I offered the following remarks at my installation service at Westchester Reform Temple.
I’d like to thank Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, my friend and
mentor, for being here tonight and for her beautiful installation remarks. Rabbi
Lippmann teaches me by her own example that a rabbi’s most important tool is
her or her own self—that the more deeply in touch a rabbi is with his or her
own humanity, the more deeply he or she can serve the human family. You are a
beautiful human being, and this is why you make the world a more beautiful
place.
I’d also like to thank Rabbi Blake, Cantor Abramson, Rabbi
Levy, and Cantor Kleinman, for so beautifully preparing this installation
service, and more importantly, for guiding me into the unique experience of
serving the Jewish people as a member of the clergy. I am humbled by your
dedication to doing this work well and honored to be a part of this team.
Equally, I’d like to thank Helene Gray and Marcy Harris,
along with the whole search and transition committee, for so graciously
welcoming me and my family into this community. Through your warmth, Leah and I
are reminded of the Jewish communities in which we grew up.
Finally, I’d like to thank my family. In particular, I’d
like to thank my parents, Bob and Linda Reiser. You raised me and my siblings
in a home that overflowed with love. At our best, our lives are an attempt
thank you. And I’d like to thank my wife and partner, Leah, and acknowledge our
sweet, curious, five-month-old daughter, Gavi. If you’ve not yet met Leah, then
when you do, you’ll immediately discover her easy people skills, her tremendous
emotional intelligence, and her natural spirituality. It sounds like a line
because I say it all the time, but I say it because it’s true: Leah is my rabbi. I aspire to be more like you.
***
My parents named me Daniel, but their reason for doing so is
unclear. I’m not named after a relative. And they weren’t particularly attached
to the meaning of the name—which is Hebrew for “God is my judge.” They tell me
that they just liked the name. In fact, they liked it so much, that they named my older sister Beth Danielle, and then when I was born, they decided
to recycle the name for me. How’s that for a hand-me-down!
My parents liked that Daniel was a classic Jewish name from
the Bible, although they—and until recently, I—knew very little about my
biblical namesake.[1]
According to the story, Daniel was an Israelite who was
raised not in his people’s homeland, but in faraway Babylon. There, his
non-Jewish neighbors spoke a foreign language, practiced a foreign religion,
and observed foreign cultural customs. Like Joseph or Queen Esther, Daniel
attained a position of influence in the government, despite his outsider status. It's a classic Diaspora story.
But unlike Joseph—who, during his reign in Egypt, adopted an Egyptian name[2]—and
unlike Queen Esther—to whom we refer by her Persian name, Esther, rather than
her Hebrew name, Hadassah[3]—unlike Joseph or Queen Esther, Daniel made a concerted
effort to be called by his Hebrew name.[4] While Joseph or Queen Esther conceal
their Israelite identity until the last possible minute, Daniel, despite his
outsider status—or maybe even because of it—Daniel’s greatest wish is to be
known as a Jew.[5]
As a Jew, I grew up feeling like an outsider in Tallahassee,
FL. I was one of only four Jewish students in my grade. A classmate once asked
me if—since people who celebrate Christmas are called “Christians”—this
classmate asked me if I was a “Chanukkan.”
Appropriately, it was around this time that my mom started coming to our
elementary school to teach the Chanukkah story to my class.[6] I
remember sitting on the rug in my second-grade classroom as she read Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, or as
she posed the math problem to our class: If you need two candles for the first
night, and nine candles for the last night, how many candles total do you need
for the whole holiday?
It was also around this time that my parents starting
throwing their annual Chanukkah parties for our Jewish friends, and that my dad
started writing his annual Chanukkah plays. The plays were parodies of classic Broadway musicals, performed by the kids for the adults, and full of corny puns. In their own silly way, the plays would retell the story of
Chanukkah—not as an epic battle between the Jews of ancient Israel and their
Hellenizing neighbors, but rather as about the small-but-mighty Jewish
community of Tallahassee, FL, fighting to maintain their identity as cultural outsiders.
So despite my having been asked if I was a “Chanukkan,” and
with no small effort by both of my parents, I grew up, like Daniel of the
Bible, taking great pride in being known as a Jew. I have a vivid memory of
being five or six years old and celebrating Simchat Torah at our synagogue. I
was marching around the sanctuary, waving an Israeli flag with glee. I remember
feeling then: the rest of the world has red and green as Christmas colors, but
I have blue and white—Jewish colors, my colors.
Jewish educational theorists[7] talk about the four axes of Jewish learning: what Jewish information you know, what Jewish actions you practice, what Jewish ideals you believe in, and what Jewish communities you feel like you belong to—or, knowing, doing, believing, and belonging. I've come to believe that primary among these is
belonging. The others—knowing, doing, and believing—all
depend upon and are strengthened by how deeply you feel like you belong to the
Jewish people.
By belonging, I don’t mean loyalty. One can feel a deep
sense of belonging, even while struggling with their Jewishness. I know plenty
of Jews who have for many years been estranged from any recognizable Jewish
practice, but nevertheless feel themselves somehow attached to this people and
its heritage. Belonging, then, means not unwavering loyalty, but rather,
feeling like Jewishness is mine—like I have a stake in it—both when I love it
and when I don’t.
I feel a sense of belonging to the Jewish people in two ways.
The first one brought me here; the second one impels me forward.
First: I feel like Jewishness is mine—like I have a stake in
it. Hebrew feels like my language. Rosh Hashanah feels like my new year. Blue
and white feel like my colors. I’m proud that, like my biblical namesake, my
Hebrew name and the name by which I’m known in public are one and the same.
Second: Because my Jewishness belongs to me, I feel that belong with the Jewish people. The Jewish people feels like my home, and as a result, I’m responsible to help care for it. My greatest hope in becoming a rabbi of this congregation is that you’ll feel the same way too—that you and I are responsible to one another, and that together, we’re responsible to the Jewish people and the world.
The Book of Daniel is about a Jewish kid in a non-Jewish
environment who was proud to be a Jew. But it’s more than that. It’s
about a person who found a place where he felt like he belonged. Thank you for making me
feel like I belong here—with the Jewish people, and in particular, here at WRT.
I hope that as a result of our time together, you’ll continue to feel like you
belong here too.
[1]
Such unfamiliarity is not uncommon in the Jewish community. The Book of Daniel
is never read in synagogue—it doesn’t feature as a haftarah portion or appear as one of the holiday readings.
Additionally, the book is written not in Hebrew, but in Aramaic, making it
difficult to access in its original language.
[2] See Gen. 41:45, and also a few verses later, at 41:51-52, where Joseph spurns his homeland in the names he gives his sons.
[3] See Esther 2:7.
[4] See Daniel 1:7 and also 5:12-13.
[5] Daniel refuses to eat non-Kosher food (Daniel 1); Daniel's three friends refuse to bow to the statue of the King (Daniel 3); Daniel is thrown into the lion's den for practicing Jewish prayer (Daniel 6)
[6] On
the likely historical connections between the Book of Daniel and the Maccabean
revolt, see The Jewish Study Bible,
“Introduction to the Book of Daniel.” There, the author argues that, based on
the prophecies in the second half of the book, it is easy to date to the book’s
composition to the era of the Maccabean revolt. In this case, the Book of
Daniel should be understood as historical fiction, intended to uplift the
Maccabees in their struggle to maintain their Jewish identity.
[7] Cyd Weissman in The Lomed Handbook for
Powerful Learning Experiences, published by the Coalition of Innovating
Congregations.