A Wandering Jew

By LCDR Robert Gersh

I am a wandering Jew. It is an apt title for me, considering my childhood and my present life. Growing up in my military family, we often likened ourselves to the hearty houseplant that my mother liked to grow in pots hanging around the house. Since my father was a career Air Force officer, my family became used to picking up our belongings and moving every four years or so. From my birth in Honolulu, Hawaii until I started college eighteen years later, my family moved five times. Despite our frequent moves, or perhaps because of them, my parents made a special point of reaching out to whatever Jewish community in which we found ourselves, to ensure that my brothers and I grew up with a Jewish identity.

At many Air Force bases to which my father was assigned, we were blessed to have a rabbi who was an Air Force chaplain. There were more Jews in the service back then, and the Air Force did a good job of providing for the religious needs of the Jewish service-members and heir families. I remember my older brother Mark and I helping Chaplain Nathan Landman to lead the singing during the Friday evening services we attended at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton, Ohio in the early 70’s. After moving to Ramstein Air Base in West Germany when I was 10, I remember how ably Chaplain Irvin Ehrlich, and then Chaplain Theodore Stainman led our sizable congregation. Rabbi Stainman personally tutored me in Hebrew so that I would be ready for my bar mitzvah.

I was fortunate to have my bar mitzvah in the Rashi synagogue in Worms, Germany. This synagogue was once the home of the famous Biblical and Talmudic commentator, Rashi, dating from the year 1038. The Nazis destroyed it during Kristallnacht in 1938. It was rebuilt in he 1950’s, but there were no Jews left in Worms to use it. The Jewish chaplains of the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in Germany found a way to hold their High Holy Day services there. Rabbi Stainman arranged for me to have my bar mitzvah there on October 15, 1977. I was told at the time that mine was the first bar mitzvah held there since the synagogue had been rebuilt following World War II.

By the time I was enrolled in London Central High School in England, it became more challenging for my family to practice our faith as part of a community. Besides my older brother and myself, I knew of only two other Jewish kids in my school – and they were brother and sister. I found it humorous to hear the v’ahavta chanted with an English accent, but I was grateful to be part of a Jewish community. I was also thankful that we had lay people who were able and willing to lead our congregation in the absence of our own rabbi or cantor.

After graduating from Tufts University in 1988, I followed my father’s footsteps into the Armed Forces, albeit the Navy. Although I encountered few Jewish service-members, I made a conscious effort to join a Jewish community wherever I lived, particularly after I got married to Susan Horowitz, and we started our own family. I wanted to give my own children, Shira and Avi, a strong sense of their Jewish identity, just as my parents, Fred and Micki Gersh, had done with me.

Four years ago my family and I moved to the Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan. We learned that there was a synagogue in Tokyo some two hours away by car, but there was no civilian Jewish community outside the base that we could join. Fortunately, the Navy had years ago built a small Jewish chapel within the Yokosuka Navy Base chapel building. It had been more than ten years since a Navy rabbi had been assigned there, but we still had a kosher Torah scroll and an excellent library of books. LCDR Michael Stiglitz, a Navy Supply Corps Officer, had just volunteered to become the Jewish lay leader for the base. Since I loved to sing, and Mike did not, I volunteered to become the congregation’s lay cantor. Following Mike’s departure a year later, I volunteered to become the Jewish lay leader in his place. I filled out an application and obtained my certification from the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council in New York, a part of JCC Association. The JWB Jewish Chaplains Council is also the primary endorsing and support agency for Jewish chaplains in the military. Because there are few rabbis on active duty these days, military lay leaders have assumed greater responsibility for establishing and maintaining Jewish community at military bases, especially overseas.

Being the Jewish lay leader was often a thankless job. On many occasions my family members and I would be the only ones to show up for the Friday night services that I led for the community twice a month. But I knew that I provided Jewish service-members and civilians a link to their faith and to the Jewish community that they had left behind in the United States. It was also important for me to teach my children that they were Jewish, just as my parents had done when I was growing up.

Since my family moved to Bath, Maine in the summer of 2004, I volunteered to become the military lay leader at the Naval Air Station Brunswick, where I work as a Navy Civil Engineer. This enabled me to attend the Jewish Lay Leaders Training Workshop at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia during the week of February 14. Chaplain Maurice S. Kaprow, Deputy Fleet Chaplain for the U.S. Fleet Forces Command, hosted the conference. The workshop was sponsored by the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council and led by its Deputy Director Rabbi Nathan Landman, USAF/ret. (Yes, the very same Rabbi Landman my family knew 30 years ago at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.) At the conference in Norfolk, I learned that military Jewish lay leaders serve four primary roles: The first is that they represent the Jewish faith to their military command. For example, I participated in he National Prayer Breakfast that we held on base on February 1. The second role of the lay leader is that of a representative of the Jewish faith to members of that faith. When I served in Japan, Jewish people knew that they could contact me to find out what Jewish services were provided and what accommodations were being made for our faith. The third role of a lay leader is to educate others about the Jewish faith. The military has always been a place where people from all parts of the country and from all kinds of backgrounds come together, many of whom have never known a Jew before. A military lay leader can help educate these people about Judaism and thereby promote religious understanding. The fourth role of a military lay leader is especially important given the shortage of active duty Jewish chaplains. That role is to identify the religious needs of one’s congregation and then to help that sailor, soldier, airman, or family member to have his or her spiritual needs met. Not too long ago I celebrated my 40th birthday, and Iraq is the fifteenth place where I have lived since I was born.

I am proud of my long service in the military, first as an Air Force family member, and now as an active naval officer I am proud to be a military Jewish lay leader. But to put it most simply, as a member of the armed services, I am proud to call myself a wandering Jew.