From a Sports Loving Jewish Boy in Brooklyn to a Household Name in South Florida Sports Television

An Interview with Florida Panthers Television Play by Play Analyst Steve “Goldie” Goldstein.

Interview and article by:

Ira G Shanes &

Aileyahu Y Shanes

Throughout Chanukah, all of the active South Florida sports teams with an active available date in their schedules host an annual Jewish Heritage Night. This event not only allows Jews a night to celebrate their heritage openly and with pride amongst thousands of spectators, it also allows the South Florida sports teams and the Jewish community an opportunity to come together and celebrate their relationship with each other.

Though the Florida Panthers are not hosting a Jewish Heritage event this Chanukah, due to date unavailability, they have done so several times in the past. Jewish bands are brought in to provide pre and post-game performances, as well as throughout the course of intermissions, and a giant menorah is brought on the ice for a public lighting. Those who take part in the event receive a special Panthers Heritage Night t-shirt and even get the opportunity to take a post-game shot on the ice. The Panthers also accommodate orthodox Jews and all those who keep kosher by providing, throughout the entire season, a kosher concession stand where one can purchase anything from a hot dog or hamburger to a potato knish or a pastrami sandwich. On top of all that, the space directly next to the kosher concession stand acts as a sort of de-facto BB&T Center Shul, where one can often find a minyan to daven Mincha, Maariv, or both.

Considering the upcoming Jewish Heritage events, The Jewish Home thought that an interview with the Jewish voice and face of the Panthers, Dolphins and other South Florida sports teams would be a way to build on the relationship with the Jewish community and the South Florida sports community. Thankfully, Steve Goldstein was extremely generous to set aside a significant amount of time for a Jewish Home interview.

Q: Every Jewish family has their own roots and origins, where do the Goldstein’s originate from?

A: I know that my mother's side is from Russia. My dad's side I've never been sure. I've never been told where they are from. I think by design… so I'm not sure what's going on there.

Q: When did your family come to America?

A: The great grandparents came here… way back, I'm talking early teens [1913-1919], 100 years ago maybe.

Q: Did your great grandparents come directly to New York?

A: I believe they did, yes. My whole family has been in Brooklyn since forever.

Q: What types of memories do you have of your grandparents in terms of Jewish heritage?

A: Pretty much every holiday really. You know in Brooklyn, it’s a big Jewish community, so with any kind of holiday you had a lot of people from the community celebrating it. Pretty much every big holiday; Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover. My mother's father died when I was very young so my grandmother was always around, and my dad's parents moved down to Florida when I was young, when I was around eight or nine years old, so we'd go down sometimes for Passover to their house, but otherwise we would be up in New York and my grandmother used to come over, my mother's mother. So not a huge contingency [in Brooklyn] if you will, because, like I said at the time, when I was growing up, my grandfather on my mother's side had passed away and my grandparents already lived in Florida.

Q: Did your grandmother make any special old school "Jewish" foods for the Holidays or Shabbos, or are there any particular "Jewish" foods that you remember, as a child, enjoying from the old school style of Jewish cooking?

A: She would always make food. I used to go over to her house as a little kid on Friday and Saturday nights in Brighton Beach and I would stay over actually watching Rangers games with her. She actually liked hockey and liked other sports like football. She would always make meatballs and she would make the challah bread. We would dunk the bread into the meatball sauce and I would eat the whole thing. She used to make chicken liver, I remember that. It always used to be a big eating feast when I used to go over to her house. I always tried to go by her Friday and Saturday nights… It was always fun over there going to her apartment.

Q: Did your parents end up keeping any of the Jewish traditions?

A: Yeah and they still do. More so on the High Holy days. We would go to temple. On Yom Kippur we would walk to the Temple and we would fast as long as anybody could. Nothing above and beyond really. But my mother, her father was kosher so my mother grew up in a kosher house. That changed I think after my grandfather passed away, I'm not exactly sure when it stopped but sometime after he passed away my grandmother didn’t keep it kosher after that. Yeah, but when my mother grew up, she was kosher and her father was very religious. He ran a tight ship from what I've been told.

Q: If your mother's parents kept kosher at one point, did she go to a Jewish day school?

A: No, I think she went to a regular public school but I'm not sure before high school where she went. I know she went to public high school. I do know that. I did go to a Yeshiva for a year or two when I was very young, I remember that in Brooklyn.

Q: Which Yeshiva?

A: I was so young I don’t even remember. I must have been five or six years old.

Q: Did you have experience any instances of ant-Semitism directed at you growing up in Brooklyn? I would imagine having the last name "Goldstein" could have made you a target?

A: Nope. There was none of that in Brooklyn. Never. It was a melting pot. There were a lot of Italians where I grew up, a lot of Jewish and no, I never really knew what anti-Semitism was to be honest with you because it just did not exist. Everybody was there and everybody treated everybody like the same.

Q: I know you have two boys, are you planning on doing a Bar Mitzvah for them.

A: Well their already older and both have already had their Bar Mitzvah's.

Q: Have you ever been to Israel or taken your boys to Israel?

A: I’ve never been, I would like to go. I will do that eventually. My younger son, he is fifteen, is going next summer on a program.

Q: Is your son going on a birthright program?

A: No, I forget what it is called. It is six weeks and there is schooling throughout the six weeks and they just do all types of activities.

Q: Do you guys do Seders at your house or your parents’ house?

A: Yeah, we go to my wife’s brother and their family. They live in Boca so we try to go on Passover and try to make it through as much of the Seder and questions. You know I think people should try to do it. Whether it is a half an hour or an hour. We can certainly do better. I’m hoping as my kids get older it sort of clicks more and they want to do it the way it is supposed to be done… Unfortunately, we lost a lot of it through grandparents not being around… It hasn’t been as much of a huge family gathering and it's more of just what we do… We lost some of that for numerous reasons. That’s something in my life that I regret a little bit but I’m hoping that when my kids get older that [it] is something that they pick up.

Q: Looking forward, what are the things that you want your children to take with them in terms of your Jewish heritage?

A: Making sure that you are proud to be a Jew. I think that is something that we have been trying to have ingrained in us. For myself personally and my kids. I hope that there is a pride in being Jewish and that they are [proud to be Jewish]. I am proud to be Jewish, I think there are so many great things about the Jewish religion and the Jewish community and the people that I know that are Jewish. As they grow up, [I hope] they are proud to be Jewish and really have the [great set of] values, and [have] what the values represent even more so than the actual religion part of it. More of the lifestyle things… That we try to hold ourselves to a higher standard. I think it's much tougher today, there is so much going on with technology. I hope, as time passes, they grasp that to a certain extent.

Q: Moving on to your South Florida heritage and roots, what caused you to pursue broadcasting in South Florida of all places?

A: After College at Syracuse University I went home to New York and did different media stuff. At the time there seemed to be a lot of opportunity in South Florida because some teams were new, except for the Dolphins of course, this was in ’94. The Panthers and Marlins had literally just started and they were only five years into the NBA with the Miami Heat. So, I was doing freelance work in New York in addition to working with CBS radio network full time and that’s when the sports station WQAM started in Miami. I [started] doing some freelance work for them in New York, doing some reports and stuff, and I asked them and a few other people who worked there, "Hey, if I moved down to Florida would you be able to use me?", and they all said yes! So, thinking to take a shot at being on the air more often, I basically took a one-way flight [to South Florida]. I was 24 years old and thought I could always go back to New York if I want to. So that’s how it happened.