“When I was a little girl the rabbi used to come to the yeshiva every week with questions. He would always have candies for those who answered right. However, one time he did not have candy, but he said he had something else, something more meaningful, and then he took a stone out of his pocket, a stone that had once been a part of the Western Wall of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. While giving me the stone he said: ‘’Remember that one day you will have to bring it back to Jerusalem because if everybody would take stones with them from the Kotel, what would be left of it?’” recalls Barbara. “I carried that stone from the time I was eight years old until the Six-Day War.”
Before the Six-Day War she had not told anyone about the stone. After the Six-Day War, when she told the story to her family, “they wanted to walk with me to the Western Wall. I put the stone there, as once the ancient builders had done. There was a purpose in my life for all this.”
The purpose of Barbara Goldstein’s life became making sure that all Jews “feel a part of the amazing historical, real journey of our nation in our homeland,” she says enthusiastically. “Israel is yours even when you live in the Diaspora.”
Barbara Goldstein, the Deputy Executive Director and past National Vice President of Hadassah, was born and raised in New Jersey. She made aliyah in 1998 and plunged into pro-Israel activism, chairing Youth Aliyah, two Hadassah National Conventions, the departments of Hadassah Travel and Tourism, Jewish Education, Programming, the Department of Aliyah, and it’s Department of Soviet Jewry.
Barbara used to remark: “The State of Israel is the greatest gift to Jewish people in 2,000 years. Titus, the Emperor of Rome, once said that Jews would never live here, and look where Titus is, and look where we are now. The Jewish people need to feel the connection to the Land – no matter where they live.”
In 1973-74, Barbara lived in Jerusalem for one year with her family during the Yom Kippur War. She served as a volunteer in the Public Relations Department of the Medical Center, working directly with the wounded soldiers, reporters, congressmen, and other dignitaries, and acting as their escort through Kiryat Hadassah.
She has been a member of the Cabinet of the American Zionist Movement and served as a Commissioner on the Joint Authority for Jewish and Zionist Education. She had also served as a delegate at eight World Zionist Congresses in Jerusalem.
Today Barbara represents Hadassah on the boards of Hadassah Neurim, Meir Shfeyah, Ramat Hadassah Szold, the World Zionist Organization, Keren Kayemet and the Prime Minister’s special commission on the Legacy of Theodor Herzl. A Yeshiva University High School graduate, Barbara also served as principal of the Hebrew High School in Camden, NJ. As a dynamic speaker, she has devoted her life to promoting Zionist/Jewish education and love of Israel.
Barbara, the widow of Cantor Mordechai Goldstein, was honored on the 63rd Israeli Independence Day with lighting one of the twelve torches at the National Ceremony on Mount Herzl.
Mrs. Goldstein’s proudest role, however, is being the mother of three children and grandmother of five grandchildren. May they all follow in her amazing footsteps!
