Arthur Goldberg, Permanent Representative to the UN in 1967

 Nadene Goldfoot                                       

Arthur Joseph Goldberg (August 8, 1908 – January 19, 1990) was an American statesman and jurist who served as the 9th U.S. Secretary of Labor, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the 6th United States Ambassador to the United Nations.  He started off as an attorney which he was at age 31, married with a daughter 

with his mother in law living with them, Esther Curgens.

Goldberg was born and raised on West Side, Chicago,Illinois,  the youngest of eight children of Rebecca Perlstein and Joseph Goldberg, Orthodox Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His paternal line derived from a shtetl called Zenkhov, in Ukraine. Goldberg's father, a produce peddler, died in 1916, forcing Goldberg's siblings to quit school and go to work to support the family. As the youngest child, Goldberg was allowed to continue school, but worked jobs on the side, including as a vendor at Wrigley Field and as a library clerk, to help support his family. 

                       Arthur with family

He was childhood friends with future professional boxer Jackie Fields. Goldberg attended classes and lectures at the Hull House, which aimed to educate recent European immigrants. He graduated from Harrison Technical High School at the age of 16. 

Goldberg's interest in the law was sparked by the noted murder trial in 1924 of Leopold and Loeb, two wealthy young Chicagoans who were spared the death penalty with the help of their high-powered defense attorney, Clarence Darrow. Goldberg attended the trial while he was a high school senior. Goldberg later pointed to the case as inspiration for his opposition to the death penalty on the bench, since he had seen how inequality of social status could lead to unfair application of the death penalty. 

Jewish Supreme Court Justices Louis Brandeis and Benjamin Cardozo also served as inspiration to Goldberg from a young age.

"Many people know about Arthur Joseph Goldberg’s incredible Horatio Alger story: The son of poor Orthodox Jewish refugees, who escaped to America fleeing Ukrainian antisemitic pogroms, rises from poverty to become a nationally renowned labor lawyer, Labor Secretary, a Supreme Court Justice, and a United Nations Ambassador.

 However, generally unknown is the degree of his shtadlanut (role as an intercessor on behalf of Jewish communities around the world) and his intervening on behalf of Jews everywhere, including Jews in the Soviet Union and Iraq,  Goldberg (1908-1990) was a dedicated lifelong Zionist committed to the establishment and advancement of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael.

Portrait originally signed by Goldberg.

Goldberg’s career was shaped by liberal Jewish social ethics and by his experience as the son of poor Jewish immigrants, and he always proclaimed his pride in his Jewish heritage: “My concern for justice, for peace, for enlightenment, stems for my heritage.”

The link between his Judaism and his liberalism was notably reflected in his family Passover Seders, where he would retell the story of the Jewish Exodus as analogous to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. He remained active in Jewish and Zionist affairs, serving as president of the American Jewish Committee (1968-69); as chairman of the Board of Overseers of the Jewish Theological Seminary (1963-69); as the honorary chairman of the National Advisory Council of the Synagogue Council of America (1964); and, as discussed below, as Chair for the American Jewish Commission on the Holocaust (1980)."