In memory of my father Daniel Ben-Joseph (z"l)

Each soldier is unique through the eyes of someone who looks up to them.

Bauch dayan emet. May the holy memory of my father Daniel Ben-Joseph be a blessing for you and for the world.

The two lessons I want you to learn from my father is to not take life for granted and to love your children. My father did both ten thousand fold. This is a man that lived to 80 years old despite being chronically ill nearly his entire life. He had renal failure since he was young. This is a debilitating disease. We have a tendency to underestimate it, but kidney failure is one of the worst things to have. It requires you to live at the mercy of a machine, one that truly takes the life out of you. But my father lived to 80 years old, above the average lifespan.

This is because my father was a fighter that never took life for granted.

We are only on this planet for a very short time. My father never took that for granted. Not even one minute of his life. When he was in his 70s he behaved like a teenage backpacker. He traveled the world. He has been all over Europe, South America, and China. He did amazing things that most people would only dream of. My father was a fighter that lived a rich life.

I hope all of you can live a rich life like my father. To never take life for granted. I hope this is for you.

He loved his children so much. He was a hero to me. When we first moved to Florida, he used to take me to Disney World. We’d make the three and half hour drive almost every weekend. I was so into Disney World. I used to put the maps of the different parks on the floor of my bedroom and fantasize about these places. I was in love with the place. And he knew it. So we got an annual pass and he took me nearly every single week.

He did this for me because he loved me.

I remember watching the Discovery Channel with him in the living room. Back before it was just reality shows. My father did not get a college degree. His education was religious. But he loved science and nature. And he would watch these shows with a deep fascination. He involved me too in this fascination. This instilled my fascination with science.

My father is the reason I am a scientist.

Without him, I would not be the person I am. My sisters are both very successful. This is because of our father. He was a hero, who constantly pushed me to be a better person, to strive further and harder. I realize now this is because he cared for me so much, and he wanted the best for me.

His ancestry is from Yemen and Syria. The Yemenite side of his family was from Sanaa, from a family of wealthy Jewish merchants. Inspired by Zionism, they made aliyah to the Land of Israel in the late 1800s. His Syrian side is from the city of Aleppo. His mother, my grandmother, walked from Aleppo to Jerusalem shortly before Israel’s birth. She walked the whole way. Aleppo is in the north part of Syria. What a long walk. This is incredible. These Syrian Jews had the oldest Hebrew Bible in existence, the Aleppo codex. This was an ancient Jewish community, massive in size. Today there is not a single Jew living in Aleppo.

After my grandmother left, there was a major pogrom. Their ancient central synagogue was burned. The Aleppo codex was lost. Until one day decades later, it mysteriously showed up. In a package sent to the Israel Museum, the national museum of Israel. It was somewhat damaged, but still so beautiful. The Aleppo codex is now in the Shrine of the Book there, alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls. If you are ever in the area, I suggest you visit it one day in honor of my father Daniel Ben-Joseph, a true son of the Israelite community of Aleppo.

My father was born in holy Jerusalem. He grew up very poor. His parents were religious. They did not maintain a material existence. The man wore used shoes, second hand shoes. He didn’t even have his own towel. If you’d see his closet now you’d see 100 towels. To him, this was the definition of success. Having so many towels was like a status symbol to him.

My dad also had a great sense of humor.

My father grew up religious. When he turned 18 he joined the IDF. He joined the IDF during the time of the Jewish state's greatest endangerment. He didn’t have to. Religious Jews like now, did not have to serve. He joined because that was the kind of man my father was. Service was the kind of man my father was. He lived for something beyond himself. And he was always obsessed with the military. He was a proud member of the United States Navy League. He used to take me to such events to eat sushi with admirals. He gave me an appreciation for national service. I have dedicated my life to national service. Because I believe in this country, the United States, is good. America is a force for good in the world. This is a country where liberty and industriousness drives the day. A nation driven by an idealism very much like Jewish idealism. A light unto the nations.

My father was selfless.

He worked with electronics while in the Israeli military, ironically setting up radio towers in Syria. He learned quite a lot about electronics and radio technology. After his military service, he became a radio officer for commercial vessels. He worked on container ships and even oil tankers. Before he was even 25, he travelled all around the world.

From an early age my father was a man of the world. What really enticed him about America was how big it was. He rented a car and drove and drove and there was always something new to see. Israel is a very small country. My father wanted something larger. A larger stereo system. He visited electronics stores and saw less expensive stuff. And he wanted a larger stereo system. He just wanted something larger. He moved to the USA, where I was born. My father was a true believer of the American dream. But he was also a success story of it.

In the USA he started off doing odd jobs, handyman work, anything that would pay. Eventually saved up for a taxi medallion and became a taxi driver. This is a hard job. You are driving all the time, you can’t even stop to pee.

My father was a hard worker.

From poverty he built up his savings. Soon he saved enough to start an ice cream shop. He opened an ice cream shop with my mother. It was successful. From nothing, my father became wealthy. We owned a large house in an affluent neighborhood of New Jersey. You have to understand he did all this while having a chronic illness. The man was unbelievable. May we all have such an incredible willpower as my father Daniel Ben-Joseph.

I will always miss my father Daniel Ben-Joseph, my personal hero. I love him so much. He was my father. But as far as I am concerned, the best father in the world. One of a kind.

I am currently working on a Ph.D. in Computer Science. My thesis is on “Artificial Intelligence for Coronavirus Antivirals and Forecasting”. My father always pushed me to finish this Ph.D. If he was still alive, and saw me finish, he would have been so proud of me, in a way I can not explain. I will dedicate my thesis to the memory of my father, so that his memory can live forever in the academic record.

We are people who live in a small speck of dust in a vast ocean of possibility we call the universe. There is so much beauty and complexity in the world, our world. We are people who ponder the infinite and yet we live less than a century. There is so much we can do. I often have dreams of a perfect world. One where humanity is interstellar. Where nobody suffers. Where there is perfect happiness. I want to help build this world. This is what drives me every day. But I would not have these dreams if it wasn’t for my father who guided me there.

May the memory of this man Daniel Ben-Joseph be a blessing for you. May his memory inspire you as much as it inspired me. May it inspire you to be a better person. May it inspire to love one another the way Danny loved. May it inspire you to live the way Danny lived. And may it inspire you to repair the world, to make a world a better place, so that one day, no son has to give a eulogy like this about their father.

God bless the people of Israel and the United States of America. Blessed is the true judge. Am yisrael chai.