Rather, my most vivid memory of that summer is from the time that Danny used the F-word.
The memorable part was not the word itself. Of course, I’ve heard and said the word many times before – and of course, I know full well that rabbis aren’t verbal ascetics. If anything, the rabbinic tradition prizes the well-placed use of a colorful word.
The memorable part, rather, was seeing Danny’s passion around an issue that he cared about.
The issue itself is hardly the point. In fact, in retrospect, I can’t even remember what issue it was. It might have been the DREAM Act, or the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, or some other important conversation that was then unfolding in the public square. I can’t recall. But what I do remember, vividly, was Danny saying: “When our teenagers leave Temple Micah and go off to college, we should want them to bring their Judaism to” [this issue] (whatever it was) “and not have wasted their time teaching them the F-ing minutiae” – his voice broke, and his eyes welled up – “of whether you are or aren’t supposed to talk between washing your hands and saying hamotzi.”
The memory is vivid for at least two reasons. First, it showed me that Danny is a person of deep convictions. The things he cares about, he cares about passionately. Second – and, for me, more importantly – it showed me that Danny believes that Judaism is for the world.
As a rabbinical student, I was interested in the world of midrash – the legends that, over the centuries, have been written into the margins of the Torah narrative. I found a certain literary wonder – and, I now recognize, pride – in knowing, for example, that the rabbis of old had imagined that when Isaac learned of the death of his mother, Sarah, he went to stay with her evicted handmaid, Hagar. I learned from Danny that those stories do indeed have a certain beauty to them – but that so far in my rabbinic formation, I had been treating them as fan fiction. Knowing that Isaac visited Hagar might be an interesting piece of Torah trivia (or, worse, “trivial”). Better to ask what that story has to say about the world.
In the pages of the best books, newspapers, and magazines (and also in theater and even stand-up comedy), a great conversation takes place about our country, about illness and death, about technology, about the global rise of authoritarianism, about race and gender, about anxiety. Great thinkers put forth compelling ideas worthy of consideration and debate. But up to that point in my rabbinical formation (and, if I’m being honest, to a greater degree than I wish were the case, still today), I spent my time marveling over the literary wonders of our tradition – forgetting that the greatest among our sages, from Maimonides to Mendelssohn, were not just biblical commentators, but also were philosophers and ethicists, well versed in (and sometimes forcibly thrown into) the most important public debates of their time.
This is not to confuse Judaism for social justice. Rather, it is to recognize that ideas matter – and that Judaism is rich with ideas.
Whenever I go to a Shabbat dinner and I see someone washing their hands and then keeping silent until we’ve said hamotzi, I think of Danny. And I know he wouldn’t begrudge them this ritual. After all, as our other great teacher, Larry Hoffman, has taught us: rituals matter just like ideas matter.
But I’m also reminded that a compelling Judaism for the 21st century will need to be about so much more than just handwashing. It had F-ing better be.