Rabbi Danniel Horwitz spent 18 years as Congregation Ohev Sholom’s rabbi. He left the congregation in the summer of 2004 and will be speaking again from the pulpit for the first time this weekend as the Conservative congregation’s Shaw scholar in residence.
The weekend begins tomorrow night, Oct. 25, and concludes on Sunday morning, Oct. 27. He will speak at Kabbalat Shabbat services, followed by Shabbat dinner at the synagogue Friday night. Saturday morning Rabbi Horwitz will present a d’var Torah during the 9:30 a.m. Shabbat morning service. He will give another presentation following the Kiddush luncheon. The day will conclude with a talk at the Seudah Shlishit (third meal) at 5 p.m. that evening. Rabbi Horwitz will also be the featured speaker at Café Ohev Sunday morning. Call the synagogue at 913-642-6460 to see if reservations are still available for any of the meal events.
Ohev was the second congregation Rabbi Horwitz served following rabbinical school. He came to town in 1986 after serving a congregation in Galveston, Texas, for six years.
Rabbi Horwitz decided to leave Ohev nine years ago and move his family to Houston so that his wife, Tobi Cooper, could join her parents’ business, Houston Pecan Company (www.houstonpecan.com).
“That has worked out very well. It has also been good that we are in Houston and able to help out as her parents continue to grow older. It was a difficult decision to leave Kansas and Ohev Sholom and our many friends in the area, but in the long run it has been a good thing,” Rabbi Horwitz said.
After serving a year as an interim rabbi at a Conservative synagogue in Houston, Rabbi Horwitz began working as the chapel rabbi at Congregation Beth Yeshurun.
“I also teach adult classes in the synagogue and in the local Melton Adult Mini-School,” he said.
This past spring the rabbi completed the Doctor of Jewish Studies program that he began many years ago through Spertus Institute of Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago.
“Now that I’ve finished the program, I am adding some other work at Beth Yeshurun and also am about to join the faculty at University of Houston,” he said.
Rabbi Horwitz will teach five sessions this weekend at Ohev. The overall message he hopes to convey is the vitality of the mystical tradition in Jewish life, something he said most Jews did not study in their synagogues, religious schools or day schools.
“We were good 20th century rational Jews, we didn’t focus much on any of that nonsense. People who did study it needed to be so much more rooted in the foundation of Judaism before anybody would teach them about the mystical end of things,” the rabbi commented.
He believes it is important today to make available appropriate treatments of Jewish mysticism because that is preferable to people learning about it on the Internet.
“It’s not like you can keep these things a secret, so we have to find ways to explain them to people and to explain why they are important and how they continue to play a role in Jewish life,” he said.
Through the years, Rabbi Horwitz said he has found that a lot of Jewish kids never learned what Jewish mysticism had to teach and couldn’t find a way to satisfy that pull within Jewish life.
“So they went somewhere else to find it. Some of them left Judaism entirely, other people left for most practical purposes and they didn’t learn that we have a lot of that within our tradition,” he said.
Rabbi Scott White, who succeeded Rabbi Horwitz at Ohev, said it will be nice to have his predecessor teach this weekend.
“Danny will always be beloved at Ohev Sholom, and it’s a thrill to welcome him back to the shul he called home for many years. No one is more excited than I about the prospect of spending an entire weekend delving into Jewish mysticism under the guidance of an outstanding teacher who holds a doctorate in that field,” Rabbi White said.
Rabbi Horwitz will be traveling alone for this visit because it’s the busy season for the Cooper family’s nut business. He is looking forward to the weekend.
“I have visited Ohev Sholom on a couple of occasions when in town for various events, but certainly nothing like this. We continue to subscribe to The Chronicle and follow developments at Ohev Sholom through The Chronicle, as well as through their email messages. I’m naturally very pleased and excited to be invited to return to Ohev Sholom and look forward to seeing many old friends and meeting those who have joined the congregation over the past nine years, as well as my friend and colleague Rabbi White,” Rabbi Horwitz said.
Rabbi White reports more than half of Ohev’s current members were members when Rabbi Horwitz was the congregation’s rabbi.
“It will be interesting to see how much it is the same and how much it’s different,” Rabbi Horwitz said.
“We really loved living in Kansas City. It’s a great community. The day school was excellent for our kids. The congregation was excellent for our kids in many ways. There are a lot of things we miss about that of course, but there are a lot of great things for us in Houston as well,” he continued.
The two youngest Horwitz children — Shaye and Eliana were born in Kansas City. Shaye graduated this summer from the University of Houston and has just begun a job as a software developer in Houston.
Eliana graduated from high school in Houston, spent a year in Israel on the NATIV program sponsored by the Conservative movement, and now is enjoying her first semester at Binghamton University in New York.
As previously reported in The Chronicle, Dina is married to Joey Carr, son of Robin and Bill Carr and are the parents of the Horwitzs’ first grandchild, 6-month-old Emmy Hannah Carr. Dina and Joey live and work in Chicago.
Sarit is in her fourth year of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. She interned last year at Yale University Hillel, and now is a rabbinic fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side in New York City. She is expected to graduate in the spring of 2015.