Home of Jewish War Veterans Online Post 77
Sunday, March 8, 2015, 1:00 p.m. Lee Mandel on Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn: Unlikely Warrior Michael Bloom on the History of the Military Siddur In 1945, when a fellow chaplain opposed Jewish participation in the religious service dedicating the 5th Marine Division Cemetery at Iwo Jima, Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn ended up giving his eulogy to a much smaller group of Jewish […]
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Russian-immigrant Bencin Riseman joined the Massachusetts National Guard and served on the Mexican Border in 1916. When that conflict ended, Riseman returned home to Boston. The Great War was raging in Europe and Riseman anticipated the need for a growing military in the U.S. He began recruiting in an unofficial capacity. He was particularly interested in training young American Jews to prepare for […]
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Abe Plotkin of Scranton, Pennsylvania served with the 284th Field Artillery, 3rd Army in France and Germany during WWII. In this new video from the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, he describes what it was like, as an American Jew, to discover the Ohrdruf concentration camp and the horrors of the Holocaust in April 1945.
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A regular JIG reader sent in a link to this touching article from Tablet Magazine. It’s about Chaplain Meir Engel’s inspirational interaction with Pvt Richard Eisenberg, an MP in 1964, Soc Trang, Vietnam, which changed Pvt Eisenberg’s life. LtCol Engel was the first Jewish Chaplain in Vietnam, who later died in Vietnam and is memorialized on the Jewish Chaplain’s Monument, at […]
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The Aleph Institute and American Friends of Lubavitch held a special Chanukah event in the Pentagon “Hall of Heroes” on Tuesday. Lieutenant General Thomas J. Trask, USAF, Vice Commander of the Special Operations Command, hosted the event, along with Rear Admiral Herman Shelansky, USN, Chaplain Colonel Jake Goldstein, USA, Chaplain Captain Irving Elson, USN, Deputy Chief Chaplain of the US […]
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Some photos from the High Holidays in Kaiserslautern, Germany with Chaplain Shulman.
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Last week I wrote about the Normandy Kaddish Project, the brainchild of Alan Weinschel, that brought people around the world together in remembering the Jewish service members who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy. This past Friday Alan spoke to his own congregation in New York. An excerpt from his speech is reprinted here: Today is the 70th anniversary […]
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