Barry S. Roffman

Lieutenant, U.S. Coast Guard

Lieutenant Barry Steven Roffman had ten years in the Naval Reserve before being honorably discharged in 1979.  He served on 5 aircraft carriers, 4 destroyers, an amphibious communications command ship, and a minesweeper.  In 1983 he enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve as an E-5 (QM-2), and received another commission in 1985.  He then worked his way back to lieutenant before retiring in 1995.  In 2003 he was recalled from retirement, first to Coast Guard District Seven in Miami for 4 months, and then on to Coast Guard Pacific Area in Alameda, CA for at least three years.

LT Roffman, also a retired high school science teacher, was recalled from Coast Guard retirement at age 56 because of his considerable experience in writing and producing OPLANs for the Coast Guard and Navy.  These plans had earned him a Commendation medal, an Achievement Medal, and a Commandant’s Letter of Achievement Ribbon Bar with gold star in the early 1990s.  He has a great love for writing and research, and has authored three commercial books.  One published in 1978 dealt with comparative religion, another work in 1989 dealt with a unique custody battle described below, and the third work (ARK CODE, Searching for the Ark of the Covenant using ELS Maps from the Bible Code) is now for sale, at Amazon.com.

The lieutenant’s ARK CODE book argues that there are maps encoded in the Torah. Key site names are encoded in such a way that the angles between Jerusalem, Arabic sites and a suspect Egyptian Ark site correspond to actual course headings on real world maps. The site, at 31 degrees’ North, 33 degrees’ East, is where a cloud of fire blocked the Egyptian army from the Israelites crossing the Sea of Reeds at Lake Bardawil in Northern Sinai, Egypt. His findings were portrayed on the History Channel’s show, Bible Code II, which will aired on 23 SEP 05. National Geographic has also contacted him about filming two shows based on his research. You can hear a radio interview, view a Power Point, and read some of his book at biblecodenews.com.

The lieutenant has made news more than once in his life. In 1984 he was not yet the Orthodox Jew he is today, and was involved in an interfaith custody battle. LT Roffman was the Director of the Homestead Jewish Center. His ex-wife decided to overlook a former agreement to raise their son, Robert, as a Jew. She then baptized the boy as a Catholic “in order to keep him from going to hell.” When LT Roffman learned of this event, he immediately protested to the Archdiocese of Miami. After an investigation, the Church ruled that Robert “had not been advised that Baptism was a sacrament of initiation into the Catholic Church, that he had not been instructed in the truths of the faith, and that prior to the Baptism and to this day, the child considered himself to be Jewish.” A letter signed by then Archbishop of Miami Edward McCarthy stated, “It is my judgment that Robert Altair Roffman is not a member of the Roman Catholic Church (see letter to the right). The Baptism was not valid and the records of the Church should be corrected to reflect that.” It is believed that this was the first (and only) baptism ever annulled or invalidated by the Catholic Church. LT Roffman is proud that his son grew up to earn a geophysics degree from MIT, then received smicha from Yeshiva Ohr Somach, and went on to serve today as a captain in the U.S. Air Force where he is an Orthodox rabbi/chaplain.

CONVERSION DAY – The above picture (click for larger view) was taken on the day my wife and son earned their Orthodox conversions. Because Kathy and I had been married by a Conservative rabbi before, it was necessary for us to be remarried by an Orthodox rabbi. As for Robert, although he had a circumcision at 8 days done by a Conservative mohel, on this day at age 11 he had to have a symbolic drop of blood taken. Both Kathy and Robert completed the process with immersion in a mickvah. Robert was still wet in this photo due to that.