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Serving God and country
U.S. military's Jewish chaplains find rewards in their double duty
CAROL KATZMAN
Jewish Press of Omaha
Last Rosh Hashana, Rabbi David Kaye, chaplain at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, received a phone call from a navy midshipman. He was the only Jew aboard a navy vessel and didn't want to be alone for the High Holidays. Rabbi Kaye cut through military red tape to fly him to Ramstein for services.
Requests like this are all in a day's work for the former chaplain at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, Neb. The New Jersey native, who spent three years ministering to military personnel of all faiths in Omaha, now serves Germany, Italy, Belgium, Turkey and Bosnia. The Kaiserslautern Military Command, or KMC for short, covers not only the U.S. Air Force, but also the Army.
"We get about 200 Jews for services on a weekly basis, and many of them are singles," says Rabbi Kaye. "It's one thing to be Jewish and single and alone, stationed on an American base, but even the most unobservant Jews want Jewish relationships when they're far away from family."
Rabbi Kaye and his wife, Galit, often invite single people to their home for Shabbat dinner on Friday night or for lunch on Saturday, as they did in Omaha.
"They like Galit's cooking," he notes, nodding his head with his own approval of his Israeli wife's Sephardic delicacies. The two have been married for four years and have two young children, Mordechai, 2, and Esther, 9 months.
Rabbi Kaye hosted a Passover seder this year at Ramstein, but went to Bosnia afterward to see Jewish troops stationed there. It was his fourth trip to Bosnia.
"The Air Force sends Protestant and Catholic chaplains to Bosnia for 90- to 120-day rotations," he says, "but Jewish chaplains are only sent in once every two months or around Jewish holidays."
Earlier this year, Omaha's Jewish Chaplains Council shipped "Solo Seder Kits" and various Passover staples to Jewish servicemen and women stationed overseas. The kits included matzo ball soup, matzo, gefilte fish and macaroons, plus ritual supplies, which enabled individuals unable to attend a seder to participate in Passover observance. The council has put special emphasis on Jewish personnel stationed in Kuwait and Bosnia. Major Ira Flax, the current Jewish chaplain at Offutt, was in Saudi Arabia over the winter and visited troops in Kuwait as well.
Ramstein was originally a Luftwaffe base for the German Air Force. Train tracks still run through the base into the heavily wooded areas beyond. "It's a strange feeling," notes Kaye, "but I have not experienced any overt anti-Semitism here."
Rabbi Kaye doesn't go off base much, though he does visit the local Jewish community center. According to recent demographic studies, most of the Jews in Germany are recent arrivals from the former Soviet Union and, though somewhat assimilated, do look to the local Jewish community for services.
Kaye and his wife have also visited the German cities of Frankfurt and Worms, and Kaye said those cities maintain a sense of Jewish history. The great Talmudic scholar and translator of the Torah, Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch, is buried in Frankfurt, and next to him is Baron Willy Rothschild. The former Reform synagogue of Frankfurt is now an Orthodox one with a full-time rabbi.
Europe has the largest population of military personnel outside the United States, including 20 chaplains.
"On the whole, Ramstein is a challenge," says Kaye, who is a full captain in the Air Force. "The military here are searching, just like everyone in America. They're interested in spirituality and looking for something bigger than they are.
"I do a lot of counseling," he adds, "and I work with men and women of all faiths. A big problem faced by military personnel is maintaining relationships, especially when partners are separated."
While Kaye was in Omaha recently, he conducted a workshop on suicide awareness for Stratcom, the military's name for the former Strategic Air Command at Offutt.
"I teach officers what to look for in their troops, and how to create an environment where people feel productive," he says.
"There are signs and intervention techniques that are important for leaders to note," the rabbi adds, "and if I can help them help save lives, that's important."
Several serve the nation
There are currently 33 rabbis serving as chaplains on active duty in the U.S. military - eight in the Army, 10 in the Air Force and 15 in the Navy, including the Marine Corps. Ten additional rabbis serve full-time in Veterans Affairs Medical Centers.
The top three bases for these chaplains are Lackland, in Texas, which trains enlisted personnel; the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs for officers (from which the current Offutt chaplain, Major Flax, arrived last summer); and Europe, where Rabbi Kaye is currently stationed.
When Rabbi Flax began serving as a chaplain in the Air Force, he says he ran across airmen with names like "Goldberg" and "Balfour," spoke to these young recruits, and discovered they had little, if any, connection to their Jewish roots.
"I serve in the outermost periphery of Jewish life," the rabbi says.
"Being Jewish in the military is like being in a club that has no membership requirements," he adds. "It's a voluntary choice to declare oneself Jewish, yet I'm seeing more and more Air Force personnel do just that."
Rabbi Flax, whose educational background includes both an Orthodox yeshiva and the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, entered the military in 1988 to serve as a chaplain in Biloxi, Miss. In nine years he has served on five bases, including Turkey, Ramstein in Germany, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and now Offutt in Nebraska, where he hopes to stay for another two years with his wife Vicki and two children - Debra, 8, and Benjamin, 5.
Flax is one of 600 chaplains in the U.S. Air Force, and one of only 10 rabbis.
"These airmen on the 'edge' wind up there because of prejudices passed on to them by their parents," Flax notes, "but they know that they don't fit in with the Christian personnel."
When asked how he reaches out to these unaffiliated Jews, Rabbi Flax says "it's like running a marathon; you can't do it without daily practice." That practice means introducing young Jews to ritual objects and the rich symbolism of Judaism, he says.
"Candles, tefillin, tallit, matzo, a Hanukkah menorah - these are very powerful for people who are not exposed to them on a regular basis," he notes. "Our prayer implements, our 'ritual stuff,' has great appeal."
Because he feels so strongly about the power of these ritual objects, Flax created a special chaplain's kit for his three-week tour of duty in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain last winter. Using a medical kit bag, he packed a number of objects in his "shul in a box" as he called it. Inside, he showed the group his folded tallit (prayer shawl), a velvet cloth with a Star of David embroidered on it in gold, a collapsible kiddush cup, traveling candlesticks, several books and other items.
"A member of the civil engineering squadron made a hidden Hanukkiah." As Flax demonstrates, the holiday object, composed of two pieces of carved wood, opens to reveal little cups to be filled with oil for Hanukkah. Flax uses a syringe to fill the cups and adds a small wick to each one.
Flax uses a pillbox- shaped container used by priests in the rite of "unction" (annointing) as a spice box (filled with cologne) for havdalah, the service ending the Sabbath. The books he carries in the kit are also quite compact. One is a siddur (prayer book), which the rabbi says "has everything in it, including how to tie knots" (in the ritual fringes worn on a tallit). The others include a Kitzur Shulchan Aurch, a book listing all 613 mitzvot (commandments), and a small volume of Mishnayot (passages from the Talmud), so he can "study Mishnah when I have the opportunity."
The use of religious paraphernalia while stationed abroad is not free of conflicts, Flax notes.
"Since Saudi Arabia is not a signer of an agreement which allows us to bring our ritual objects and prayers into the country, all of it can be confiscated," the rabbi says. During his recent stint there, he rolled his own tefillin (phylacteries) and tallit into his sleeping bag and hoped that the Saudi inspectors wouldn't find them. They didn't.
In addition to the Shabbat articles and the menorah, Flax also cut open a box from an old pair of tefillin so he could show Jews with little knowledge an actual piece of parchment with words of Torah written on it by hand.
"At the very least, we have the Shema ("Hear, O Israel...") which, in the middle of the desert when you're waiting for orders that might endanger your life, is a very powerful symbol and reminder of the holiness of the word of God, "says Flax. "Plus, I can even use the four sections contained in the tefillin as readings from the Torah to use during a service."
Major Flax considers his job as one of mekarev, "bringing Jews closer." One example is the B-1 bomber squadron commander who came one day to services and put on tefillin, something he hadn't done since his bar mitzvah.
"Can you imagine the statement that makes when sergeants and recruits see an officer involved in a Jewish ritual?" the rabbi asks. "I heard that after I left Saudi Arabia, the commander started coming to services regularly."
Thousands of miles away at Ramstein, where he will be stationed until the year 2000, Rabbi Kaye also says his service has allowed him to have a positive impact on others.
"It has given me the chance to interact with young Jews far from home who need someone to turn to, not just for advice on how to live, but how to live Jewishly," he says.
Carol Katzman is editor of the Jewish Press of Omaha in Nebraska.
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