England’s Ministry of Defense to Appoint First Full-Time Jewish Chaplain

(Jewish Chronicle photo of British Colonel Martin Newman)

This past weekend I spoke at a conference about my project Operation Support Jews in the Military. And I met two young men from London who shared with me a February 12th newspaper article from the U.K.’s The Jewish Chronicle – “Wanted: a chaplain for the armed forces” by Marcus Dysch.

The Ministry of Defence [MoD] is to appoint its first full-time Jewish chaplain to the armed forces.

He will be expected to advise on religious issues, organise services for Jewish personnel and arrange kosher rations.

Jewish servicemen and women are the last to receive a dedicated chaplain, with Christian, Muslim, Buddhist and Sikh padres already employed by the MoD.

Jonathan Woodhouse, MoD deputy chaplain-general, said the appointment was “essential”.

The number of Jewish personnel in the armed forces is thought to be in the low hundreds, but includes troops now serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Martin Newman, of the Jewish Committee for HM [Her Majesty's] Forces, believes the number of troops is “small but significant”, and growing.

Now as an American Jew, here’s the part of the article that I found most interesting, and this also perhaps explains why the U.K. already had Buddhist and Sikh chaplains and no Jewish chaplain.

“Because the [forces] community has become more active in recent years, people are coming out of the woodwork and changing their records to show they are Jewish,” he [Newman} said.

“If someone in the forces says they are Jewish then we need to be in a position to give them the best possible support we can.”

Lynette Nusbacher, senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, said: “For a very long time service personnel hid the fact they were Jewish. They are a bit less likely to do that now the MoD’s commitment to diversity has been demonstrated.

“For many years members of the services would take leave for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur and go back to their family. So rather than be affiliated with a Jewish community in the armed forces, they were affiliated with their family synagogue.”

But with personnel now regularly serving in operational theatres of war around the world, Dr. Nusbacher said, demands had changed.

“It has become much more intense, so ordinary members of the forces need more assistance. We need chaplains who can go to those theatres, make sure kosher rations are available and do whatever is necessary. The idea that there has not been a full-time chaplain is pathetic.”

Here in the U.S., American Jews believe that there is more anti-Semitism in England than in the U.S. Thus I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that, until recently, Jewish military personnel in the U.K. hid their religious affiliation.

And in connection with this U.K. newspaper article, I’d like to share with you a February 6-12th article I just received from my parents in the mail – “Rabbi Abraham on the occasion of his 200th birthday, a look at Lincoln and the Jews” by Pauline Dubkin Yearwood in the Chicago Jewish News. Here’s the section circled by my parents:

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Congress passed legislation allowing the Union to raise a voluntary army. The same bill allowed for the provision of military chaplains, who by law could only be bona fide Christian ministers.

But with many Jews serving in the army, a delegation of Jewish soldiers' families soon appealed to Lincoln to allow rabbis to serve as chaplains to provide appropriate religious services for Jewish soldiers.

"The debate about the chaplains went on for months," [historian Gary] Zola says. "The issue distressed American Jewry greatly. They had people in service; they were appalled." Eventually, the law was changed and rabbis were allowed to serve as chaplains.

Two different English-speaking countries. Two different responses. And today there’s a shortage of Jewish chaplains in the U.S. military, which is the impetus for my new site www.OperationSupportJewsintheMilitary.com.

Check out this site now, and you can read the entire Jewish Chronicle article and the entire Chicago Jewish News article.