Zachary Noah Piser may not be a household name (yet!), but to me he’s a superstar. Why? Because on Father’s Day 2022 my family went to see “Dear Evan Hansen” on Broadway. Before going to the show, I read everything I could find in the Jewish press about Zach, the Asian-Jewish actor who was starring as Evan Hansen.
I knew from The Forward that Zach was raised in the Bay Area in a multicultural Conservative Jewish home; his mom Jing had grown up in China and Taiwan before coming to the United States and she had converted to Judaism before Zach was born; Zach went to Hebrew School on weekdays and Chinese School on weekends; when he was home he went to services at his synagogue, Temple Beth Abraham in Oakland; and his parents kept a kosher home until he left for college. I even knew that the theme for his Bar Mitzvah party was swimming.
After the show was over, due to COVID, guards stood outside the stage door. They were strict about not letting anyone approach the exiting actors to ask for signatures or pictures. But the guards had left before Zach exited the theater.
I was standing around chatting with my family when Zach came out. I noticed that four or five people from the audience who were still around had formed a short line, and Zach was taking pictures with each of them. I stood at the end of the line, and just a few minutes later I got to meet Zach. I told him that I had read about him and that I was a rabbi. He asked if I knew his rabbi from Oakland (I didn’t), and then he excitedly shared that his rabbi had come to see him perform the week before. He then made my day by posing for pictures with me and my daughter. But after the encounter ended and Zach left, I realized that I’d forgotten to ask the Jewish actor the one thing I most wanted to know about him: Did he have a dog?
As my husband was driving back to Philadelphia from NYC that evening, I searched on Google to see if Zach had a dog. I was excited to learn that he had a dog named Scout. I loved how Zach described his typical day to Playbill a few months earlier: “I do my obligatory crossword/spelling bee/Wordle, and take care of any miscellaneous to-dos. Scout will keep me on a tight leash until I start prepping for the show around mid-afternoon….I end the day with a gentle warm down, a quiet check-in with my partner [and] some snuggles with Scout….”
I tagged Zach when I posted his picture with Scout on @mazelpups on Instagram, and I was so excited when he messaged me and we had a brief private chat. I’m a big fan of this sweet, talented young Jewish actor and singer and I wish him lots of success…and I wish Scout lots of love and treats!
