New rabbi brings change to Rego Park Jewish Center

The Rego Park Jewish Center’s new rabbi is not new to the congregation. Rabbi Romiel Daniel has been an active member of the center for nearly 20 years, including 13 years as the center’s president, a post he continues today. It’s an impressive accomplishment, made more so by the fact that Rabbi Daniel is originally from a place 10,000 miles away—Mumbai, India!

But distance was no obstacle to Rabbi Daniel. He attended prestigious Brandeis University in Massachusetts, where he received a master’s degree in chemistry, before returning to Mumbai. After spending a few short years in in Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and Madagascar, he returned to the States in 1990, finally settling four years later in New York, chanting the prayers Ashkenazi style, lecturing in English with an Oxford accent and loved by the congregation. He later studied at the Belz School of Music at Yeshiva University to become a Cantor and then was ordained a Rabbi in 2010 through the American of Board Rabbis.

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Rabbi Romiel is a master of the Sephardic liturgy, having conducted the High Holyday Services for the Indian Jewish community back in India as well as here in New York. The congregation sometimes gets a glimpse of the Indian Nusach in the services, which they all seem to love. In fact, they ask him to chant the Haphtarah using the Indian trop.

Like the edifice in which he conducts services, Rabbi Romiel is a Queens treasure. His unique background embodies the diversity that has made the borough so popular. And as such, he offers a fresh and exciting take on the rich Jewish traditions, so beloved by the congregation, retaining the original feel and flavor of the synagogue, established 76 years ago.

To embellish the High Holyday Services, the Jewish Center has invited Cantor Yehuda Rottner from Israel, who brings with him an impressive resume, having led services in Israel, Germany, The USA and Canada. He’s also given concerts in the States, Canada Russia and Germany and released CDs of the High Holyday Services as well as Selichot.

Together, Rabbi Romiel Daniel and Cantor Yehuda Rottner have made the High Holyday Services a unique, spiritually uplifting experience not to be missed.