The Book of Daniel

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.

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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.

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[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.