDIN, HYMAN ELIAS

GOLDIN, HYMAN ELIAS (1881–1971), U.S. rabbi, educationist, and author. Goldin was born in Lithuania and studied at the Yeshivah of Vilna where he was ordained as a rabbi in 1900. He immigrated to the United States in the following year. In a chance visit to a study group in a synagogue, the destitute scholar so impressed those present with his erudition that they immediately established a fund to aid him in his studies. He graduated from the New York University Law School in 1909.

Goldin served successively as principal of the Machzike Talmud Torah, the Hebrew Academy of Boro Park, both in Brooklyn, n.y., and the Glens Falls Hebrew Academy. Passionately devoted to education, he established summer camps for children and later a camp for adults at Blue Sky.

From 1932 to 1947 Goldin served as chaplain of the Great Meadow Prison in Comstock, n.y., and his experience there served as the basis for his unique volume The Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo. His main literary activity, however, was devoted to spreading Jewish knowledge and combating antisemitism. His The Case of the Nazarene Re-Opened (1948), which he regarded as his magnum opus, was the fruit of research in the New Testament, on which he became an acknowledged expert.

Among his other publications were Universal History of Israel (4 vols., 1935), Hebrew Criminal Law (1952), and a translation of Ganzfried's Kiẓẓur Shulḥan Arukh. He also wrote introductory books for Hebrew. Goldin published no fewer than 80 books for children based on rabbinic and medieval Jewish literature.

[Irwin Mirkin]