R’ Daniel Danesh

How does a hardworking businessman manage to make Torah his main focus in life?  R’ Daniel Danesh, a lawyer and commodities trader who devotes much of his time to learning and spreading Torah in his community, is an inspiring example of how to achieve this ultimate balance.  

It is an accomplishment he attributes to the influence of his years in Toras Moshe, as well as to strong family support. 

A native of Brooklyn’s Iranian community, R’ Danesh attended Yeshiva Ateret Torah for high school.  When it came time for post-high school yeshiva, he chose Toras Moshe because of its reputation for Torah learning at a very high standard.   He learned there from 2008 – 2010, in the shiurim of Rabbi Abramowitz and Rabbi Shurkin.  While in yeshiva, he was zocheh to develop close relationships with his rebbeim, in particular Rabbi Avraham Meiselman and Rabbi Yosef Kupetz.  

After yeshiva, he entered Yeshiva University for college and, subsequently, law school.  After graduation, he joined Goldman Sachs, where he stayed for nearly five years in a number of roles, including its Firmwide Strategy Group. He now runs his own firm in the renewable energy industry. 

Through it all, R’ Danesh always made it a priority to devote time every day to serious learning, even when it was challenging to find the time.  At Goldman Sachs, he started a program for a group of learners, fondly referred to as the GS Yeshiva. The yeshiva included short bursts of high-quality learning, shiurim during car rides, and starting a weekly shiur with his brothers and friends led by Rabbi Avraham Meiselman. Two years into marriage, these Torah-centric values and love for Toras Moshe culminated in coming to Israel with his family for six months this past year to learn in Toras Moshe, spanning the summer, Elul and winter zmanim.

Aside from constantly pushing himself to grow in his own learning, R’ Danesh, who is currently completing semicha from Machon L’Horaah, has taken a leadership position in spreading Torah within his Brooklyn Iranian community, where he lives with his wife, Dr. Yael (Roberts), a nurse practitioner, and their young son.  Daniel has been very involved in founding Kehillat Shaarei Shushan, a new shul in development for the Persian kehillah. When it opens, he will head the Beit Midrash programming, spearheading harbatzas Torah initiative, including Gemara, halacha, and mental health shiurim for the shul and the greater community.  The shul’s goal is ambitious: to create a space for all in the diverse community and to develop a makom of serious talmidei chachamim who are able to learn and connect to Torah on a high level, with the Beit Midrash being the hub and focal point of the community. 

In addition, Daniel founded Legally Links in in 2019 and started the Links Family Opportunities Chat in 2021. Legally Links, a branch of Links Family, is a group of lawyers and finance professionals who volunteer to assist families who have lost a parent and require legal and financial advice. This ranges from banking to budget management to accounting and social security survivors’ benefits.  To date, the organization has assisted in over 650 cases. 

The Opportunities Chat, now encompassing close to 2,000 people, was created to fund emergent needs on a weekly basis for Links families that were not covered by the operating budget. To date, it has raised over $1.2 million through small donations, all of which go directly to Links families.

R’ Danesh credits his parents with imbuing in him the value that Torah learning must come above all.  He saw the sacrifices they made for their children’s Torah learning, and how supportive they’ve always been of his own learning.  He is very grateful to his Toras Moshe rebbeim for their care and involvement throughout his life, and for instilling in him the strong message that wherever a person finds himself in life, he must always push himself to learn, to grow, and then to give over that Torah to others. Above all, like many Toras Moshe alumni, he recognizes that his wife’s encouragement and belief in their joint life mission powers all that he does.