I’m talking about a specific rabbi – a woman, probably in or around Wilmington, Delaware.
It’s not usual that I would make a request like this and it’s not often that I am moved by an article as much as I was, but Jay Nordlinger’s piece on NRO – My Kingdom for a Safe Zone. It reached me deeply. The article is about the difficult today’s liberals have in leaving their politics out of things where they don’t apply. Actually, “My Kingdom” is a series of reader responses to a post Nordlinger made on the The Corner, “The Conductor’s Podium as Political Platform.”
The last of these responses went like this:
Nordlinger: Well, I have saved the worst for last — this is about the worst thing I have ever read. That will not stop me from sharing it with you, however. I apologize in advance. This may leave you trembling with anger for a while. But it illustrates my point almost too well:
Hello, Jay:
Your item on the concert is right on target. A friend of ours was killed last winter (2007) when his twin-engine plane crashed on takeoff out of Wilmington, Dela. He was a good pilot, but no match for a combination of strong winds and a faulty flap mechanism. He was 40. We’d just gone to his birthday party a few weeks before. He had been married only two years and they had an 18-month-old baby girl.
So we’re at the service. He was Jewish, and the rabbi is presiding over this “celebration of life” for Dan. And she says something to the effect of, “At least he won’t be around to see more of Bush’s errors in judgment.” The audience tittered.
The thing is, I knew that Dan was pretty darn conservative and admired President Bush in many ways. We often spoke about it. The rabbi knew nothing about his politics. But she did know her audience — at least a majority of them. The rest of us didn’t count, I guess.
I have often thought of contacting this rabbi and telling her how inappropriate and just plain offensive her comments were. But I’m not Jewish and don’t even know her name. Like you, I believe that censure must come from the constituency of the speaker to make an impact.
The memory of that remark still saddens me.
Well, I am Jewish. In fact, I was Bar Mitzvahed in a Reformed Jewish temple. So I am part of the “constituency of the speaker”. (Since the rabbi is female, I am assume she is a reformed Jew. Most are.) I would very much like to talk with her. I believe it would be an interesting conversation. Can someone help me locate her?
UPDATE: Those of you who helped with this, thanks very much. I have been doing jury service all day and will try to get into it tomorrow.
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21 Comments
1. Minerva:Ask Prof. Amy-Jill Levine if she has any leads. You know better than us about detective work.
Jan 5, 2009 - 1:08 pm 2. Roger L Simon:Perhaps I do… then some. But I also know that many minds better than one.
Jan 5, 2009 - 1:11 pm 3. Roger L Simon:Of course, we don’t even know for sure that the deceased was from the Wilmington area. We only know he died during take-off from there. Perhaps Jay Nordlinger knows more – though I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t share it. This was a confidential message, obviously.
Jan 5, 2009 - 1:13 pm 4. John Simmons:Roger,
I put the reference to the plane crash in the wrong comments section. Sorry, but here it is again:
http://cbs3.com/topstories/Plane.Crash.New.2.601874.html
I will see if an obit was printed later in the local paper.
John
Jan 5, 2009 - 2:59 pm 5. EdSki:If you have the deceased gentleman’s full name, and the approximate date, you may be able to find more information from an on line obituary. I know our local news paper posts them, and keeps them on line for about one year.
Jan 5, 2009 - 3:19 pm 6. Alex:Here’s the obituary, from delawareonline.com:
Daniel S. Hart
Age 40, of Wilmington, DE, died suddenly in an airplane crash, Tuesday, December 4, 2007.
A graduate of Concord High School and the University of Georgia, he was the founder and owner of Serveon, a software development company in Wilmington. He was an avid fly fisherman, pilot, and veracious reader. Daniel was a devoted husband, father, son and brother. He was passionate about his work and deeply cared for his employees.
Daniel is survived by his wife, Lisabeth Moore; daughter, Zoe; parents, Marvin and Orlene Drucker Hart; sister, Shana Abelson and other extended family.
A celebration of his life will be held 2 pm, Friday, December 7, at Copeland Lecture Hall at Winterthur Museum & Gardens on Kennett Pike.
In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to Arch Foundation, Dan Hart Memorial Scholarship Fund, Frank College of Arts & Sciences, Attn: Suzi Wong, 124 Old College, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-1732.
SCHOENBERG
MEMORIAL CHAPEL
[published 12/06/2007]
———–
No name of the rabbi, though.
Jan 5, 2009 - 5:15 pm 7. RNB:This may be the National Transportation Safety Board report on the accident:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20071227X02000&key=1
Jan 5, 2009 - 7:33 pm 8. Lightnin' Hopkins:Hi Roger,
Here is Dan Hart’s obituary from Delaware Online showing the time and location of the service mentioned in Jay’s post:
http://tinyurl.com/77ts63
The website for the Museum and Estate the service was held at is Winterthur_dot_org
I couldn’t find any additional info leading to the rabbi’s identity even after scrolling online petitions against all things Bush and War on Terror signed by rabbis and ministers, as well as religious directories for the area, etc. Hopefully someone better at online sleuthing can narrow things down for you. If you do find her, I’d love to read (or watch) that interview. Good luck!
Jan 5, 2009 - 7:34 pm 9. RNB:A little more personal information. (Googling on ‘Daniel Hart’ helped.)
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=5812609
Jan 5, 2009 - 7:53 pm 10. Bob K.:FAA registration prior to deregistration is here:
Jan 5, 2009 - 8:48 pm 11. PA Cat:http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNumSQL.asp?NNumbertxt=105PP
Ownership shows:
Name AVWERKS LLC
Street C/O SERVEON
1401 SILVERSIDE RD SUITE C
City WILMINGTON State DELAWARE Zip Code 19810-4400
County NEW CASTLE
Another google search showed that a Dan Hart was or is CEO.
I tried searching for directories of Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative women rabbis but no luck. There is a Reform temple in Wilmington, but the rabbi is obviously a male.
Jan 5, 2009 - 9:33 pm 12. somejoe:not sure if my previous comment was eaten or moderated, so here’s the important part with only one link:
Quick googling and checking the websites of synagogues near Wilmington turned up two female rabbis, but my money is on Rabbi Linda Potemken of the Reconstructionist Congregation Beth Israel.
http://www.bethisraelmedia.org/NewSite/NewRabbi.htm
Her shul is about 20 miles from Wilmington
Jan 5, 2009 - 10:47 pm 13. Alex Bensky:She signed onto an anti-war statement in 2003
She was a “Rabbi for Obama”
There’s more, Google her name with any lefty buzzword and you’re likely to land a hit
I should think the funeral home would have the name of the officiating rabbi. Whether they’ll give it to you is something else.
Jan 6, 2009 - 9:46 am 14. Lightnin' Hopkins:Nice work somejoe. That’s almost certainly her.
Commenters here are very respectful by nature as it is, but it would be appropriate to let our host make contact without voicing our own displeasure via phone or email – just yet anyway. Besides, she may look, walk & talk like it and still not be the right duck.
Jan 6, 2009 - 10:27 am 15. stace:Good job, guys. Roger, I hope you get to have that discussion with her. That story was very disturbing. We need to start speaking out against this decline in civility.
Jan 6, 2009 - 1:34 pm 16. Bugs:If this guy was so conservative, why would he or his family have this rabbi at his service? In the Jewish tradition, does the rabbi of a person’s congregation usually officiate? Or maybe this guy was more secular and had no preferences – so the family just chose the most convenient rabbi they could find.
More clarification would help.
Jan 6, 2009 - 2:10 pm 17. DavidN:On a completely different thread, I missed the original discussion of concerts and pop culture and how they’re becoming pervaded by liberal thought and polemic. Since I logged onto this end of things, I thought I would provide my two cents.
For one thing, I’ve never been able to listen to Garrison Keillor. In addition to the politics involved, to my mind he has a voice that would have been perfect for the silent movie era. Now, the only entertainment job I think he’s qualified for is mime.
Second, I don’t go to concerts really at all, and while I listen to music it either tends to be on the radio or recorded. I do however read a lot, and much of what I read is military history. I’m interested in the American Civil War, World War II, and to a lesser extent some other conflicts. One of these others is the American Revolution. About a year ago, I read a book titled “Patriot Battles”, which purported to be a nuts-and-bolts history of tactics and strategy during the American Revolution. In addition to the fact that it didn’t do a very good job of recounting this subject, believe it or not, in the Introduction the author spent most of his time comparing George III to George Bush, making much of the fact they share the same first name, and insisting that Bush was bound to fail in Iraq just as George III did in America. Yeah, it did damage the author’s credibility in my eyes irreparably, and yeah, it wasn’t a very good book anyway.
P.S. Much better on the American Revolution, by the way, was Fusiliers by Mark Urban. It’s a history of a particular British infantry regiment during the war, and spends a lot of time discussing everything from uniforms and equipment to organization, has a unique premise (he thinks the British army was reforming during the war, discarding the older more dense formations for more loose “light infantry” tactics, and that this led to the British army’s effectiveness in the wars against Napoleon two decades later), and its well-written and interesting. I would recommend Urban’s book highly, the other not at all.
Jan 6, 2009 - 6:58 pm 18. somejoe:@bugs proximity and convenience were big factors for me. The other Deleware woman rabbi is 50 miles south and leads a conservative synagogue. Though she has a degree from Vassar and might fit the “old hippy” stereotype, there was no indication she let her politics creep into her rabbinical work.
Jan 6, 2009 - 9:38 pm 19. Gary Rosen:Bugs, yes the rabbi of a person’s congregation would normally officiate. I had the same thought you did – that he was not observant and the family chose a “convenient” rabbi. It is almost certain his wife’s background is not Jewish – her brother’s name is “Chris”. On the other hand, he was connected enough that the funeral was held at a Jewish mortuary. He came from the region so his family was probably still in the area.
Jan 7, 2009 - 1:08 am 20. Bailey Yankee:One must remember that conservative might mean politically, not religiously.
Jan 7, 2009 - 7:37 am 21. BMoon:How do they say “asshole” in Yiddish?
(And that’s from a pastor.)
Jan 7, 2009 - 5:50 pm