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Eric Goldman is a noted film historian and educator who lectures on Jewish, Yiddish, and Israeli cinema. Dr. Goldman is adjunct professor of cinema at Yeshiva University; he also teaches at Fairleigh Dickinson University and the Streicker Center/Skirball Academy for Adult Jewish Learning in New York. Goldman has also taught at Hebrew Union College, The Jewish Theological Seminary and Queens College. Eric is founder of Ergo Media Inc., a New Jersey-based film distributor, specializing in Jewish-oriented film. Ergo Media is the pioneer in introducing Jewish and Israeli cinema on video in North America.  

Dr. Goldman’s nationally-televised series, “Jewish Cinematheque.” may be seen on JBS TV- The Jewish Broadcasting Service or livestreamed at www.jbstv.org. On the program, Eric interviews filmmakers and film artists about their recently released films. Goldman also teaches for the Wexner, Ruderman and Nahum Goldmann fellowship programs and has served as film scholar-in-residence at Jewish film festivals around the world, most recently in Houston, TX.  

Dr. Goldman is former director of the Jewish Media Service, which was a national clearinghouse on film and television for the North American Jewish community. At JMS, he helped launch the concept of Jewish television programming, film festivals across the country, and greater use of media in Jewish education. Prior to that, he was curator of film for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where he supervised the preservation of Yiddish films. For many years, he developed and moderated the film program at the Center for Jewish History and Yeshiva University in New York City. As a student, Eric hosted radio programs on WRTI in Philadelphia and WCRB in Boston and he later directed The New Jewish Media Project, a New York City-based collective for young Jewish filmmakers. Eric Goldman was also a member of the Educational Advisory Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.  

Dr. Goldman has been teaching college for over three decades. In September 2014, he joined Robert Osborne on TCM: Turner Classic Movies as co-host of a month-long television series, “The Projected Image: The Jewish Experience on Film,” He has provided commentary on Israeli and Jewish-subject films for Turner’s  video-on-demand subsidiary, Filmstruck. In 2012-2013, he was film scholar-in-residence at the Mid-Westchester JCC and he has served as scholar-in-residence at synagogues across North America and Europe. Eric Goldman was adjunct fellow in cinema at The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as a fellow at Brandeis University’s Schusterman Institute for Israel Studies. He was also an educator fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. In the spring of 2004, he conceived and co-chaired a national symposium on “The American Jewish Experience as Reflected in Film,” held at Queens College.  

Eric Goldman received a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University, where he studied with Jay Leyda and Robert Sklar, while a fellow of the Max Weinreich Center for Eastern European Jewish Studies at Columbia University/YIVO. He holds graduate degrees in Contemporary Jewish Studies and Theater Arts from Brandeis University, a B.A. from Temple University and Bachelor of Hebrew Literature from Gratz College. For over a decade, he planned and moderated the Israeli film series, "Lens on Israel," at New York's 92nd Street Y and the Yiddish film series at Hebrew Union College; he also was one of the founders of the New York Yiddish Film Festival. In 1999, Eric became artistic director of the Jack Wolgin Jewish Film Festival, held in suburban Philadelphia. In 2006, he created the Ergo Media "Digital Filmmaking" specialty camp at the NJ Y Camps in northeastern Pennsylvania. He also developed the “Israel Jewish Identity Film Project” and curriculum for the Avi Chai Foundation and the “PJ DVD Project” for PJ Library and The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life.  

Eric Goldman has written extensively on the Jewish experience in film. For over a quarter of a century, he served as film critic for New Jersey's The Jewish Standard. His last book, THE AMERICAN JEWISH STORY THROUGH CINEMA, about the American Jewish encounter with movies, was published in 2013 by The University of Texas Press and recently translated and published in Chinese. He is also the author of the newly revised and expanded VISIONS, IMAGES AND DREAMS: YIDDISH FILM PAST AND PRESENT (Holmes and Meier Publishers, 2011). Prior to that, he authored a monograph on the American Jewish experience through the lens of cinema for American Jewish Committee. Dr. Goldman is currently working on a book about Israel and Israeli cinema.   

In 2000, Eric Goldman served as a juror at the Jerusalem International Film Festival and a decade earlier at the First International Jewish Film Festival in Tiberias, Israel. In the summer of 2011, he was film curator at the International Yiddish Theatre Festival in Montreal and in 2012 he curated the Ring Family Israel Film Festival at Yeshiva University. Eric curated the film program at KulturfestNYC, a Jewish culture festival that took place in New York City in 2015 and serves as film curator for the annual week-long filmfest at the gathering of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. In 2019, Eric developed The First Stockholm Yiddish Film Festival. 

Dr. Goldman has also produced and directed for radio, television, video and film and has developed and authored over a dozen DVDs, including Yidl mitn Fidl, Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer and Lies My Father Told Me. He won a Special Jury Award at the 1996 International Jewish Video Competition.