The People's Rabbi

Rabbi E. Arnold Siegel was born in Connecticut, and he loved the New England area. But when he was around seven years old, he moved with his family to Mesa, Arizona, and the Siegels were in for a bit of a culture shock.

The year was 1949, and Rabbi Siegel remembers seeing Native Americans coming off of their reservations every weekend, riding into town with their horses and wagons to do their shopping. It definitely wasn’t a typical upbringing for a young Jewish boy.

“They could’ve taken me to the other side of the moon,” Rabbi Siegel says. “There were maybe 14 Jewish households, but they banded together. Jews just had to learn to get along. I essentially grew up in a pluralistic community in all the demographics – Mormons, Catholics, Hispanics, Protestants.”

That upbringing would be a good training ground for his job as the Central Florida area’s community rabbi. Since 2004, Rabbi Siegel has been part of the Jewish Family Services programming staff, mostly providing end-of-life services such as funerals and memorials for Jews who are unaffiliated. He also visits hospital and hospice patients – affiliated and unaffiliated – and is available 24/7 for crisis ministry.

The community chaplaincy program is operated in partnership with the Greater Orlando Board of Rabbis and the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando, which helps fund the position. Last year alone, Rabbi Siegel offered 1,034 chaplaincy services to nearly 2,000 individuals.

“A chaplain – a rabbi, in this case – is an outlet to give expression to any concern, any question, any fear,” says Rabbi Siegel, who makes weekly rounds at four of the Orlando area’s main hospitals. “They may be wondering, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ And I hope to give them some insight from our Jewish traditions.”

Rabbi Siegel’s interest in Judaism and its traditions began when he was living in Connecticut. The local Talmud Torah religious school was right down the block, and one day five-year-old Arnold followed his older friends into their Hebrew class.

“I absolutely loved it,” he recalls. “I wanted to learn Hebrew, and I wanted to be like the big kids.”

Little Arnold’s mother had no idea where he was, until the school’s principal brought him back home after dark and convinced her to enroll him in classes. By the end of the school year, he was reading Hebrew.

Jewish studies were more difficult to come by after his family moved to Arizona. In 1949, there were no synagogues in Mesa, but Arnold was a founding child of the first one: Temple Beth Sholom. Religious services would be held in various places, from living rooms to mortuary chapels, until the group purchased a church and converted it to a synagogue. There was no rabbi; services were led by “whoever could read Hebrew and was willing,” Rabbi Siegel says.

There were only four or five Jewish kids in Mesa at the time, and fathers took turns making the two-hour round trip to a Conservative synagogue in Phoenix so the children could attend Hebrew and Sunday School classes. Arnold had his bar mitzvah on June 18, 1955.

“I did not come from a ritualistic home,” Rabbi Siegel says. “But we always had the Jewish ethnic identity, and we always supported the Jewish community.”

By the time he went to Arizona State University for college, Rabbi Siegel admits he felt spiritually empty.

“At least I ate lox on Sundays,” he says with a grin. “But I was so uneducated about Judaism.”

After graduating from ASU in 1965 with degrees in political science and liberal arts, Rabbi Siegel worked as a graduate assistant and married his first wife. Not knowing where to turn after that, he decided to go into the seminary. In 1972, he was ordained from the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion. That led to his first job at Northern Virginia Hebrew Congregation in Reston (another pluralistic community), where he was the synagogue’s first permanent rabbi.

After going through a divorce, with two children to support, Rabbi Siegel decided he no longer wanted to be a pulpit rabbi. He joined the United States Navy Reserve and began a 24-year stint as a Navy chaplain. During his Navy career, Rabbi Siegel traveled the world, including two tours in Japan, and was responsible for taking care of the religious needs of the Navy’s Jewish community. Upon his Navy retirement, Rabbi Siegel took his current job. He moved to Casselberry with his wife Mary and their daughter Elisheva, now 28.

“I wasn’t looking for congregation work, and this would be almost the same as my work as a Navy chaplain,” he says. “Because I grew up in Arizona in a diverse community, I’ve always been comfortable in a pluralistic setting, even within the Jewish community. I don’t like labels.”

Rabbi Siegel does, however, give himself a most-original label: Reconformodox – combining the three primary Jewish denominations of Conservative, Reform, and Orthodox.

“I get along with everybody,” he says, “and I respect where they’re coming from. If I try to do something good, maybe somebody will benefit and the world will move a little closer to what Jews view as perfection, a better place.”