Jews and Rabbis in the United States Military today
"It's hard to get kosher food in the U.S. Marines"
From http://www.haaretz.com/
By Shlomo Shamir
Sun., November 14, 2004 Kislev 1, 5765

"Rabbi Irving Elson, a Jewish chaplain for the U.S. Marines, was on his way to lecture students in a rabbinical seminar in New York when he learned that a Jewish marines officer was among the casualties in the Fallujah battles.

Elson, a tall, mustached man in marines uniform, who recently returned from active service in Iraq, tried to persuade the rabbinical students to join the marines after their ordination. He believes that "every young Jewish man and woman ordained to be rabbis should aspire to serve in the U.S. Marines."

"Believe me, the challenge to serve in the armed forces in a spiritual capacity, administering to the religious needs of Jewish soldiers, is greater and much more fascinating than the role of a rabbi in a synagogue," he says.

Elson never met First Lieutenant Andrew K. Stern, who was killed in Iraq in September, but he did know four other Jewish marines who were killed in Iraq. There are no official figures of the number of Jewish soldiers killed since the invasion to Iraq. An American soldier's dog tag bears his name, personal number, blood type and religion, but in its official announcements, the army does not refer to their religion.

"There are American soldiers in Iraq who do not reveal their Jewish identity and there are Jewish soldiers who don't bother to contact the chaplain," an official in the Jewish Chaplains Council's office in New York says. This makes it difficult to document authoritatively data on Jewish soldiers who have been killed during the war in Iraq.

Some 37 military rabbis are in active service, 11 in the U.S. Air Force and seven in the U.S. Navy. Chaplain (Rabbi) Lieutenant Commander Irving Elson, 44, is completing his 18th year of service in the U.S. Marines.

He first served as military rabbi at the Okinawa marine base. Between 1992 and 1994, he was rabbi of the Sixth Fleet. "We visited Haifa several times," he says. In the first Gulf War, he was based on an aircraft carrier "far from the real action."

When the preparations for the invasion into Iraq began, he was attached to a marine artillery brigade that spearheaded the invasion. Elson estimates that 800 to 1,000 Jewish American soldiers are taking part in the war. His first term in Iraq lasted nine months. He was sent there again in August 2004, returning to his San Diego base in October.

There are some 400 Jews in the Marines Expeditionary Force. Elson describes his service during the High Holy Days with Jewish marines in Iraq as "a spiritual experience" that will stay with him for many years. He was stationed at the Marine base on the outskirts of Fallujah, from where he would take off on a jeep or helicopter to visit Jewish marines.

He "stretched" Rosh Hashanah out to five days "because I wanted to hold holiday prayers every place I knew there were Jewish marines," he says. He held Rosh Hashanah prayers, including shofar blowing, 17 times. "In one place near a battlefield, I blew the shofar for two Jewish marines," he says. On Yom Kippur, despite the terrible heat, Jewish marines fasted all day.

"I decided to enlist as a rabbi to the army instead of looking for a synagogue, because in the army, religion is devoid of politics," he says. "Among the Jewish soldiers, there is no distinction between Reform, Conservative and Orthodox. I never ask a soldier which stream he belongs to. Every Jew gets equal treatment in the army."

The only complaint Elson has against the military authorities is the chronic shortage of kosher food rations. A Chicago plant manufactures kosher combat rations, but for some reason they are hard to come by. Elson says 3,000 kosher combat rations are stored in a base in Kuwait and for bureaucratic reasons the army is delaying their distribution. Every package of 12 standard rations has two vegetarian rations, "and this is what I lived on for months during my service in Iraq," he says.

Elson, who was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal, is married and father of three, wears a knitted skullcap and speaks Hebrew he learned during his studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Elson says that many senior marine commanders admire the IDF. "When they hear that I'm a rabbi, they ask if I've visited Israel and compliment the IDF."

"Jewish marines ask me what will happen to them if they are killed in battle, or why was their friend, a decent, good guy, killed in battle?" says Elson.

Many of the marines are 18 and 19-year-old men, who are stationed out of the United States for the first time.

"A Jewish marine recently asked me if he may say kaddish [mourning prayer] over a gentile marine who was a close friend of his and who was killed. I told him he was permitted to express his grief any way he felt. But I recommended he say psalms," says Elson."

- posted by Izak @ 5:50 PM