If you missed the deadline for DLA Pesach supplies, the folks over at Aleph might still be able to help. They have just announced their annual Passover care package program for 2012. Even if you did order through the DLA, Aleph has some items you might still be interested in. Shmurah Matzo is not offered through the DLA and intends to send Shmurah Matzo to all Jewish military personnel that will commit to eat this special Matzo after dark on April 6th and 7th.

The following items are available:

1. Plastic 64-oz bottles of Grape Juice
2. 1 pound boxes of regular Passover Matzo
3. 1 pound boxes of Shmurah (handmade) round Matzo (For Seder only, can be shared by up to six people)
4. Seder plates that come with all the ritual items needed except for Romaine lettuce (each Seder plate can be shared by up to five people)
5. Hebrew/English Haggadahs
6. Packages of bouillon soup cubes (3 per pack)
7. How To Passover DVD

The Aleph Institute will ship these packages at their expense to any address where Jewish men or women are stationed FREE OF CHARGE. Aleph will begin shipping packages on March 5th, so please place your orders soon.

If you are interested in receiving a package, send an email to Rabbi Katz and provide:

1. Name of chaplain, lay leader or other person to whom the packages should be addressed to at each location.
2. Complete mailing address (If in the US, please provide Street (UPS) address if possible- Outside the US, APO address).
3. Total number of Jewish personnel to whom you will be able to distribute Passover packages.
4. Please provide the names of the bases or the locations of the personnel these packages will cover. Please copy all other chaplains, rabbis or lay leaders that may also be ordering for the same personnel to help avoid duplicate orders.
5. Phone number of contact person (and cell phone, if at all possible).
6. Email address. Please provide a personal or generic military email address in addition to the email addresses connected to your current location.
7. How many of each item you require.

If you already placed an order through the DLA for some of these items, please do not request same items from us as well. While the deadline has passed, some orders can still be placed for Kosher for Passover meals from the DLA.

Rabbis Available

If you are not able to arrange for a rabbi to lead the seder, Aleph can help. Aleph has a number of young rabbis who are willing to travel to any base or area where Jewish military personnel are stationed (both in the U.S. and abroad) to conduct the Passover Seder services and the recitation of the “Haggadah”. They will provide these services FREE OF CHARGE, but may require transportation or the reimbursement of the transportation expenses, especially if rabbis will need to travel to remote or generally-inaccessible locations.

If you are interested in having a Rabbi travel to your location to lead Passover services for Jewish members of the United States Armed Forces and their families please call or email Rabbi Katz at (305) 864-5553 or (305) 725-2439.

Earlier this month Jewish service members (including chaplains, lay leaders, and regular troops) travelled to South Florida for the Aleph Institute’s fifth annual Military Shabbat Retreat and Training Course.

The weekend gathering kicked off at The Shul of Bal Harbour Thursday morning with classes and events exploring the theme of diversity in the U.S. armed forces. Over the next several days, participants looked at current issues in the military from a Jewish perspective and looked at tools for chaplains to succeed in their work.

On Sunday, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner came to The Shul in an appearance coordinated by its spiritual leader, Rabbi Shalom B. Lipskar, and Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch in Washington, D.C. In his speech, Boehner reiterated his support for a strong bilateral relationship between the United States and Israel, and spoke of the importance of strengthening educational institutions.

Read the full coverage on Chabad’s website.

The good folks over at The Jewish Channel are looking to produce a feature story on Jews who are returning from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other combat areas. If you recently served in any of those areas, they would like to interview you for their TV program. The intent of the story is to focus on Jewish veterans returning home, but they are also interested in stories of Jewish experiences in war, such as unique holiday celebrations or Shabbat in austere locations.

If you aren’t familiar with The Jewish Channel, they are a premium channel available across the country on most cable and satellite TV plans. They produce some excellent programming and have a wide viewing audience.

They are located in New York, so are preferably looking for service members in the New York / New Jersey area (or those willing to travel to their location for an interview). If you or anyone you know would be interested in participating in the piece, please contact me via email and I will get you in touch with the producer.

This is a unique and special opportunity to share our military experiences with the Jewish community and the American community as a whole. As such, I’m asking that you share this post with anyone you know that might be able to make a connection with someone who might be able to contribute.

The first, from Time Magazine, called One Private, Two Armies is about Private Daniel Houten, who is currently in basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. What makes his story interesting is that Houten just finished an 18-month tour with the IDF. This drives the main focus of the article, where the theme is comparing and contrasting life in the IDF and the U.S. Army. It’s a pretty light-hearted article with some humor mixed in (what else would you expect from an Israeli soldier?)

Like most 20-year old soldiers, Houten is familiar with the creature comforts valued by every grunt since Hannibal. Although there are exceptions, he likes the variety of the U.S. Army’s Meals-Ready-to-Eat. “In general, they’re pretty good,” he says. “In Israel, they have Manot Krav — a cardboard box, you get one per squad — and it’s a bunch of cans of tuna, a can of corn, they used to have something Loof, which is kind of like kosher Spam but now its all tuna – and you get a loaf of bread, a couple of vegetables and that’s it. You get really tired of tuna – really, really tired of tuna.” He recalls his assignments at forward posts: “In general, it was tuna and bread, tuna and bread.”

…

Houten laughs when asked which army has the cooler uniform. “All right – define cooler.” When told coolness is in the eyes of the wearer, he thinks for a moment. “The American uniform is kind of a little bit cooler – I’m not going to lie – it’s sort of a better material” he says. And the Israeli uniforms don’t sport a camouflage pattern, which means another layer is needed to blend in. “So if you’re operating in the desert, you need to have a second camo suit over that,” Houten says. “Which I think, personally, is a little bit ridiculous.”

Go check out the full article, it’s well worth the read.

The next two articles come from the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. The making of a “Military Jew” is about LT Jonathan Heesch, and his unusual path (is there a usual one?)  from an unaffiliated enlisted Marine to a frum Coast Guard Lieutenant. A man after my own heart, he seized the opportunity to serve as a layleader which led him to rediscover his Judaism and now wears his Judaism proudly on his sleeve (or more appropriately on the back of his head).

The Shabbat service was led by a master gunnery sergeant; the Heesches doubled the size of the congregation. It was an informal affair: the group recited the Shema, discussed the Torah portion, and had refreshments. “When we left, I felt better about things and couldn’t explain why,” Heesch says. “We started going on a weekly basis.”

Six months later, Heesch became the congregation’s lay leader when the gunnery sergeant rotated out of Okinawa. Heesch was reluctant to take the position – “I could barely read Hebrew and I didn’t remember anything from Sunday school,” he says. “Then he told me that I had to wear a yarmulke, that I had to stick out for the benefit of other Jewish service-people. I saw that yarmulkes came in neat designs, so I said okay.” (Marine Corps regulations allow a black or “hair-colored” kippah.)
“The group was very Reform,” he says. “Jews in the military are usually laid back because of military requirements. Jews came out of the woodwork. I got emails and phone calls; people were asking me what to do for a bris. Thank God for the Internet, where I found Chabad and Aish.” The Jewish Welfare Board supplied the group with materials and rabbis for the holidays.

The other feature from the Jewish Ledger, “What’s a nice Jewish boy…?”, is actually promoting a talk by LTC David Michael Kaplan (USA, Ret.) that will be held Feb 26th at Temple Sinai in Stamford, CT. Kaplan was interviewed and shares some great stories about his experiences as a Jew in the Army.

One of the highlights of my early military career was interacting with Jews from all over the world. Attending services with Vietnamese Jews of French extraction and dancing around the Torah at Simchat Torah services with aging Holocaust survivors in Germany were true bonding experiences. I found myself in the position of wanting to take a leadership role while we lived in Germany and therefore served as a Jewish lay leader. I sought out as many Jewish soldiers as I could find and organized local Shabbat services, High Holiday services, and family social gatherings, and worked on community-building.

If you are in the Stamford area, I’d highly recommend catching the event. If not, take a look at the interview over at the Jewish Ledger – it’s a good read.

Rear Admiral Shelanski began his Navy career when he was commissioned an ensign in July 1980 at Aviation Officer Candidate School and earned his Naval Flight Officer (NFO) Wings in the E2-C Hawkeye in 1982.

Shelanski commanded VAW-121, the Bluetails on the USS John C. Stennis’s maiden deployment around the world and was awarded the CNO Battle E Award, Safety Award and the AEW Excellence Award. He commanded and decommissioned the 6th Fleet’s fighting command ship, USS La Salle. He commanded USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) for a seven-month deployment to the Arabian Gulf in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and maritime security operations. The ship was awarded the 2008 CNO Safety Award, Battle E Award and the Secretary of Defense Large Category Maintenance Award. In June 2009, As commander of the Truman, Shelanski installed an ark and Torah on the ship, and he has led the effort to supply all aircraft carriers with Torah scrolls.

The Jewish Military Leadership Award is given in recognition of devotion to Jewish life and peoplehood in addition to high military achievement. A committed Conservative Jew and active member of his Norfolk, Virginia congregation, Shelanski has been an avid supporter of Torah for Our Troops, JWB Jewish Chaplains Council initiative to commission special lightweight Torahs for chaplains to use in the field and as they move from ship to ship. “We’re proud and happy to present him with this award,” Robinson said.

Photo by: To the Nth (http://tothenth.net/)

This past week I had a unique opportunity as a Jewish layleader. I’m currently serving as a flight instructor for naval aviators near Pensacola, Florida. I’m extremely happy to (finally) live in a place with an active Jewish community. However, having two synagogues in town usually means that most of what I do as a layleader is refer them to one of the two rabbis. This week turned out rather different though.

It’s a big occasion when student aviators complete their training and earn their wings of gold (even for me). The winging ceremony is a special event, when you make the transition from being a student to an actual military aviator – kind of like the aviation equivalent a bar mitzvah. The chapel on our base has a tradition that complements the actual winging ceremony called the “blessing of the wings”. This is a completely voluntary program, but one that is rather popular among many of the new aviators. While it is billed as a non-denominational ceremony, it is clearly a Christian program that culminates in the Catholic priest sprinkling holy water on the wings that these service members are about to pin on later that day.

I received a call the week prior from the chaplain where he told me about a Jewish ensign who wanted to participate in the ceremony, but wondered if a rabbi could administer a more Jewish blessing. I contacted my rabbi to see if he would be willing to participate. He is a young rabbi, and new to the community so he was more than ecstatic to take part. I worked with the rabbi and gave him some context of the ceremony so he could best prepare for it.

In my experience, many military Jews keep a low profile but tend to come out of the woodwork when you “rattle the bushes”. True to form, once the word got out that a rabbi would be attending the blessing of the wings, a second ensign came forward and said he wanted to participate too. The chaplain was (almost) as excited as I was about this. While the base chaplains are clearly Christian ministers, they always jump at the opportunity to include other faith groups. They wanted to review the ceremony with us to make sure there wouldn’t be any prayers that would be exclusionary or offend the Jewish attendees in any way. It turned out there wasn’t much to be changed, really just inserting a couple of places for us to add in our own prayers.

Everything was set in place. I had hoped to attend, so I had my dress uniform ready, but I was scheduled to fly a sortie in the morning and another one in the afternoon. My big goal was just to make sure the rabbi would be set up for success. If I got to see the ceremony itself, that would be a bonus. Literally, within minutes of my head hitting my pillow on Thursday night I received a call from the rabbi.

Unfortunately, he had just received news of a death in the family and needed to leave town first thing in the morning. Now I had to stand in for him at the ceremony. As I hung up with the rabbi, I reluctantly set my alarm a little earlier so I could squeeze in a little preparation in the morning. I also wanted to try and get a head start on the flight schedule so I could finish in time for the ceremony. I figured I had a 50/50 chance of actually pulling this thing off, but I had to try.

The alarm came early and it was off to the races. A shot of espresso and a bagel later, I was out the door on time. I staged my uniform and headed out for my flight. Thankfully my first student did extremely well, which put me in a cheery mood and allowed for a short debrief. I shoveled some food down and pulled my best impression of superman (minus the phone booth) as I swapped from my flight suit to my full dress blue uniform. Somehow I made it to the chapel with a little time to spare. That was important, because there was some confusion as to the rabbi’s absence. They saw me on the flight schedule and had assumed I wouldn’t be able to make it to the ceremony. After some last minute coordination with the Monsignor, everyone was ready to go. I spoke briefly with the two ensigns to make sure they were OK with a layleader performing the blessing instead of a rabbi and then the show began.

While I’m building this up like some exciting episode of 24, the ceremony itself wasn’t very complicated. When the non-Jews were done with their blessing, they called up the two Jewish ensigns and I read a slightly modified version of the traveler’s prayer and ended with the priestly blessing.

Afterwards, both ensigns came up and thanked me. Their families followed suit and all expressed a great deal of gratitude for allowing their children to participate in the ceremony. They even wanted to take pictures with me! It clearly meant the world to them for me to perform what was essentially a simple (yet extremely meaningful) task.

I stress this point because I’m a perpetual evangelist for others to serve as layleaders. While officers and NCOs are in the best position to do so, it’s really something anyone who has the means to do so, should do. You don’t have to be a rabbi, a yeshiva graduate, or even know how to lead a service. Much of what a layleader does is serve as a point of contact and liaison between individual service members, chaplains, and the local Jewish community. Occasionally we get to do something special and rewarding like this, but even then, all I did was read some english prayers with a touch of Hebrew. Something just about anyone reading this could do. The reward you get, and more importantly the support you provide, is immeasurable and makes a huge difference in the lives of those Jews you serve with. It was the excellent Jewish lay leadership I experienced as a young enlisted Marine that inspired me to seek out this role wherever I go.

At the end of the service I received numerous compliments from non-Jewish attendees. Perhaps, they were just trying to get a closer look at my dress blue coordinated white satin kippah, but they all seemed impressed that these Jews wanted to include their faith in their accomplishment just as the rest of the participants did. The organ player pulled me aside and said that in her 40+ years of performing these ceremonies, this is the first time she had seen a rabbi (her words, not mine) perform a blessing for Jewish aviators. I was a little shocked by that fact, but I told her I hoped that it certainly won’t be the last.

By standing up as proud Jews, these two ensigns showed the world that us Jews continue to serve bravely in the protection of our nation, just as countless of our forefathers have. It made me proud as a Marine and proud as a Jew to be part of it. A heartfelt mazal tov to Ensign K, and Ensign P for holding the title as the Navy’s newest Jewish aviators!

 PS: Even after all this, I managed to get my second flight done and somehow finished early enough to catch the tail end of Shabbos dinner. Quite possibly the most rewarding and productive day I have ever had!

Well the folks over at About.com put together a decent guide to choosing a service to enlist in. It doesn’t cover everything (if that is even possible), and it focuses mostly on the enlisted experience, but it is good reading for anyone trying to wrestle with that decision.

So before you post a question on the forums or send an email, please take a good look at the guide and see if it helps answer some of your questions.

Things to Consider When Choosing Which Military Service to Join

My favorite part of the article is how the Marine Corps turned him back to Judaism:

Encounters with a Marine Corps rabbi led Stern to return to his Jewish roots and become religious. Seven Years ago he made aliyah, and after spending time in Safed he moved to the settlement of Itamar in the West Bank.

While it sounds like there might be a bit of embelishment in the original article, it’s still an interesting read. Go read about David Stern here.

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