Socially aware
By EMILIE PHELPS Special to the Daily Press
NORTH OF WILSHIRE — Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels was destined to be a doctor but divine intervention turned him into a rabbi and an activist in the local community.
As a rabbi at Beth Shir Sholom for the past 15 years, Comess- Daniels, 55, has thrown himself into the Santa Monica community — tackling such weighty issues as finding solutions to homelessness and pushing for worker’s rights.
He has been involved with Clergy United for Economic Justice (CLUE), Americans for Peace Now, Santa Monicans Allied for Responsible Tourism (SMART), People Assisting the Homeless (PATH), Santa Monica Bay Interfaith Council and Rabbis for Human Rights. He is a member of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and works toward peace in the Middle East. His involvement in Muslim-Jewish dialogue will land him a peacemakers award from the Islamic Center of Southern California in a few weeks.
When asked why he gets involved with social issues, he said, “That’s another one of my privileges as rabbi — that I get to spend my whole day involved in these things and to do it on behalf of this incredible community that I’m part of.”
A resident of Mar Vista, Comess- Daniels has a son who recently graduated from Brandeis and a daughter entering UC Davis in the fall. He is looking forward to spending a month sabbatical with his wife.
He helped start Temple Shir Shalom in the basement of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Mar Vista and was the rabbi there from 1980 until 1991 when it merged with Beth Shalom Temple to create Beth Shir Sholom in Santa Monica, where he has been rabbi ever since.
Comess-Daniels moved a lot growing up starting in New York, moving to Denver at age 11 for two years and then to Southern California. He attended Valley college in Van Nuys before transferring to UCLA and then attended rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College. Despite all the moving, or perhaps because of it, Comess-Daniels has helped create a cohesive community in Beth Shir Sholom that bridges city lines, and soon may bridge religious lines through a new interfaith youth group.
Comess-Daniels recently sat down with the Daily Press to discuss his role as a rabbi in the community and his perspective on some current events.
At what moment did you decide to become a rabbi?
“I don’t know if it was an exact moment. I think there were several things that happened that began to reroute what I wanted to do in the world. I’d been told since I was 5-years-old that I was going to be a doctor, just like my cousin and that was the route I was on. When I was about 16-years-old, I had a friend who was about two years older than I, and he was the president of our youth group, and a regional officer as well. And I’m an only child, so he was sort of like a big brother in some ways — at least I saw him that way and I admired him. He was smart, he was a good leader, he was a great musician — a great jazz pianist. He was so good, actually, that his four-person jazz combo was asked to go to Vietnam and entertain the troops and they did, and he was ambushed... and he was killed.
“He was a great, important part of my life and it just really changed things. People were trying to give me answers about what had happened and I knew there weren’t any pat answers to what had happened. I remember one rabbi asked me what my problem was and I didn’t think I had a problem. I thought the world had a problem. So I pretty well shut down from active Jewish involvement at that point for at least a couple of years.
“My first year at college, Kent State happened and it was a tense time in my life. I didn’t know exactly (what I would do), but I knew that I wasn’t going to be a doctor anymore, I just knew that. That summer, some friends of mine got me a job — as it turned out — at a Jewish summer camp. I took the job because I needed the job and I figured I could do it because I was Jewish. But what I ended up with was an opportunity to help kids find their answers about the same things that were bothering me, without me giving them the answer — which is what people were trying to do to me — and I loved the process.
“So I went back to school. I remember I walked into the office and I dropped chemistry and physics and calculus in the same moment, and started taking some Judaic classes and other things, and ended up studying that at UCLA and getting my BA in it. And then I had to figure out if I was going to go to conservative seminary or reform seminary, because you know a rabbi is a teacher and I wanted to keep doing this teaching, so it was the perfect continuation for me. But I realized that within the reform movement I could be both as traditional as I wanted to be and as liberal as I really needed to be and it’s been true ever since.”
What do you think of Mel Gibson’s recent antics?
“I’ll be speaking about him at the high holy days. Anti-Semitism is something within Western culture that will ebb and flow, but never ever go away because whether people realize it or not, it is at the basis of some of the fundamentals of Western society, and unfortunately some of the Christian bases of Western society.
“That being said, what’s frightening about Mel Gibson is that in his apology... he couldn’t come out and say,‘I guess I really am an anti-Semite.” Judaism concentrates much more on apology than it does on forgiveness, which is why I thought it was admirable in his statement that he said, ‘I’m not asking for forgiveness,’ but he didn’t say, ‘I really am an anti-Semite... I really have something horrible to work on.’ That is as vicious, as poisonous, as much of a disease, and as dangerous as his alcoholism.
“What’s scary for the Jewish community is knowing why he said it, when he said it, under the world circumstances that are now existing, how many others are out there who are also harboring such thoughts.For us,that’s a sobering moment, more than fearful. But you know, it’s something that we’ve dealt with before and we’ll deal with again, but it would be terrific if those who are spewing this venom could admit what it is and not call it something else.”
What are your thoughts on Israel and Lebanon?
“It’s a tragedy in the classic sense. The more I read about it and the more I understand about it, the more tragic it becomes. I begin my perspective about this quagmire we’re in with my love of Israel and my support of Israel. And I love Israel and support Israel so much that I think that part of the tragedy is that Israel’s choice in its response to clear aggressive activities on the part of both Hezbollah and Hamas was this kind of a military response... That has moral and ethical consequences that we, as Jews, can’t ignore, and Israel, as a Jewish state, can’t ignore.
“And I’ll be talking about this at our high holy days as well — the only possibilities for peace are negotiated ones and not military ones.Israel has demonstrated that to itself time and time again,and I want better for Israel and her neighbors.All children scream the same,all children bleed the same, and the death of any innocents is wrong and is a horror.
“Hezbollah, in terms of indiscriminately firing missiles into clearly civilian areas and only apologizing when Israeli Arabs are killed and seeing that as a tragedy is an obscenity that Hezbollah and its supporters are going to have to deal with. And Jews and Israel can’t walk away from the reality that civilian infrastructure was severely compromised both in Lebanon and in Palestine as a result of recent events, and that innocents, for whatever reasons, were killed. I don’t think that we can talk in terms of moral equivalencies or inequiva-lencies at this point. What we need to do is think differently. This didn’t work, this doesn’t bring anybody a better time.”
How does your congregation cope with the issue?
“By talking about it. A couple of weeks ago we had a big communal meeting and aired some things. People are very emotional, and our way of doing these things has always been to respect the emotions and try and sift through what we know to be fact and what we know not to be fact and so on, but then also to say, ‘What are we going to do about it?’ I haven’t quite announced to the congregation that we’re forming a interfaith youth organization, but I think that it will be a very Beth Shir Sholom kind of outgrowth that will resonate with people who have various opinions (about) what just happened and what is still happening and what has the potential for happening. So I think we’ll be in good stead that way — rather than just saying slogans, or complaining or whatever it is, or anywhere in between, we’ll do something.”
Can you explain what it means to be a reform congregation, as opposed to being a conservative or other denomination?” “(My recent Torah portion interpretation) was all about keeping kosher, which I think actually serves as a good example. Because the Torah, you know, the first five books of the Bible, are very precise in the sense of what you can eat and what you can’t eat but with reform eyes, we give ourselves an opportunity to take a step back and say to ourselves once again, ‘What is this all about?’
“Ultimately, if you take the messages about keeping kosher, they’re a way of understanding that the world is a holy entity and the way in which we choose to consume from it is a holy activity, and therefore we need to look closely at the details of what it is we do with the world... Reform Jews need to know as much about what we’re not doing as what we are doing.’ In other words, those who do keep kosher have developed reasons why. Those who don’t keep kosher need to have an articulation of why they have decided not to. It’s definitely part of who we are, and you can’t just reject it out of hand. You need to do it from a knowledgeable stance.”
What are the keys to running a successful synagogue?
“I think the other thing is to be extremely organic and real. The way I do things here is the way that I find my own authenticity and I am really blessed that other people resonate to that. I hardly do anything around here without a guitar around my neck. Many years ago we formed a synagogue band because I wanted to do it with others and I heard more music happening, and all these people are members of the synagogue. I mean we don’t hire any outside musicians to come in and do this. I think the best of what we do is organic that way.”
Can you talk about the Santa Monica Bay Interfaith Council’s youth group?
“Well, we have good models around. What used to be the National Conference of Christians and Jews — which is now the National Conference for Community and Justice using the same initials — especially before they changed their name, (they) had a track record of being the people that you would go to who were experts in dialogue, experts in communication, experts in inter-group work.
“Because I’ve been so frustrated in my head about what just happened in the Middle East and knowing that there are various groups that work to try and bridge the misunderstanding and create understanding, I approached my colleagues from the Santa Monica Bay Interfaith Council and I said, ‘I want to do a Muslim-Jewish youth group,’ and my colleagues said, ‘Well let’s do more than just Muslim-Jewish — let’s do everybody because the prejudices are everywhere, the misunderstandings are everywhere and we need to create different kinds of spiritual citizens in the world.’ So we have a lot of work to do. You are at the germination of the idea, because this was actually our first meeting about it.” BOB GABRIEL INSURANCE
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 28, 2006. Read the original PDF.