the cantor's daughter

The best thing about visiting my dad in LA was seeing Danielle Dardashti. Danielle's dad was the cantor at the synagogue where my dad was the rabbi. During those trips I got to be the me that I should have been. The pretty popular California girl. The rabbis daughter, the cantors daughters best friend. Exactly the opposite of my real life in Kansas City.

Danielle was beautiful. She had thick glossy black/brown hair and was skinny in just the right way. She wore Heaven sweatshirts and guess jeans. She looked like how I imagined I could look if everything would just come together the way it should. She is what I wished I could have seen when I looked into the mirror. She was popular of course, in the special IP section of her Jewish Day School, and a talented singer like her dad. She had both a swatch watch and a boyfriend at a time when I was pretty sure that either one of those things was a ticket to everlasting happiness. She was my best friend when I visited LA. I am pretty sure it is this friendship that caused me to move to LA at age 22. In LA I didn't have to be me, I could be happy.

Danielle and I went rollerskating with her friends on Saturday nights. We held hands and glided around listening to Madonna and the Go-Go's. Everyone at the rink new Danielle and her crowd. I was one of the crowd with Danielle. She took me to "Heaven" and helped me pick out my own pair of guess jeans all paid for by my dad. I slept over at her house and we talked about boys. When I talked to Danielle I invented a fantasy world for myself back in Kansas City. I told her about the popular crowed and the roller rink and all of my friends. Exactly as I wanted them to exist in my mind, these are the stories of my life that I told to Danielle. All beautiful fiction.

Once Danielle and I were at the mall together during Passover. We were hungry and ordered salads at the deli. We were so careful and proud of ourselves that we were not breaking Passover. Our salads arrived each with a side of bread. We ate the bread. We felt horribly guilty and wondered what our dads would have said if they had seen us. You know if the rabbi and the cantor just happened to be walking through the gallleria together in the middle of the day during Passover. "My dad would kill me, but yours wouldn't be mad at all". She was right. The idea that my dad would get mad at me for eating bread on Passover was ridiculous. (My mom on the other hand was a different story). She was also right that Farid, her dad, would be furious with her. She was the cantor's daughter and expected to live up to certain standards. She was expected to be the best at everything. She was an example to the community. She should not be seen at the mall eating bread on Passover.

I was more jealous of Danielle over this then anything else. I was not an example for anyone. No one in this community knew who I was. True, I was the rabbi's daughter but not really. I was the rabbi's visiting daughter and I'm pretty sure no one in the community knew that I was visiting. The rabbi's real daughter was three years old at the time and safely at home with her mother. It would be different if I lived there I knew it would. If I lived in LA I could be like Danielle. We would be celebrities together.

The other problem was that my dad didn't care about the laws of Passover, not really. How did Danielle know this? Did he just seem to be the kind of person who didn't care about the rules, or was her family privy to the fact he really couldn't give a damn? I know Danielle had never seen him get mad at me. He never did, not anymore. He treated me like a visiting movie star when I came to town. He bought me whatever I wanted, there were no rules, no limits, certainly nothing as insignificant as Passover would cause him to limit me in any way. He didn't care about those rules, not really, but he desperately wanted me to be happy. To like him. Life with my dad was magic. But I wanted what Danielle had. A father who cared about Judaism and who acted like a father. One who got upset if his thirteen year old daughter ate bread on Passover.

After my Dad left the congregation in Northridge he uncharacteristically stayed in touch with Farid Dardashti. Farid was one of the few people and definitely the only cantor that my dad ever liked enough to keep in touch with after he moved. That was however, it, for my friendship with Danielle. It wasn't the last time I ever saw her though.

We both found ourselves in Israel at Hebrew University for our junior year. I saw her name on the list of students that they handed out at the airport. She was still stunning. We hugged. When it was time to get off the plane she came and found me so I could check out her lipstick for her. Her boyfriend was meeting the plane in Israel and she wanted to look good, which of course she did. Danielle and I weren't friends that year in Israel. We lived in different dorms and she was in a higher ulpan than me. Even after being a star for all of those years she was still nice but we could no longer connect. I couldn't be friends with the stars in those days. I was too damaged from my years of missing the spotlight. Her light hurt my eyes. I was busy mourning my lost celebrity while she was still glistening in hers.

A few years ago I bought a book about Jewish crafts that families could do together to have in my office. I had a lot of families come to me asking for ideas on how their families could connect over Jewish stuff and this book seemed to offer just the right mix of Judaism and Kitch. One day I was looking for a Tu B'Shevat craft for a Shabbaton, pulled down the (now forgotten) book and noticed that the author was Danielle Dardashti. There was a picture of her and her family on the back page. They were adorable, but in an ordinary way. Not more so then me and my family. They looked actually like us, like most of our friends. The book jacket had her email address so I emailed her. I congratulated her on the book. I heard back from her right away. I am sure if I met her again I would like her. We are not so different anymore.