Meet Daniel Herz
He’s the new president of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey
It’s hard to tell Daniel Herz’s story without starting with the Jewish federation system.
Mr. Herz, who lives in Demarest, is the new president of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey.
It wouldn’t be entirely fanciful to say that he was born for that position; he comes from a family deeply entwined in the Jewish federation system, and in Jewish communal life. And it also is true that part of his determination to give not only materially but also in time, commitment, dedication, and love comes from his mother, and her deathbed charge to him.
Mr. Herz and his twin brother, Joshua, were born in Shorewood, Wisconsin, in suburban Milwaukee, but “I think that the beginning of our story was on the south side of Chicago, where our mother grew up,” he said. “Her name was Maxine Klein, and her family — the Schrayer family — was a staple part of the Jewish community in Chicago.
“My mother’s uncle, Max Schrayer, was the president of the Chicago federation” — the organization that now, after the name changes common to federations as they consolidated their catchment areas, is called the Jewish United Fund of Chicago, JUF for short — “my mother’s cousin, Bob Schrayer, was president of the Chicago federation, and so was my mother’s cousin’s son, Skip Schrayer.” And there’s more. Joshua Herz, Daniel’s twin, is now JUF’s campaign chair.
And because everything is connected in the Jewish world, even if those connections usually are a little less visible, “Skip also happens to be my twin brother’s business partner,” Mr. Herz added.
“So from my perspective, I’ve always had a connection to the federation, and even more importantly, a deep sense of commitment to our community.”
Mr. Herz’s nuclear family was unusual because he and Joshua have three older siblings — “who are 17, 19, and 20 years older than we are,” he said. All are the children of the same two parents. “I was an uncle when I was 10, and my niece is like a sister to me.
“My mother was 19 when they married, and my father was 21. They were much more mature when they had us.” The Herz family structure was so surprising that the local newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal, featured it on the front page, Mr. Herz added.
Mr. Herz’s mother died 21 years ago, but his father, Thomas G. A. Herz, died just about a month ago.
“He was born in Bonn, in Germany, in 1932, and he and his family escaped Nazi Germany in September 1938, just before Kristallnacht,” Mr. Herz said. “My grandfather had fought for Germany in World War I. He was a decorated veteran. So the head of the Gestapo called him in, and my grandfather thought it was all over, but instead he said, ‘Arthur, you need to leave now. Take your wife and son and go.’
“That’s how they were able to get out of Germany.
“My parents met at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in the early 1950s. My mother was visiting from Chicago. She was set up on a date with my father, and he was such a fun, exuberant person, and they had such a great time, that they set up a date for the next night.
“But the next day, he was having such a great time that he forgot all about my mother, and he didn’t show up. But my mother, being such a well-mannered young woman, sent him a thank-you note for the date the day before.
“They got married two years later.”
His father graduated from Madison on time — his mother took some time off and finished her degree, from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, later — went to law school, also in UW Madison, “and then he joined the army,” Mr. Herz said. “He was an intelligence officer in Germany during the Korean War.” Paula Herz, the oldest child in the family, was born there.
There’s a story to Mr. Herz’s father’s name too. “He was born Ado Gunther, and he changed it to Gunther Ado, because who wanted to have a name that reminded anyone of Adolf Hitler.
“And then, when he came here, he was abused in America as a German immigrant, so he changed his name to the most American one he could think of. He became Thomas G.A., for Thomas Gunther Ado.”
Tom and Maxine Herz sent their older three children to public school all the way through, but their beliefs changed as they grew older.
“In the 1950s there was a real desire to assimilate. My dad named his son after himself” — a non-Jewish but American tradition that he’d have been unlikely to have followed a decade or so later. The Herzes had become more outwardly Jewish by the time their twins were born. Also, “my sister Debbie lived in Israel for a year, around the time that she went to college, and that really helped reshape their connection to Judaism and to Israel.”
As a mark of that change, “My mother helped found the Milwaukee Jewish Day School,” Mr. Herz said. It’s a community rather than a movement-affiliated school, and “it’s the pre-eminent Jewish day school there today. It has been ever since they started it.” Needless to say, that’s where the Herz twins went for elementary school.
And there was more.
“My father was the treasurer of our synagogue, Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun in Milwaukee” — it’s Reform — “and my mother was on the board of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.” Her philanthropy extended outside the Jewish world. “She was also a board member of the Milwaukee Public Museum, and later she was made a lifetime member of the board in appreciation of her leadership.”
But the Milwaukee Jewish Day School ended with middle school, and there was no Jewish high school around, so the Herz family moved to Fox Point, Wisconsin; the town, which sits on the shore of Lake Michigan, had a high school student body that was about 30 percent Jewish. “There was a strong Jewish community in the area,” Mr. Herz said.
Mr. Herz went to Indiana University – Bloomington. This is where his having grown up in an area that is not this one becomes clear. “Growing up in Milwaukee, the only information we had about colleges was about the Big 10 schools,” he said. “So I went there.” (To be clear, many local kids go to Indiana University – Bloomington with joy, and they flourish there. The difference is the options available to them, not the choices they make.)
“I studied economics — I was an econ major — and I met my wife, Jillian Rokeach, there. We met when we were 18, began dating when we were 19, have been together for 28 years, and have been married for 22,” he said.
But something terrible happened next.
“When I was 25, my mother was given one month to live,” he said. That was just before Daniel’s wedding. “She ended up living seven months,” he said; she was able to be there. “She wrote me a letter” — it went only to him, and he thinks it might have been prompted by the emotion of the wedding — “saying that the key to life is not the pursuit of your own happiness, and it is not the pursuit of financial or monetary gain. It is in giving to others. It is in giving back. That’s where true happiness can be found.
“That’s the legacy of our family, she told me, and she asked me to continue that legacy.
“I still have that letter,” he added. “It is extremely meaningful to me. That is why I do what I do. I do it to honor her.”
Meanwhile, while he was in college, Mr. Herz realized that “I wanted to build companies and lead them.” Because his wife’s sister was dating a boy who wanted to be an investment banker, “I learned that the best way to get to do what I wanted to do was to become an investment banker.”
So he did. “I didn’t know it was a hard job to get, so I went and got it,” he said. “People often make things more complicated than they have to be. I just made it my mission to get a job in investment banking.”
He graduated from college in 1999, got married in 2002, worked in investment banking, moved to New York, and “left my job at Bank of America in January 2004 to lead a series of energy companies. One was called Atlas Energy, and the other was Atlas Pipeline. We grew those companies. At Atlas Energy, we pioneered Marcellus Shale, the largest natural gas field in the United States. It’s in Pennsylvania. We sold it to Chevron in 2011, for about $4.3 billion. And then we built Atlas Pipeline to be the largest in Oklahoma, and one of the largest in Texas. We sold it in 2014, for $7.7 billion.
“It was great.”
“But then you gotta get back to work. So I led another energy company — all of these companies were public — that operated 14,000 oil and gas wells in 12 states. In 2018, I took an oil and gas royalty company public. Imagine that you have thousands of oil and gas wells — you have to pay royalties. It was one of the largest royalty companies in oil and gas, and I ran it.
“When I ran it, it was called Falcon Minerals — my son, Jason, and I named it. Three years ago, I left Falcon — it’s called Sitio Royalties now — to start the company I run now. It’s called WhiteHawk Energy. We own natural gas royalties, and we’re also invested in the carbon capture space.
“I’m proud of three things in my career,” Mr. Herz continued “The first is our pioneering work in Marcellus Shale, because it has allowed us to transition from coal fire to natural gas generation. Today, about 43 percent of our electricity is generated using natural gas, and that has reduced our carbon emission to the lowest level in almost 50 years. It is not the right answer forever, but it is a great transition. In WhiteHawk, I am involved in natural gas royalties and carbon capture.
“The second thing is that I have had employees with me for a very long time, up to almost 20 years now.
“And the third thing is that I have had investors with me for 10, 15, almost 20 years now too. My job is to deliver for investors. The $12 billion we made in sales of our companies didn’t go to me. It went to our investors. They have done well, and I am pleased that they continue to have confidence in partnering with me.
“My father always preached that your reputation is probably the most important thing you can have, and it comes from how you treat people, whether they work for you or invest with you, or however they interact with you.” That’s a belief he’s always remembered and taken to heart, Mr. Herz said.
Meanwhile, back at home, Jillian and Daniel Herz moved to Demarest and had their daughter, Olivia, in 2007; Jason followed in 2009. (Both Olivia and Jason are students at Northern Valley Demarest. They went to public school all the way through. Jillian is from Demarest; her parents, Susan and Mel Rokeach, still live there. “My mother-in-law was a sixth-grade science teacher in Demarest,” Mr. Herz said; she’s now retired, but he feels that a district that employed her is a district where you should send your own children.)
“I would say that my federation journey began around 2011. It began with a phone call I received on a Sunday morning from Lenny Cole, who was a federation legend.”
Leonard Cole, who died in 2022, was a dentist by trade and a passionate, committed Jew and proud Zionist by avocation. He was, among many other things, president of the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey — to list all the other things would be to turn this from a story about Daniel Herz to a reminiscence about Leonard Cole. He was a presence.
“Lenny called, and asked, ‘Would you like to contribute to the federation?’ And I said, ‘My family has a long history with the federation, and I would like to do more than just contribute on Super Sunday.’”
The family had been in Bergen County for four years, and “I hadn’t done anything with the federation before they got my phone number from somewhere. I don’t know where they got it from.” It’s not that finding his number would have been hard, it’s that he doesn’t know who made the suggestion that led to Mr. Cole’s call, which started everything.
“Lenny immediately set up a meeting,” Mr. Herz said. “We got together, and went to see Zvi Marans,” who became federation president in 2013.
“While Zvi was in medical school” — he’s a pediatric cardiologist — “he taught my business partner’s son for his bar mitzvah.” Everything is connected.
“So I got involved, I got on a committee, and then, when Zvi asked me to join the newly reconstituted board, I did. And then, for the last three years, I chaired the financial resources and development committees.
“Also, probably around eight years ago, I joined our synagogue’s board.” That’s Temple Emanu-El of Closter. “Around 2019, I joined Emanu-El’s executive board; in 2021 I was the treasurer, and now, as of 2023, I am the synagogue’s vice president.
“I also sit on the executive dean’s advisory board at my alma mater, Indiana University,” he added.
“I never sought out any of those positions. Never. I have just been here, going about my business, trying to help the community in any and every way I can.
“My mother engrained in me the understanding that if you are able to say yes when you are asked for help, you say yes. But then you have to be able to help them with everything you’ve got.”
He detailed some of the reasons why he supports the JFNNJ — and would even were it not for his parents. (And his twin brother, Joshua Herz, who was shaped by the same family background, now lives in Chicago and has a strong presence in JUF and other Jewish and non-Jewish philanthropies there.)
“I have a deep love for what the Jewish federation does when it comes to combatting antisemitism,” he said. “That’s more important today than it has been in decades. We are providing security for our synagogues and community centers and helping to support our Israeli brothers and sisters. And then there’s the day-to-day work of helping our most vulnerable community members.
“My number one objective is to bring our community together.
“I look at the days after October 7, how we came together by the thousands, Americans and Israelis, from the religious to the unaffiliated, to mourn and grieve together, and then how we led thousands of people from our area to join thousands of others to DC, to stand and march for Israel.
“The federation brings the community together. We lift up those who need the most, when they need it most. What the federation does is bring everyone together, so we can speak in one voice.
“I just want to do the best I can do, whether it’s professionally or within our community, and I want to be a good example for my kids,” Mr. Herz concluded.
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