Jews in green

Observant life for U.S. soldiers and marines

By Michael Orbach

Issue of Oct. 17, 2008

On his first day of basic training Army Specialist Jason Claude experienced what he considers the embodiment of the military’s attitude towards practicing Jews. It was Friday afternoon and he was carefully explaining the rules and regulations of Shabbat to his drill sergeant, when the drill sergeant interrupted him and said in the thickest Southern drawl Jason ever heard: “Boy, the army says you can worship any G-d, but you worship Him on my time. “

The military’s attitude towards Jewish soldiers has recently come under scrutiny after the Anti Defamation League intervened in a case of alleged anti-Semitism in Fort Bennings, Georgia. Private Michael Handman, an observant Jew, was prohibited from wearing his yarmulke in the dining hall and was assaulted by a fellow soldier. Handman was also subjected to anti-Semitic comments from two of his drill sergeants. According to the ADL, Handman was moved to a secure location since the attack and both drill sergeants were reprimanded.

Monica Manganaro, an army spokesperson quoted in the Associated Press, said that the attack on Handman was not racially motivated. Handman, according to the ADL, felt differently.

Asked if hazing was simply a ritual of military training, Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, defended his organization’s action.

“Bigotry is not part of anyone’s culture,” he told The Jewish Star, and “to accept it is nonsense. Is bigotry part of American culture? Do we say bigotry is part of our culture and move on? It’s certainly not acceptable. This is a government institution; this is taxpayer funded. [The military is] supposed to defend America and defend our values. It’s defending our values to be a bigot?”

Foxman added that while anti-Semitism is historically part of military culture, it’s “come a long way to try to eliminate it but it hasn’t eliminated it [yet].”

Jews have served in the military, historically. As of late, however, while there is no official census, it seems the number of Jews in uniform has decreased. Major Rob Levinson, writing in February of 2001 in the Jewish News Weekly of California, lamented the decrease.

“Unfortunately, while Jews in the United States are over-represented in virtually every profession from law to medicine to science, they are few and far between in the armed forces of our country,” he wrote.

One of the reasons for the decrease, according to Levinson, is a middle-to-upper class Jewish population that no longer views the army as upwardly mobile.

For religious Jews, the American military has never been a particularly appealing career option given the difficulties inherent in maintaining religious observance, not to mention social pressures.

Azriel Peskowitz, an Orthodox Jew who grew up in Kew Gardens, and is currently on his second deployment with the 2nd Battalion 25th Marines, spoke to The Jewish Star from Al Asad, Iraq, about his experience.

“Jews don't consider it an acceptable career path,” he said over a garbled connection at 4:00 a.m. Iraq time, “It’s not considered the socially accepted thing to do.”

He said that in his own experience he was “damned if he could find an Orthodox chaplain,” but he emphasized that while there was always joking around among Marines, he was never targeted for being Jewish. To him, Handman’s decision to wear a yarmulke in basic training was self-indulgence.

“It’s not anti-Semitism, it’s enforcing the standards,” Peskowitz explained. “They can’t alter the uniform standards because he has a religious preference.”

According to Department of Defense Directive Number 1300.17 (Accommodation of Religious Practices Within the Military Services), a yarmulke and other religious headgear are allowed. The directive actually uses the yarmulke as an example.

“A Jewish yarmulke may be worn with the uniform whenever a military cap, hat, or other headgear is not prescribed. A yarmulke may also be worn underneath military headgear as long as it does not interfere with the proper wearing, functioning, or appearance of prescribed head gear,” the directive reads.

However, members of the armed forces who spoke to The Jewish Star said that while the directive was acknowledged, wearing a kippah was generally not recommended.

Peskowitz also disagreed with the assessment that there were less Jews in the military than previously.

“There’s a lot more Jews than people think,” he said.

In his marine platoon of 60, he explained that there are three Jews, five percent, larger than the representative two percent of Jews in the general population of the United States. Thirty-five Jews attended the Yom Kippur services at his base in Iraq.

Peskowitz was critical of Handman’s decision to to the ADL for assistance.

“He’s making Jews look like mama’s boys.” Complainers in the military are likely to get extra “attention,” Peskowitz said, which could be a motivation for the attack Handman experienced. “A guy like that gets treated like a stool pigeon,” he said.

Speaking of his own experience, Army Specialist Claude, who is from Merrick, said that being Orthodox in the army was difficult but not impossible. He’d get up 10 minutes before official wake-up, the maximum time allowed, to put on tefillin and daven. He kept kosher for the first week in basic training by eating peanut butter sandwiches for his meals. It eventually became easier after speaking with the captain of his base, an Evangelical Christian.

The unspoken rule was that any Jewish law that Claude wanted to keep he had to point out in the Bible that the captain kept on his shelf. However, the civic duty Claude felt outweighed the difficulty.

“World Jewry is so much better because of this country,” he explained in an interview at a local Starbucks.

“Jews owe something to America. We take advantage of the rights and in some way we should try to pay it back... To be free is amazing. A lot of people take it for granted, but we shouldn’t.”

Claude said in his own experience he has found the military, institutionally, to be very religiously accommodating. The problem, he said, is that nothing works the way it’s supposed to.

“There is some intolerance, but it’s hard to distinguish between intolerance and ignorance,” he explained.

In a point echoed by the other members of the military who spoke to The Jewish Star, Claude maintained that the problems religious Jews face in the military are in part a self-sustaining cycle. In his words: “There are no Jews in the army because there are no Jews in the army.” If more Jews served, it would be easier to be Jewish in the service.

Menachem Kirschner, an Orthodox Jew who served as a Marine, offered a different take. He said that while his drill sergeant referred to him with religious epithets, others were insulted with racial slurs and targeted because of their family history. When Kirschner signed up, he was told it would be possible to keep Shabbat and kashrut in the marines, but it was near impossible in practice. However, said Kirschner, who is now a project manager in a construction firm, that was just part of the game.

“They’re training you to be a mindless killing machine,” he said. “Any accommodation, including religious accommodations, weakens the system.”