For the first time since he arrived at Wausau’s Mount Sinai Congregation as its rabbi in 1988, Rabbi E. Daniel Danson recently was “out of the loop” about a coming event at the synagogue.
All he knew was what’s written in the current congregational newsletter: “Mt. Sinai is celebrating Rabbi Danson’s 25th year of leadership with a dinner on Saturday, May 11, starting at 6 p.m.”
For Danson, this was an unprecedented luxury. Asked what he knew about the party during a pre-event interview with the Chronicle, he laughed.
“They invited me!” he said. “I see little flurries of activity. My wife is going through endless amounts of photos and sending them off to people. They’ve invited my whole family and all my kids [daughters Sarah and Leah and son Eli] are coming in for it, which is very nice.”
But Danson’s wife, Dr. Julie Luks, wasn’t just going through pictures. Party decorations included some of his clothing — specifically team jerseys from his beloved Canadian sports franchises.
The room was also festooned with Canadian flag banners, and the congregational gift was a specially-inscribed replica of the synagogue’s stained-glass window.
Danson did not expect his career to last at a rural synagogue whose membership has held steady at 90 families scattered across a seven-county area, 120 miles north to south and 60 miles east to west of Wausau.
He has a stock answer to the question of why he stayed, because he has been asked it a lot over the years.
“I came here because it looked like a great place to start, and I forgot to leave,” he said.
‘Just themselves’
Many of the reasons for his forgetfulness are the same ones that initially attracted him to the region and congregation.
A native of Ottawa, Canada’s capital, Danson had summered in rural Ontario. Central Wisconsin’s forests and lakes reminded him of that region.
His two immediate predecessors had laid fertile groundwork for a successful rabbi/congregation relationship, he said, and the congregants were prone to trust and work well with their rabbi.
Most of all, he liked what he saw of the congregants. While he was impressed at their education, curiosity and interest in learning, it was the way they treated him — and each other — that sealed his decision.
“People dealt straight with you from the get-go, and I found that very attractive,” he said. “They didn’t put on any airs. They were just themselves, and ‘just themselves’ was committed and motivated and kind. They were kind to each other, and that impressed me.”
Asked what he and the synagogue have achieved over the past quarter-century, Danson replied, “One shouldn’t brag, but we’ve certainly accomplished a lot.”
“We built a building and paid it off,” he said. “Our endowment fund went from $10,000 to $1.1 million, so our work in infrastructure has been pretty substantial, due to some extraordinary lay leadership.”
In addition, “We continue to run a very dynamic and fully-structured religious school in terms of curriculum that goes from pre-kindergarten through tenth grade and is entirely volunteer-run,” he said.
While some of the 90 families have been there since Danson came, many have left and others have arrived.
Among those arrivals is Donna Stapleton, the congregation’s current president. Like many of Central Wisconsin’s Jewish families, Stapleton contacted Danson prior to the move.
At the time, she and her husband Jay lived in Los Angeles, near where Donna had spent most of her life and had raised her family. Jay, a Wisconsin native who wasn’t Jewish, understood Donna’s desire to not “be the only Jew anyone had ever seen in their entire life.”
On an annual visit to see his family in Wisconsin, the couple attended a Shabbat morning service at Mt. Sinai and told congregants they were contemplating a move to the area. The following year, they showed up for a Friday night service. Stapleton said congregants’ first question was whether they’d moved yet.
Shortly after, they settled in Weston, north of Wausau. Donna has served on the board for seven years, first as ritual committee chair, then vice president.
Most of the congregation’s families are concentrated in what Danson describes as four regions: Wausau, Stevens Point, Marshfield and the “Northwoods.”
Approximately half are interfaith families, and non-Jewish spouses are very much involved in synagogue life. Jay is part of the group that builds and takes down the congregational sukkah in fall and makes the latkes for the annual Chanukah party.
Donna attributed the level of inclusion and comfort to Danson’s ability to balance a commitment to inclusion with respect for ritual and practice.
“When I chaired the ritual committee,” she said, “I had to know who was Jewish, because the non-Jewish spouse can’t do an aliyah but can open the ark, for example. So I knew who was Jewish and who wasn’t, so I wouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings by asking them to do something and then having to renege.”
As president, she said, she and Danson have a regular lunch date to discuss synagogue business.
“The thing I’m absolutely going to miss the most when I become past president is that I won’t have that one-on-one with the rabbi,” she said, “which I’ve never had in my entire Jewish life.”
That level of connection, said Danson, is something he also appreciates.
“We’re ants lifting the leaf,” he said. “By rights, a town with a metro area of 70,000 people in 2010 shouldn’t be able to sustain a resident rabbi. It’s something that towns like us in America have pretty much let go of.”
The endowment, he said, is the reason that hasn’t happened to Mount Sinai. With a synagogue, a rabbi and a full program of synagogue life, the Jewish community has been able to sustain itself and, because of its lay leaders, to flourish.
“[Jewish people are] kind of surprised to be looking at a job in Marshfield or Stevens Point or Wausau,” he said, “but there’s a synagogue here so it’s viable.”
“In a place that’s not viable, you get into a vicious cycle of decline,” Danson continued. “We’ve been able to avoid that because there’s been sustained Jewish leadership in town and because the people who’ve come here have been extraordinarily generous and have taken responsibility for maintaining it.
“It’s a collaborative effort and people have been enormously generous with their leadership talents. Not just with financial support for the synagogue, although they’ve been that. But they have been very forthcoming also with their leadership.”
It is a serious achievement, but the congregants and rabbi can see some humor in it. “We have a joke that our membership is 90 families and it’s illegal for it to increase [or] to decrease,” Danson said.
Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
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