By Jonathan Feldstein
On the conclusion of Shloshim
Danny Allen was my rabbi, my teacher, my friend, my boss, and my mentor.
I had the privilege of being part of his life, and he of mine, since 1983. I arrived at college that year as and made my way to Hillel to establish my Jewish home on campus. Danny was my Hillel rabbi and we connected instantly. I became president of Hillel in the second semester of that year and my conversations with Danny grew in frequency and substance.
There was one conversation I’ll never forget. I can see myself walking toward Danny’s office at the end of the long hall on an upper floor of the student center. I don’t recall going into see him with any particular agenda, but he had one. It was one of the many learning moments I’d have with him.
As if planned and scripted in his head, Danny asked, “What would you do if you have a decision to make with two possible outcomes, but each one being a bad outcome?”
Being the ever-knowing freshman that I was, my reply came simply. “I’d choose the least bad option.”
Danny paused, and shook his head slightly. “No. You look for a third good option.”
That lesson stuck with me since, and is a model I’ve tried to embrace throughout my life.
I didn’t understand when he left Hillel at the end of my freshman year, in another learning moment in what would become my career in Jewish communal work, that changing jobs was normal, like shuffling a deck of cards. Ultimately, we are all playing the same game. Sometimes we have winning hands and change jobs because we choose to do so; to grow, get a raise, and take on new challenges. Sometimes we have losing hands, and career changes happen because of internal politics or board members playing a trump card.
I remember affectionately suggesting “Maybe you can go underground like Abbie Hoffman, have plastic surgery, and come back as someone else before my senior year.”
I was privileged to have a close relationship with Danny over the ensuing decades. This was his hallmark. He embodied making and nurturing personal relationships. A conversation never went by that he didn’t ask about my family. He cared.
That was reflected in his joining my family to celebrate our oldest daughter becoming a bat mitzvah the year after we made Aliyah. He had pride in seeing former students doing well, particularly in Jewish communal work. I can picture him in the back of the crowd as I spoke, publicly imparting to my daughter the blessings and hopes I had for her. He was shepping nachas for sure, but he was also watching closely, evaluating.
Looking beneath the surface was something I learned that Danny did often as well. He was always assessing, conferring, and planning based on changing realities. Every detail mattered. Standing in a parking lot together once, he observed how something as seemingly insignificant as a bumper sticker on a particular vehicle depicted a more detailed reality. I’d have never thought to look at, much less assess the significance of a bumper sticker.
He taught me numerous things that still impact me and make me a better professional and a better person.
Like others I am sure, I had the occasion to disappoint Danny once in a while. Because he wanted everyone to be their best, and he wanted that for me, his validation mattered. He articulated his disappointment but didn’t hold it against me. He wanted me to grow and learn. That made me better. That was his raison d’etre.
After getting settled in my new life in Israel, I called Danny one afternoon to share an idea I had for the position he had just assumed with a major American Jewish organization. He liked the idea. We agreed to meet the next time he was in Israel. During that meeting he reiterated that the idea was good, and he liked my reasoning. But then he shared with me all the reasons that it wouldn’t work.
If he had an agenda in our conversation my freshman year I didn’t know it. But Danny pivoted our Jerusalem conversation with a clear agenda, and told me the reason he wanted to meet was because he wanted to hire me to be his representative in Israel. That was an honor and an opportunity not to pass up. A few months later he became my boss. We worked and strategized closely together as he set out to put together a team that could do its best for Israel and the Jewish people. He innovated unique ideas and allowed, guided, and encouraged me to do the same.
In the first year of our working together in this new relationship, my mother died. Other than the grief, I had the responsibility to fly back to the US regularly during her illness and shiva, and to clean out her house and settle her estate. Toward the end of that period, I realized that Danny never once mentioned vacation time. He told me to take as much time as I needed. That was unusual because he truly cared, and because as the boss and under the circumstances, he bent the rules of official bereavement and vacation time for me to do what I needed to do.
It wasn’t unusual or out of character for Danny to do this. I remember thanking him and noting then that I had lost both of my parents, and his were still alive. He displayed incredible sensitivity despite never having gone through the experience of personal loss and bereavement. It was a small but no less remarkable thing, a personal comfort, and another learning moment.
Sometime during my freshman year, we had a Shabbaton for Hillel leaders. That week’s Havdalah remains one of the most memorable in my life. When I make Havdalah still today, I think of it. As someone held the candle high for all to see, Danny commented about seeing the reflection of the candle in our fingernails. When I look at the flame of the Havdalah candle reflected in my fingernails nearly four decades later, I think of Danny.
But whether he intended it or not, it was also a learning moment. The reflection of the candle on a small appendage of our bodies gives me a moment each week to reflect on the week that just ended, and the week ahead. But even more so, it gives me a chance to look into myself and reflect on what I want to be, and how to be the best I can. I credit Danny Allen with this insight along with many more.
Fortunately, I was in the US on the day of Danny’s funeral. This took place on the 10th of Tevet, a fast day mourning the initial Babylonian siege of Jerusalem that would end several months later with the destruction of the First Temple. Fittingly, Danny Allen’s burial would be on a day of national Jewish mourning. His death is first and foremost a loss for his wife, children, grandchildren, siblings and cousins. Many, like myself, feel that loss as well. But his death is also a loss for the Jewish people.
There’s another aspect to the timing that I wish Danny were here to critique. If we understand that the destruction of the Temple took place because of sinat hinam, baseless hatred, among Jews, the siege of Jerusalem could have been a wake-up call. If during the Babylonian siege we understood and sought to reflect upon and rectify this, perhaps we could have changed the outcome.
I see Danny sitting quietly, evaluating, and nodding along with this thesis. Or at least I’d like to see that, not just because I wish he were still alive and present to have this conversation. His opinion mattered.
As much as Danny Allen was about Jewish unity, he hated the opposite: divisiveness and disrespect. In that sense, despite the loss which is palpable to those who knew him, maybe his burial was another Danny Allen learning moment. As we mourn our loss personally and communally, we need to commit ourselves anew to be the best we can be, to strive to strengthen Israel and the broader Jewish community in unifying and not divisive ways.
We should do so not only in Danny’s honor and memory, following his example, but as if our very lives and future depended on it the same way the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem had then. I think if Danny were reading this, based on the discord that exists among us, he’d agree. Our future does depend on it.
Danny Allen is no longer physically present to guide and inspire us to be better as individuals, communal professionals, or as a people. However for those who were privileged to know and work with him, he continues to guide us and teach us in many ways. May his memory and legacy always be a blessing.
Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He shares insights and experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel, writing for prominent Christian and conservative web sites and appearing on many Christian TV and radio programs. He is the president of Run for Zion and the Genesis 123 Foundation. He can be reached at [email protected] and via www.runforzion.com.
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Thank you for this. This describes the Danny so many of us loved.
No words can righty capture the depth and power of our respect and admiration and love for Danny — but your words are true and definitely right-on. Danny taught us all so much in profound and life-altering ways.
Thank you, Jonathan. This is a stunning and beautiful tribute to someone you and I were so close to. Our lives have been changed for the better with his having been in them and I will always cherish my time in service to the Jewish people as it was influenced by his presence and guidance and encouragement. He will forever be a part of me. L’hitraot. Lewis
Hope nobody will mind a longish comment about Danny:
When I was in high school, word got out that a new Jewish kid had arrived in town. This was big news because there were so few of us. From my perspective, the real question was whether he could play basketball. Our youth group team, which drove up to Omaha every Sunday morning to play in a competitive league, was thin. (At 5’6” I sometimes played center which gives you an idea just how thin we were.) When somebody told me the new kid was tall—Jewish tall, anyway—I was excited about meeting him.
Basketball was not Danny Allen’s thing. As I learned later, his passion was Judaism and, more specifically, Israel. My parents were Zionists in the sense that they believed that Jews had a right to a state in their Middle Eastern homeland. But Danny’s family was ZIONIST. His parents had been active in the movement forever and Danny caught the bug honestly. I think I learned what Zionism meant, in a fundamental sense, from conversations with him and observations of his family.
Danny’s style sometimes made me anxious. He was out there as Jew, criticizing the schools that ignored Jewish holidays, objecting to government displays of Christian piety, speaking up vociferously for Israel, and engaging in other activity that left no doubt where he stood. Having been raised by German Jewish parents, who wanted us to keep our heads down lest we alienate the gentiles, I wasn’t always comfortable with somebody who wore his Judaism on his sleeve. But I also admired him for his boldness and did not doubt for a second that it came from pride in the Jewish people.
At some point, we learned that we shared a birthday, not just a birth date but the very same day of birth—February 13, 1949. To be honest, this didn’t mean a lot to me but it seems to give us a common bond.
After college, when we didn’t see a lot of one another despite attending the same university for some of that time, we went our different ways, me to graduate school and academia, Danny to rabbinical school and the world of Jewish communal service. He spent time as a federation director and Hillel rabbi but got more involved in Israel-Diaspora relations. He eventually became director of the United Israel Appeal, the organization that transmitted contributions raised in the US by American Jews to Israel, and, for a time, head of the American Friends of Israel’s Red Cross equivalent, the Magen David Adom. He was also senior vice president of Jewish Federations of North America.
I recall a memorable meeting in Jerusalem many years ago. Danny was there to visit his daughters who was, I think, studying in Israel. I was there to visit my daughter who was serving in the Israel Defense Forces. We both marveled that two Jewish guys from Lincoln, Nebraska were sitting down together in Jerusalem to catch up on old times.
Danny’s parents, Harry and Annie, moved to Jerusalem and invited my family to visit them for a sabbath dinner one Friday evening. They lived in the well-known King David Towers. In the lobby, my two kids, wife and I entered what appeared to be the only functioning elevator. Before the doors closed, another family of the same size crowded into the small compartment. Little did we realize that both families were headed for one of the highest floors and that we had both taken what Jews call the Shabbat elevator.
Under Jewish law, Jews are to abstain from generating electricity on the sabbath. (Don’t ask.) Because elevators can be designed to discharge any energy they generate into the ground, riding one does not violate this stricture. But to press a button for a floor would be sinful so the elevator is programmed to stop at each floor. This made the ride up very lengthy and sweaty. On the other hand, we got to know the other family who had also been invited to the Allen’s sabbath dinner.
Although Danny and I didn’t keep up regular communication, he had a habit of contacting me on significant birthdays. We shared our experiences of growing up and our astonishment that we became adults with real jobs and families.
Danny died from ALS on Sunday night, December 16th. I’m going to miss the phone call that I know he would have made on February 13th next year, our 70th birthday. I’ll have to content myself with his memory as a blessing.
Ken Wald
Lew
Good to read your long lost face in memory of Danny Allon. I could not add to your most thoughul tribute!
Sy
What a wonderful man G-d brought into your life Jonathan. Your tribute is moving and really conveys how Danny impacted your life and the lives of so many others. We will be praying
G-d’s peace and comfort upon you and all who knew Danny. G-d bless you all!
Karen Hall
30 Days since Danny died. Such a loss. Thank you Jonathan for this piece and EJewishPhilanthropy for publishing it. My heart is certainly with his wife Mary Lou, their very impressive and Jewish committed children, grandchildren and other loved ones.
Thank you Jonathan also for putting Danny’s funeral on Facebook live so I could watch it even though I could not be there in person. Who puts a funeral on Facebook? I know it’s not exactly custom…but I really wanted to be there for/with Danny – and Jonathan you made the possible. I noted with a tear and smile that more than 400 other people also watched the funeral on Facebook. Danny was so loved!
Danny Allen played a big role in my life at Emory, where he was my Hillel director, and ever since. I was very active on campus and looked forward to sharing shabbat dinners with him, Mary Lou, my roommate Risa Satlof (now Satlof-Werblin), Brian Beal (now himself a Rabbi), Jonathan Feldstein (who wrote this piece above) and others. Our Hillel house was pretty schleppy, but filled with ruach (spirit) and love. Now Emory has a gorgeous Hillel building, but I cannot imagine a more gorgeous program than what Danny brought to our lives.
My senior year at Emory I was run over by my own car when a fellow Hillel leader was trying to help me fix it. The friend had forgotten to hit the clutch and brakes while trying the engine. Thus, I spent a lot of time in a wheelchair and/or on crutches. It was before the Americans with Disabilities Act, and to get into Hillel people had to go up a big flight of steps. But Danny still let me know I was wanted and welcomed. Thus, folks would help carry me up so I didn’t miss out. Danny would always have a welcoming smile and words.
When I started The Israel Project, Danny came and helped me. He advised me on recruiting and working with board members, staff structures, impact, Israeli leaders and more. Danny also helped me with ideas also for RespectAbility, even though at the time he didn’t have a disability. The most recent time I saw him in person was when he gave a very moving eulogy for our mutual friend, Shoshana Cardin. He gave a spectacular talk that she would have loved.
Rabbi Daniel R. Allen was a leaders’ leader – a Rabbi’s Rabbi. When Jewish organizations denied access to my child due to disability issues, Danny was a calming voice who counseled to keep working for positive change. He was also a constant feminist inside Judaism, Jewish groups and Israel.
Danny served in leadership in so many groups that it’s almost silly to list every job and organization. Put simply – he was the ultimate Zionist and friend of the Jewish people.
Ordained at the Hebrew Union College and an honors graduate of the University of Nebraska who was born in Rena Nevada, Danny he was one of the leading experts on American Jewish philanthropy and its impact on Israeli society. He also would utz people a little when they were not living up to Jewish ideas. I liked that about him quite a lot.
“Our love for Israel is unconditional,” said Danny. He was always pleased to play whatever leadership role he could that would enhance the work of Jewish people and create targeted opportunities to help care for those in need throughout the Jewish State. He was constantly mentoring people and helping out.
I am a better person and leader because I had the real luck of having Danny Allen as my Hillel rabbi, lifelong friend and mentor. I can only hope that I can pay it back in mentoring others in the same way.
Rabbi Daniel Allen is survived by his beloved wife of 46 years, Mary Lou (Frishberg) Allen, his children Sarah, Rabbi Uri (Sari), Noah (Rena). In addition, he leaves behind four precious grandchildren, Doron, Aderet, Yedidyah, and Livya. Rabbi Allen also leaves behind his beloved mother Annie Allen of Jerusalem. Rabbi Allen is also survived by his beloved siblings Dr. Joel (Debbie), Dr. Miriam Kluska (Avram), Rabbi Morris (Dr. Phyllis Gorin).
Donations may be made to the Israel Religious Action Center – http://www.irac.org click on donate button or Herzl Camp – http://www.herzlcamp.org click on donate button.
Yasher Koach Jonathan. Beautiful tribute to an extraordinary man. I am grateful to have had the privilege to know you both.
What a beautiful tribute! I was visiting the Jewish Philanthropy site and was shocked to see the headline — then checked to see if it was the same Danny Allen I knew so long ago in Atlanta. So sad to read of his passing. Uri and my oldest daughter attended pre-school together. We shared birthday parties and school events. But we made aliyah in February 1984, and we lost touch with the Allens. So moving to read of his man accomplishments. May his memory be a blessing.
Rabbi Danny Allen was a friend and fellow classmate at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem in 1971-1972.
We met during our Junior year in college, as Presidents of our respective Hillel groups at a joint Hillel function between our two universities. My former wife Cathie and I were close with Danny and Mary Lou. Our daughter Rachel Tamar was named in the HUC chapel in Cincinnati and Danny and Mary Lou were Rachel’ s God-parents. Danny was a loving, kind, caring and sensitive man, who loved his family fiercely, cherished his Jewish heritage, and loved Israel passionately. I left the seminary in 1974 to pursue a doctorate in counseling pyschology/ marriage and family therapy. Through the years we connected once in a while, and when in 1997, I decided to return to complete my seminary studies elsewhere, Danny wrote an outstanding letter of recommendation for me. I was finally ordained in June of 2000, in part because Rabbi Daniel Allen believed in his determined, stubborn friend. Danny was a mensch, and a Rabbi’s Rabbi. His untimely death leaves a huge void in our Jewish world.
May his memory be a blessings