Danny Siegel

Danny Siegel was raised in Arlington, Virginia, the child of a “country doctor” father and of a mother who devoted her time to the Hadassah organization and to her synagogue’s sisterhood. Observing both his parents work with such dedication sensitized him to people who try to touch the lives of others. Throughout his formative years, Danny Siegel was most deeply impressed by his teachers at the Arlington-Fairfax Jewish Center, most notably his teacher and mentor, Rabbi Noah Golinkin. In 1962, still a teenager, he became International President of United Synagogue Youth, which began his odyssey of more than thirty years of teaching Judaism to teenagers.

Attending the undergraduate “joint program” of Columbia University’s School of General Studies and the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Teachers’ Institute, he received a bachelor of arts in comparative literature from Columbia and a bachelor of arts in Bible and Talmud from JTS. Those years provided him with an understanding of the glories of literature as well as the central place of Jewish text in one’s life. Texts became the source of action: whether Biblical, Midrashic, or Halachic texts, all offered guidance for action. Danny Siegel continued his studies for several more years in the rabbinical school of JTS, left the program a year and a half before ordination, and earned, instead, a master of arts in Hebrew literature.

He does not recall purposely preparing for either his vocation of writing poetry and prose or his work in teaching and distributing tzedakah. He began to write poetry “by accident,” he explains, after a member of the audience at one of his speeches suggested to him that he give it a try. In 1975, before leaving for a trip to Israel, his friends collected $955 for him to distribute to the needy. In the process of distributing that money, Danny Siegel met extraordinary people who had dedicated themselves to tzedakah. Awed by them, he called them “mitzvah heroes,” and could not stop talking about them and their work. This experience inspired more tzedakah work, including arrangements for young Americans to meet these heroes during visits to Israel. Danny Siegel has also retold these remarkable stories to American Jews of all ages. He is known for his ability to hold audiences spellbound as he talks about the magic of taking on the obligation of tzedakah.

In 1981 he created the Ziv Tzedakah Fund, which has distributed close to $14,000,000 to tzedakah.

2019 Update:

Mr. Siegel’s volume of original prose and poetry, titled Radiance – Creative Mitzvah Living  is due out in April.

He continues to be on the road, lecturing at synagogues, day and afternoon schools, Limmud conferences and other conferences on topics including tzedakah, mitzvot, tikkun olam, and Jewish values. He also continues to serve as the Tzedakah Resource Person on the United Synagogue Youth Israel Pilgrimage – which he began in 1975.  The oldest of the former Pilgrim attendees is now almost 60, and he estimates there have been anywhere from 10-15,000 of them, many of whom Mr. Siegel reports to meet everywhere: on the street, at JTS, in a synagogue in LA, and most recently, at a restaurant in Jerusalem.