Just days before dying of cancer earlier this month, East Bay judge Stanley Golde tape-recorded a High Holy Day message for his young grandson.
He spoke of the importance of living a moral life, one of wisdom, compassion and justice. He wanted to make sure the precepts that guided his own life were passed on.
Golde, an Alameda County Unified Superior Court judge for a quarter century, died Sunday, Oct. 4 at his Oakland home with his family by his side. He had battled stomach cancer for months. He was 70.
At a funeral service Wednesday of last week, an overflow crowd jammed the chapel at Home of Eternity Cemetery in Oakland to remember a fair-minded, scholarly and generous man with a devilish sense of humor.
Friends and colleagues spoke of Golde’s legal accomplishments, first as a prominent criminal defense attorney who defended victims of McCarthyism and participants in the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, and later as a judge.
And they spoke of a side lesser known to colleagues — his passion for Judaism.
A voracious reader, the judge frequently peppered his conversations with talmudic references. Occasionally, those citations made their way into his courtroom.
At home, he prayed every day.
“He was a very spiritual man and it permeated how he would live [or] sentence people,” said his son Matthew Golde, an Alameda County deputy district attorney.
Born and raised in St. Louis, the late judge was the only child of Russian and Lithuanian immigrants. His father wrote Yiddish poetry and sold jewelry. His mother worked at home.
Golde never forgot his humble origins.
One colleague recalled that walking by the courthouse, Golde would often stop to hand change to the homeless. “I lived through the Depression,” he would say.
A 1952 graduate of Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, the judge was respected by prosecutors and defense attorneys alike and popular with jurors.
“The jurors loved him because he treated them so well,” said Alex Selvin, a Santa Fe attorney and longtime friend of Golde. “He treated them like intelligent people. He was extremely considerate of them.”
A Democrat, Golde was named to the Superior Court in 1973 by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.
He presided over cases including that of William and Emily Harris, the Symbionese Liberation Army members who kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst from her Berkeley apartment in 1974.
Golde pronounced more death penalty verdicts than any other judge in the county and maybe the state. Still, he felt torn between his personal opposition to capital punishment and his duty to uphold death sentences passed down by juries.
He officially retired in 1997, but remained on the bench until July of this year, when his illness forced him to stop.
At his funeral, friends described a family man dedicated to his wife and three children and deeply enamored with his grandson Daniel, who will turn 3 in December.
Rabbi Steven Chester of Oakland’s Temple Sinai, where Golde was a longtime member, read a letter Golde sent the child just weeks after his birth. It spoke of the joy and wonder Golde felt when he saw the newborn cradled in his grandmother’s lap for the first time.
“At that moment, I acknowledged both my mortality and my immortality as I leaned over to kiss you, my grandson Daniel,” the judge wrote.
“I look forward to the days we shall spend together,” he continued. “We will play with each other. We will talk with each other, learn from each other and even discuss such esoteric things as the meaning of life and how we can make our own special contributions to the world in which we live.”
Golde is survived by his wife, Pat, son Matthew, daughter-in-law Julie and grandson Daniel, all of Oakland, son Ivan of Oakland and daughter Claudia of New York. The family asks that contributions be sent to Temple Sinai, 2808 Summit St., Oakland, CA 94609, or Pathways Hospice, 7901 Oakport St., Suite 3500, Oakland, CA 94621.