A sit-down with Pocatello’s first female rabbi

POCATELLO – A bird is protesting in the background of Sara Goodman’s house, and she is worried that her tortoise, who likes to push around the furniture, will move his cage again.

“It’s been a day,” she laughs as the February snow piles up outside.

Goodman, Pocatello’s first female rabbi, is a Chicago native who moved to the Gate City shortly after the pandemic. She came here to be closer to family after experiencing the deaths of several friends.

“It was really hard to leave,” Goodman says.

But the opportunity to serve as a rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Pocatello was hard to pass up. Goodman started this journey as a teenager, though she didn’t know where it would lead.

At the time, she attended a Jewish summer camp that taught children to lead service. She loved the creative ways they taught Hebrew, especially through music.

She began taking guitar lessons, and a month after starting, her rabbi had her performing during services.

“I think I ended every service with ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ because it was what I knew how to play,” Goodman says with a laugh.

She later joined a workshop taught by noted Jewish musician Debbie Friedman.

“I was the youngest one there,” Goodman says, recalling how nervous she was when tasked with teaching music and being critiqued.

When asked if these early experiences inspired her to become a rabbi, Goodman says no.

“I wanted to become a cantor,” she says.

A cantor leads the congregation in prayer and song and is a repository of liturgical knowledge.

Someone associated with the local cantorial school told Goodman to take voice lessons. It was the 1980s, and women had only been able to hold these positions for the last decade.

“It was very competitive,” she says.

A recent photo of Goodman | Courtesy Sara Goodman

Three decades later, Goodman and her family moved to a town that hadn’t had a rabbi in 100 years.

Goodman was excited by the challenge of becoming Pocatello’s first female rabbi and one of the few Jewish religious leaders in Idaho. She began a year-long rabbinic program, an intense course of study considering rabbinic school typically takes two to four years.

Goodman was ordained on June 17, 2023.

Now, Goodman can perform weddings, the only life event that must be performed by a rabbi in Judaism. But this is just one of her many rabbinic responsibilities, including teaching Hebrew, composing and presenting drashes (lessons or sermons), and presiding over other major life events.

Although she enjoys being a rabbi, Goodman admits it doesn’t come without challenges. She still gets nervous before every drash (interpreting sacred texts). Teaching Hebrew can be difficult, due to the different alphabet and the highly organized structure of the language. Many students find it overwhelming. But Goodman doesn’t mind, saying these challenges keep her on her toes.

When not tending to her congregation or teaching Hebrew, Goodman creates art, specifically sculpture and illustration. Some of her work can even be found at Gate City Coffee. She’s learning the banjo as well. No word yet on what her bird and furniture-moving tortoise think about her new musical endeavor.

For more information about Goodman or Temple Emanuel click here.

Recent photo of Goodman playing banjo. | Courtesy Sara Goodman