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By: JNS Staff
Before swearing in Jewish philanthropist and businessman Robert Tucker as the New York City Fire Department’s 35th commissioner, the city’s mayor, Eric Adams, directed his comments at the appointee’s father, Barry Tucker, a wealth adviser and benefactor.
“We sit here today, and we see the elevation of your son becoming the commissioner of the Fire Department. But I know there’s another narrative here,” Adams said. “There’s an underlying love story that only we know as fathers and as mothers. As we see, Robert is taking his son off tomorrow to go to college.”
“The continuous tradition of what we want for our children, how we hope that they can just have a fair chance in life,” the mayor said.
Adams then turned to the man of the hour.
“If you look through the résumé of Robert, you will miss some of the things that he has done. The legacy of his mother and her role with Mayor (Ed) Koch, and how he started up looking starry-eyed at the beauty of being a member of this department and always wanted to have a role in giving back to the city,” the mayor said.
“It was with the Board of Rabbis, it was with Big Sisters, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, no matter what, he wanted to give back,” Adams said of Tucker. “I knew what he was inheriting. He was inheriting more than just a department that had to put out flames of burning buildings. We had to put out the flames that are actually burning inside the agency, and it’s going to take a level of honesty and ability to communicate to accomplish that task.”
Tucker’s 86-year-old father held a copy of a Tanach as his son was sworn in to his new role. “That is Commissioner Tucker’s personal bible that was used at his bar mitzvah,” the New York City Fire Department told JNS.
Addressing those assembled, Tucker said that “public safety has been my life’s work.”
“I can say without a shadow of a doubt, I can think of no higher calling than serving as the fire commissioner for the City of New York,” he added. “This is truly a dream come true.”
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, a fire department chaplain and executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, then delivered a blessing, noting the “famous religious proverb” that “blessed are those who speak briefly, for they shall be invited back.”
“In all of our religious traditions, mountains play a prominent role. We speak of Mount Sinai. We speak of Mount Ararat. We speak of the Sermon on the Mount. The reason being that you have to learn in life to make mountains out of moments,” Potasnik said.
“Today, we come to celebrate that mountain of a moment. As we watch the Olympics, let us also remember that in the original Olympics, the winner of the race was not the one who finished first, it was the one who finished first, with the flame still burning brightly,” he added. “Commissioner Tucker, I know you well. You have run this race with your ideals burning very brightly.”
(JNS.org)
