GOLDSTEIN, SIDNEY EMANUEL

GOLDSTEIN, SIDNEY EMANUEL (1879–1955), U.S. Reform rabbi. Goldstein, who was born in Marshall, Texas, was ordained at the Hebrew Union College in 1905. From 1905 to 1907 he held the position of assistant superintendent at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital. When the Free Synagogue was founded by Stephen S. Wise in 1907, Goldstein became associate rabbi and established and directed its Social Service department. The services instituted by Goldstein included a child-placement service and a program for assisting former mental patients to readjust to life outside the institution. Goldstein was a vigorous supporter of the labor, woman's suffrage, and civil rights movements, regarding the rabbi as a pioneer in social and community reform and the synagogue as the instrument for implementing them. A founder of the Jewish Institute of Religion, Goldstein was professor of social service at the Institute from 1922. Long interested in the field of marriage counseling, Goldstein served as chairman of both the New York State Conference on Marriage and the Family from 1936 to 1947 and the Jewish Institute on Marriage and the Family from 1937. His numerous public activities included: chairman of the Central Conference of American Rabbis' Commission on Social Justice (1934–36); chairman of the executive committee of the War Resisters League of America (1930–40); chairman of the Joint Committee on Unemployment (1930–34); and executive committee member of the State of New York Committee on Discrimination in Employment (1941–44). His book, The Synagogue and Social Welfare (1955), studied the meaning of the synagogue and its relation to American life.