A Jewish Chaplain in France

was typical, showing the effect of release from discipline combined with a pleasure trip on thousands of our soldiers, most of whom needed it far more than I; for t

itual welfare of the forces. We had to conduct Jewish religious services for both holydays and ordinary seasons, to assist the dying Jew, and to pray for him at his grave. We had to defend the Jewish boys in the rare cases of prejudice against them, or, wha

visions and areas, and the very large number detailed to hospitals. The total number of chaplains who went to France was 1285, just half the number needed by this program, and from this total we must subtract a considerable group of deaths, wounds and other casualties. The chaplains' corps was undermanned at all times,-we Jews were simply the most con

g experience and the co?peration of the Chief Rabbi of England, the English chaplains were well equipped with suitable prayerbooks and other material, which I obtained from one of them for the use of our men while I was on the British front. Still, e

. And yet it was inevitable that twelve chaplains could not meet personally the hundred thousand Jewish soldiers scattered through the two millions in the American uniform through the length and breadth of France. Under these circumstances we all feel a natural pride at the work accomplished against adverse conditions. I for one feel that we did all that twelve men similarly situated could possibly have done, and I gladly bring my personal tribute to those others,

its provisions. He was examined by a special board appointed overseas by General Pershing at the direction of the Secretary of War; his commission was dated November 24th, 1917. In January 1918 he was assigned to the 41st Division and in March to Base Hospital 101 at St. Nazaire. While posted there he conducted his first important service overseas in Passover 1918, the first official Jewish service held in the A. E. F. He was assigned to the 77th Division in May 1918 on their arrival in France where he served with a most enviable record, receiving the Croix de Guerre and being recommended for the D. S. M. for exceptional courage and devotion to duty in time of danger. The midnight patrol on the banks of the Meuse, by

he Jewish holydays of 1918. I have already described how these were carried out, by designating central points for services, getting

Senior Chaplaincy. Chaplain Davidowitz was the only Jewish chaplain to be wounded, receiving severe injuries from shrapnel; these put him in the hospital for several months and occasioned his being sent back home, invalided, the first of us all. The others, in order of their arrival, were Chaplains Jacob Krohngold, of the 87th Division; Israel Bettan of the 26th Division; Harry Richmond, at the

mber of the faculty. We came from every section of the country, east, west and south, including Krohngold and myself from little towns in Kentucky and Richmond from Trinidad, Colorado. Rabbi Richmond h

nard W. Rothstein, Israel J. Sarasohn. Three of them, Rabbis Rothstein, Felshin and Barasch, soon after resigned their commissions and came overseas as representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board. When the great need for morale agencies was realized after the armistice, the War Department refused to relax its prohibi

he order named, although for a long time Rabbi Krohngold was the only Jewish chaplain there. Rabbi Egelson left his division for the port of St. Nazaire, Rabinowitz was transferred from Blois to St. Aignan, and I was left behind at Le Mans together with Heller, who shortly after was transferred to the Third Army in Ger

at was serious enough. The larger aspect lay in the number of men, the number of companies, the infinite possibility of individual service if one were only able to know all these soldiers personally, to understand their needs, and to minister to them. Every hospital ward with its forty beds presented forty distinct individual problems,-often, indeed, more than forty. Sometimes the same man would need pay, mail, home allotment,

bsorbed mine several months before, when he was already entering his second year in France. The second time was on the last day of the year, when I met Rabbis Friedman, Egelson and Rabinowitz in Paris, all coming there as I did for the cars which the J. W. B. had ready for us. At the same time Rabbis Martin Meyer of San Francisco and Abram Simon of Washington were in the city, both captains in the American Red Cross. Their six months of duty in France had just expired and the

o military exigencies, we never did. But we did adopt a program of co?peration with the J. W. B., which indicates the mutual dependency and the closeness of contact which were almost uniformly the case. Our program provided that the J. W. B. should submit to the chaplain the weekly report of the area in which he was stationed and should have relations with the military authorities through him. The chaplain, on the other hand, was to make suggestions to the worker in his area, and in exceptional cases to the Paris office and was to be in complete charge of all Jewish religious work in his area, al

Rabbi Isaac Landman, who was reporting the Peace Conference for his paper, the American Hebrew, and he introduced me in turn to Miss Harriet Lowenstein, at that time the Paris purchasing agent of the Joint Distribution Committee, especially in the important work of buying supplies originally sent to Europe for the use of the American forces. I encountered also three of the active workers of American Jewry, sent to represent us before the Peace Conference in such matters as might concern the Jews; Judge Julian Mack, representing the American Jewish Congress; Dr. Cyrus Adler, for the American Jewish Committee; and Mr. Louis Marshall, a repres