The Jekyll and Hyde Story of Daniel Greer

Daniel Greer with bail bondsman (New Haven Independent)

In September 1956, as Daniel Greer's fellow freshmen were dining in the Princeton University Commons, he ate every meal alone in his dorm room. An Orthodox Jew some 10 miles from the nearest Orthodox congregation, only 16 years old because he had skipped grades, Greer kept kosher throughout college with the aid of the refrigerator, a hot plate and home-cooked meals he picked up on weekend visits to his parents.

''We were brought up to believe one goes out into the world,'' says Dov Greer, Batsheva's older brother, who has also attended Yale. ''But one doesn't accommodate one's religion for one's college. All Orthodox Jews know they live in a society that has some values that aren't ours. My father's main point is that the most important thing is that you are an Orthodox Jew. ''

With degrees from Princeton and Yale Law School, Daniel Greer moved easily into the secular world. He became an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, general counsel for the Commissioner of Investigation under Mayor John V. Lindsay and a candidate for New York State Assembly in 1972. But by the late 1970's, Greer had become a rabbi and moved with his wife, Sarah, to New Haven.

Unable to find an appropriate Jewish nursery school for Dov, their oldest child, the Greers founded one. Under Daniel as chairman and Sarah as principal, the school grew to include elementary and secondary grades serving 260 students, among them Batsheva Greer, who attended from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

Not that she grew up sheltered. The Greers lived in a relatively poor neighborhood with a large black population; it was being revived by a nonprofit housing program led by Batsheva's father. As a teen-ager, Batsheva volunteered in a soup kitchen, took meals to house-bound senior citizens, organized an informal day camp for local children. ''And I didn't do it,'' she says with a rare flash of edge, ''as 'community service.''' 

Beginning in the 1980s, Rabbi Greer oversaw the revival of the neighborhood around his yeshiva at the corner of Norton and Elm streets, renovating neglected historic homes. 

Over the years, Greer has also crusaded against gay rights in Connecticut, at times played an active role in politics and government, and advocated for keeping nuisance businesses out of the Whalley Avenue commercial corridor. He and his family earned national attention for exposing johns who patronized street prostitutes in the neighborhood, for filing suit against Yale University over a requirement that students live in coed dorms, and then in 2007 for launching an armed neighborhood “defense” patrol and then calling in the Guardian Angels for assistance to combat crime. In the 1970s, Greer also led a successful campaign to force the United States to pressure the Soviet Union into allowing Jewish “refuseniks” to emigrate here and start new, freer lives.