Danny Ceisler has always been a problem solver.

The candidate for Bucks County sheriff has an impressive resume that includes a Bronze Star from the U.S. Army, work with the Pennsylvania governor’s office and helping to litigate against a major firearm manufacturer whose defective products harmed law enforcement officers.

But there is one story from long before he began his various professional careers that illustrates this quality better than any other.

Ceisler is a baseball player, and when he was a senior in high school, his team found out that its long-anticipated trip to Florida for spring break baseball would be cancelled because the break fell during Passover. The trip only happened once in each player’s high school career, and Ceisler wasn’t going to let it go without a fight. So, as one of the only Jews on the team, he took the lead to make sure his teammates got to travel.

“I convinced the school to change their policy and let us go on the condition that we have a Seder while we’re there — so we rented a back room in a college cafeteria, I printed out Haggadahs and we went to Publix and did the best we could [to create] a Seder plate,” he said. “I brought my grandfather’s Kiddush cup, and we had a Seder.”

After that trip, Ceisler earned a new nickname from his coach and teammates: rabbi.

Now, he wants to earn a new title in a more official capacity than that baseball-team nickname. Ceisler is running for sheriff of Bucks County, and he said that his campaign is inspired by his Jewish values, particularly tikkun olam.

“You don’t have to fix the world or the problem. But you have to try, and you have to do your part, and that’s how I have lived my entire life. I have always thought that thoughts and prayers are nice, but they don’t feed the hungry, they don’t shelter the homeless, they don’t protect the vote. What you need to do is step up and act,” he said.

For Ceisler, whose resume includes work on a joint special operations counterterrorism task force in Afghanistan, the Pentagon’s COVID-19 crisis management team and service as Governor Josh Shapiro’s senior public safety official, elected office is the best place to make these changes.

“Throughout that time, I really discovered that if you really want to make the biggest difference you can, you need to be the principal. You need to be the elected official, and I wanted to be in a position where I would be able to act and make a real difference,” he said.

Ceisler said that he believes that the sheriff’s office specifically is the place for him because of its limited but essential capabilities in the Commonwealth.

“It’s a very narrow set of responsibilities — they’re really the law enforcement arm of the court, but having interacted with them as an attorney, you see how effective a well-run sheriff’s office can be to really make your community a safer place,” he said.

Ceisler gave one example of an area that the sheriff’s office can make a sizable and tangible impact on the lives of constituents: alleviating domestic abuse.

“[The sheriff’s office can] really lift up vulnerable people,” he said. “For me, something that’s interesting is victims of domestic violence, because the sheriff is responsible for large components of enforcing protection from abusers.”

Ceisler said that he does not think that the office should be taking on additional duties, like working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as I.C.E. Across the country — including in Bucks County — local agencies are signing on to work with I.C.E., whose powers and funding have been expanded in Donald Trump’s second administration. The sheriff’s office has entered an agreement that will see it receive I.C.E. training and assist with detainments and arrests.

“Practically speaking, it’s distracting officers from their core responsibilities,” he said. “It’s expensive. Inevitably, American citizens get detained under this program and the counties get sued — that happened in Lehigh County, and they dropped the program after that,” Ceisler said, referencing a case settled by Lehigh County around a decade ago. “It damages relationships with communities where you need to build relationships, it damages the office’s credibility and it’s just distracting from the mission of the office, when there are thousands of outstanding arrest warrants that need to be served by the sheriff.”

Ceisler said that, while his Jewish upbringing and values have always guided his work, he recently saw his history and tradition in a whole new light. Ceisler’s wife converted to Judaism, and the Bristol Borough resident and Congregation Rodeph Shalom member took the opportunity to take the necessary classes alongside her.

“It was really fascinating because what I was doing was reexamining my faith through the critical lens of an adult, rather than when you’re just a kid,” Ceisler said. “It was a fascinating experience to revisit Judaism again.”

The class affirmed to Ceisler that the values he has embraced his whole life are the ones he wants to take with him to the sheriff’s office should he win in November. Whether it was in the governor’s office, on the high school baseball field or in the mountains of Afghanistan, Ceisler has been proudly and passionately Jewish. He is hoping that, this November, voters decide to place him in a new office where he can continue to be that way.

aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com