This article was first published in the Marin Subud Center Newsletter and is reprinted here with permission.
How fortunate we are that we knew Isaac, that he was a part of and cared deeply for our Subud group.
I hope you will enjoy the below tributes to Isaac as much as I have. Isaac not only touched the lives of people all around the world–a few of who write below–he worked directly to help save the lives of 300 (and counting) young children in Bolivia in need of heart surgery. A remarkable thing.
—Meldan Heaslip
Renee Goff said: In all the years we were together, Isaac always tried to follow the tenets of SUBUD and Bapak’s advice. He wasn’t perfect, but he was a good man, husband, father, friend and employer. And he had a really good sense of humor which made up for any minor shortcomings. And I miss him.”
From Peter Filippelli ~ Isaac! A mountain of a man. A man with a sense of the future. A man with the knack of how to make ten cents into a dollar. A successful business man. Not only was he successful but he used this talent to advance Subud and particularly Subud Marin.
Aside from this unique talent, he was my warm and loyal brother. A man who, despite an occasional doubt about Subud, stayed faithful to Subud and Bapak. To his end, he professed a deep commitment to the latihan.
He accepted his coming death with grace and surrender. He told me during recent phone calls that he thanked God for his success and family. He knew he was dying but accepted this with surrender. I remember telling him that he was an example as to how to face death. I confessed to him that when it was my time I would probably break down in tears and act like a spoilt child: I don’t want to go. He laughed and actually comforted me despite his angst.
God bless my dear brother. I will miss you deeply.
From Miftah Leath ~ I first met Isaac when I was 19, cleaning house for Vivana Brodey, who introduced us. I was not yet in Subud, but Vivana made sure I got invited to all the social gatherings, and at that time I could sit outside the latihan before being opened. Subud Berkeley rented the Val Bovie ballet studio for sequential latihans. The women went first. I loved the image of all these big men loitering outside a ballet studio, hanging by the curb smoking cigarettes, waiting to go in for latihan.
Isaac had just opened his yarn shop on University Avenue and I started buying yarn from him. He and I had a compatible sense of humor–a comfortable wise-guy way of talking to each other. He was a kind of indulgent older brother and I was a sassy little sister. He was always patient and seemed very wise to me, and his business succeeded and grew. Vivana was into astrology at one time and told me Isaac had many planets in Taurus, and that his chart had a large influence on his business acumen. He told me once, not that he particularly loved business, but that he was good at it and he may as well do that as anything else. Later in life he would share the other things he was good at, like his beautiful photography.
It seemed to me that if God wanted to make something happen on earth, God would just have to grab onto Isaac and pull to make things in the material world move. He was a monumental presence in my Subud life, one I thought would always be around. He was my big brother, and I will miss him.
From Reynold Weissinger ~ I moved with my family to Marin from San Francisco in 1969, a year after the Marin Subud group was started. I think Isaac moved from Berkeley a few months later, perhaps just after we bought the Subud house.
He was a happy addition to the group, energetic with a great sense of humor. Soon after, he moved his business, Dharma Trading, to San Rafael. Marin was a close group at that time, and we did everything together. A number of us who lived in Fairfax, including Isaac, would meet at the bakery after work for coffee. There were frequent activities to raise funds, like dinners, rummage sales, a successful film series and a music festival.
After purchasing the Subud House in San Anselmo we had many work parties. Isaac was a fixture at these events. When we decided to remove some pavement for a planter, Isaac was on the jackhammer. A very unpleasant job that took hours. He also became a helper. And married Renee! A beautiful wedding.
About 1973, Isaac, Yohannan Kalisher and Juan Lorenzo Hinojosa started an enterprise called Dharma Mercantile, to manufacture jewelry. The business took off and eventually employed about 50 Subud members. It attracted many new people to our group, which grew to two hundred members. One of the largest Subud groups in the world, and we had many international visitors, including Bapak and his family.
The last time I saw Isaac we met at the Marin Subud house to discuss major remodeling and repairs. I knew he was having health problems. This was one more thing he wanted to take care of, facing an uncertain future. We both loved that place, filled with so much history and so many happy memories. We were friends for 50 years. He will be missed.
From Rachman Cantrell ~ I thought of Isaac as eternal in this physical realm and never suspected he could actually leave it. Isaac was an impressive presence and had a huge impact on the material development of Subud. He started a number of Subud enterprises over the years involving many members along with his main business Dharma Trading Company, which is still going strong.
Isaac is kind of an unsung hero. He did not put himself forward but worked quietly in the background to make the world a better place with his charitable projects helping kids in South America. His efforts saved lives and improved the lives of many others. He is an example of what it means to put the benefits of the latihan into practice in the world. Some details on his charitable enterprise can be found here.
Isaac loved riding his motorcycles and photographing amazing sights on his travels. His photos were truly beautiful (find them on Facebook).
He will truly be missed by those left behind, but I have no doubt he will be active in his next big adventure in the world beyond this one!
From Raymond Lee – “Here’s the thing…” or The Lessons I Learned from Isaac
The geese glowed in the dark.* Forced to migrate from California, they stood silently glaring on the lawn of their new home, livening up an otherwise drab corner of Wisma Subud – Isaac’s container had arrived.
Isaac had brought his geese, his family – Renee, Sampson, and David – and familiar belongings to an unfamiliar land. Hired to help the hotel and Kalimantan projects that Bapak had initiated, his down-to-earth California-chill approach would be tested by the frustrations of Jakarta life, and the cantankerous community of Wisma Subud residents.
“I just wanted a swimming pool,” sighed Isaac, “but the powers that be think that kids in bathing costumes will bring moral turpitude to the compound.” Isaac had proposed a pool, but what he called the “morality committee” vehemently resisted his plan. He sighed; his hang-dog expression even droopier than usual. I could see his frustration. But then, being Isaac, he shrugged and let go of his dream of swimming in the compound. That was Isaac: he didn’t get hung up on things.
After a meeting in Bapak’s office in the S Widjojo Centre, he turned to me, “Here’s the thing… Bapak sees people the way they are, he doesn’t expect them to change or be something else, but just what they are.” That was a revelation to Isaac. Yet, he was like that himself, taking people as they were – most of the time – not trying to change them.
But most of all, as his plastic geese proclaimed, Isaac was Isaac. He made no attempt to adopt Javanese customs as many foreigners in Wisma Subud did in a quest for spirituality. Always the pragmatist, spirituality was a turn off. Isaac never talked about life forces or angels, no. He was far more interested in importing gym equipment from Nautilus than nattering about the nafsu. So, I was curious to see Isaac on one of the high points of the Wisma Subud calendar, the end of Ramadhan, when hundreds of Indonesian members, dressed to the nines, brought their families to pay their respects to the man they regarded as their father, Bapak. I saw Isaac and family sweltering in the humid horde, inching forward to where Bapak and family sat. For Indonesians, this was a deeply moving moment: touching someone of Bapak’s stature would bring them good fortune. That was not the case for Isaac. After more than an hour or perspiring, Isaac finally got to lower his great bulk on to his knees and greet Bapak. Bapak smiled graciously. Isaac struggled to his feet, moved down the line until he saw me, “Raymond, I don’t know what that was, but it certainly wasn’t spiritual!”
Though Isaac stuck to his ways, Indonesians warmed to him. They were noticeably friendlier to Isaac than they were to me. What did he have that I didn’t? Was it the plastic lawn geese that glowed in the dark? I was trying hard to fit in, through language, gesture, and behavior, yet Isaac was accepted effortlessly. Finally, it dawned on me, Isaac was himself, what you saw was what you got, there was no hidden agenda. People felt safe with him. A big lesson for me.
As one of the most practical and straight forward people I ever met, he asked down-to-earth questions that had me scratching my head. “Here’s the thing, Raymond. Why are we struggling to raise all this money for this hotel? We could buy storage facilities in downtown LA yielding 12%.” I looked at him, couldn’t he see the vision for what we were doing? Why would we buy something as mundane as a storage facility?
Isaac was frustrated with the way things were going on the projects, many things did not make sense to him. Then, when PT S Widjojo, the hotel project, and the bank sank into the Anugraha vortex of spiraling debt, Isaac packed up his geese, and took his family back home. I never saw the geese again, but I would see Isaac, this time in California.
After I had given a presentation about PT S Widjojo to a Subud group, Isaac offered to put me up at his home, promising me a tour of California on the way. And that is what I got – a five-hundred-mile drive from San Diego to Fairfax, during which Isaac gleefully pointed out various landmarks, none of which were visible. We were driving at night.
The next morning, we sat down in his office cum den. “That’s me when I was a cab driver in New York City”, he said, pointing to a photo on the wall. Isaac somehow always looked like a biker – minus the tattoos. He got out his mail-order catalogue, a thick publication printed in black and white on cheap paper. “I prepare this every year and send it to schools who order t-shirts and dyes. I do it all myself,” he said proudly. Dharma Trading was a simple business and Isaac was a master of cost control. “How do you keep costs down?” I asked, as he showed me his warehouse in Fairfax. “I never use lawyers”, he whispered. I was puzzled: How could Isaac survive without one? Then I realized, when he got into a dispute, he would simply sit down and work it out with the other guy. That was who he was.
When next we met, it was in Innsbruck at the World Congress. “Still selling t-shirts and tie-dye materials?” I asked. “Yes, and I am buying my competitor.”
I’ll admit, his business seemed boring. It did not have the daring and dash of the great Subud enterprises, which by now had all collapsed. Where was his vision. Where was his burning desire to change the world? All he wants to do is make money, I thought.
“I’ll double my turnover to more than two million dollars a year,” he went on. I nodded, thinking to myself, that’s nothing, the Subud mining venture will generate billions.
Then he told me that he was spending time in South America. “Doing what?” I asked. “Funding cataract operations for poor families.” I was startled.
In Christchurch, New Zealand, I caught up again with a very different Isaac. He was trimmer and slimmer. Gone was the California-casual look, he was dressed in stylish black.
“What happened? You are not your usual casual self.” “You won’t believe what I’m doing now?” grinned Isaac. “I’m designing women’s clothes!” He was amazed at himself, and so was I. Even his charitable activities in South America had expanded to funding open-heart surgery for poor families.
That was the last time we met, but a few years later, he shared with me photographs he had taken as he toured on his bike – living the biker dream. They were stunning, moving meditations of the California countryside.
Then it struck me. Isaac had transformed. From proud owner of tacky plastic lawn geese, he was now a master photographer making wonderful images. Without spiritual claims, or crisis, or visions, Isaac had evolved from purely making money through enterprise, to doing significant charitable work, to being an incredible artist. And all the while his business kept growing until the turnover was in seven figures. He wasn’t an enterprise guy, a Susila Dharma guy, or a SICA guy, but all of them rolled into one. He was a living reality that the latihan, which he had done diligently for so many decades, transforms us. He had become a complete human being.
I will miss the big guy as he sets off on the next stage of his journey. I can only imagine that when he meets the angels tasked with interrogating him about his deeds and misdeeds, he will pull them aside, and with a wink of his gentle brown eyes, he will grin and say, “Here’s the thing…”
In memory of Isaac Goff: Keep it simple, keep it real, and keep at it.
With deep affection, your brother, Raymond
*Editor’s note: Renee loved what Raymond wrote above, but noted that there were no plastic geese (or flamingos, or plastic anything) 😊
One of Isaac’s talents was writing. The story he wrote about why he got into business is worth reading and can be found HERE.
When I was 21years old and lived in Inverness I traveled to Marin Subud Center. My name then was Annette Blakeman. Renee opened me and I am forever grateful. The Marin group was very caring and supportive. I remember Isaac and Renee being kind to all. I am sorry for the loss of Isaac’s presence with his family and the center. I am so appreciative that Isaac and Renee followed Bapak’s advice through the years and helped so many. In those days the group was really big and I remember Bapak arriving at the center and his words and smile. A moment in time that stays with me to this day.
Somewhere in the archives and annuls of Subud California, there is a brief video of an interview Issac conducted of our daughter Fiona, who at approximately age 12, had lost most of her of vision, some language, and some coordination to the neurodegenerative condition which eventually brought on her death in 2015.
She was lovingly supported at the Regional Congress and the subsequent kid’s camp that year in the Santa Cruz mountains (was it Camp Campbell?) during which Issac recorded interviews of various attendees.
I’m not sure how I came to see that video years later, years ago, but if anyone knows where to find a copy, and wishes to post it here, it shares my fondest remembrance of that dear brother, and a facet of his character we did not always see.
Tye-dye would not have been possible for so many artists, if it had not been for Issac.
The music group the Greatful Dead,
With their Tye-Dye merchandise were able fund the Lithuanian Basket Ball Dream team. That is just one small example of the power of Tye-dye, love of people, music, Bill Graham . All of this was possible because of Issac.
Every August we tye-dye in Memory of Gerry Garcia . Now we can light a candle and say Shalom to Issac.
Peace and Comfort to Renee and family.
Love, the Snyder family
I did not know Isaac very well. He was North Bay, I was East Bay. But when I was making tie-dye clothing as a fundraiser for children with HIV/AIDS in the early 1990’s he donated enough dye to make hundreds if not thousand of dollars to help the mostly hemophiliac children in Seattle. This eventually launched a thrift store yielding enough money to open a summer camp for the kids who just wanted a taste of normal life before they often succumbed to the disease. His heart was in the right place, he knew that being a successful businessman brought him the ability to help others. I consider this the primary purpose of our lives here, to help others suffer less if we can possible do that. He did that, his life was lived as best anyone can do.
I remember Isaac with great fondness, even though I did not know him well. I worked at Dharma Mercantile for a year or more, and then briefly at Dharma Trading after it moved to San Rafael.
Some say that the sense of smell is the closest to memory. I remember Yuban Coffee, Marlboro and Camel cigarettes and Bear Claw pastries. These were the outer fuel of Dharma Mercantile. Back then, digital calculators with glowing numbers were new. Life was simpler. Now, all that is part of a dim past. That era is long-gone, but Isaac lives on in our hearts and memories as someone who could always be admired.
I sensed in Isaac an air of both confidence and good cheer, an attitude probably born of experience, capacity and scrupulous honesty. I have never known a more diligent, ethical business man and I do not expect to meet his peer again in this life.
I remember occasions where Isaac returned much-needed multi-thousand dollar checks to customers when they had taken an inappropriate discount. Terms were 2%/10 days, not 2%/20 days. Isaac expected no less of big customers than he demanded of himself.
I applaud his success on so many fronts, and my prayers and best wishes go out to his family. He is missed. If there are Harleys in Heaven, I bet Isaac is cruising off into the light of a new dawn.
Isaac is my good friend and I will miss him but I will be so happy for the time we had together and things he taught me .l learned (from him ) that everyone is good at something..it could be pitching a baseball.reading a book ,being a Doctor . For Isaac that wasn’t good enough you need to take that gift and make the world a better , kinder place by using this skill. He never pushed Subud or his beleaf in Bapak’with me but we would talk often about his experiences through ladehan . We all know that Isaac was very good at making money and how he took those riches to make a-change , Renee and Isaac gave the gift of life to children who were in need of hart transplants . Isaac is my good friend and I will miss him but I will be so happy for the time we had together.