A Jewish Chaplain in France

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nd for more than four years and whose aftermath will be with us in years to come cannot be forgotten unless the conscience of manki

it the wounded in the hospitals, but the tradition of the Army up to the period of the Great War, rendered the appointment of a Rabbi as chaplain impossible. The chaplain had been a regimental officer and was always either a Protestant or a Catholic. The sect was determined by the majority of the regiment. When the United States entered the Great War, this was clearly brought out and it

necessary for the Jewish organizations to create a body which could sift the applications for chaplaincies and certify them to the

s voluntary and each synagogue is autonomous. In the face of the awfulness of the war, these differences seemed minimized and through the co?peration of all the Rabbinical associations and synagogue organizations, a Committee was created under the general authority

ish ministry in America that one-hundred and forty men volunteered for the service. As there are probably less than four hundred English speaking Rabbis in the United States, many of whom would have been d

osophers may have viewed the war, it strengthened the faith of the men who were engaged; hundreds of thousands of young men turned to the chaplain who would have been indifferent to him at home. That this was true of Jewish young men is certain and if there has been a reaction on the part of these young men who returned from the war, let it be blamed not so much upon religion, as upon the disappointment in the soldiers' minds at the attitude of the

of the American soldiers and sailors and particularly to provide for the religious needs of those of the Jewish faith, I want to express the obligations of the Board to the Rabbis who without experience or previous training for the purpose, enter

on and ministration is largely to women and children. It meant something for the chaplain to have great congregations of men, and of young men at that, and I am inclined to think hardened his mental and even spiri

herhood of man will be a mere abstraction until individual men can act as brothers to one another. The ministers of religion, if they have any God-given mission above all others, surely ha

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manity. During the war such words as morale, democracy, Americanism, became a sort of cant-so much so that their actual content was forgotte

the same ground has not yet been covered by any Jewish chaplain or welfare worker in the American Expeditionary Forces. The r?le played by Jews in the army and n

reat indebtedness to Mr. Harry L. Glucksman, Executive Director of the Jewish Welfare Board, for giving me full access to their records; to Mr. John Goldhaar for his personal reminiscences of the welfare work overseas; to Captain Elkan C. Voorsanger for the invaluable suggestions based upon his vast personal experiences; to Justice Irving Lehma

es appearing at various times in the American Hebrew, American Israelite, Bibli

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