Goodman was the ninth of twelve children born to poor Jewish emigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, David Goodman came to the United States in 1892 from Warsaw in partitioned Poland and became a tailor. His mother, Dora Grisinsky, came from Kaunas. They met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Goodman's birth. With little income and a large family, they moved to the Maxwell Street neighborhood, an overcrowded slum near railroad yards and factories that was populated by German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish immigrants.