If you build it, they will come…

Rabbi Levy’s comments to an older article are worth repeating in an individual post.

I’m a graduate of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion serving as an active duty chaplain in the Air Force. I graduated, was ordained and entered the Air Force chaplaincy just over 11 years ago. We weren’t at war then, but when I applied to their rabbinic program in 1991, we were in the middle of Desert Storm and nobody suggested that, as an active duty serviceman (I was in the Navy at the time) I would not be welcome at HUC-JIR. During my five years at the school, nobody I encountered ever suggested that the military chaplaincy (everyone knew where I wanted to go with my rabbinate) was not an appropriate avenue of service for a rabbi. At times while serving as an active duty chaplain, I’ve tried to recruit rabbinic students from HUC-JIR as well as ordained rabbis, have managed to recruit two rabbis (one HUC-JIR grad, one JTS grad) over the years, and more to whom I spoke expressed interest but were too old or otherwise not commissionable.

There are really two large impediments to recruiting more rabbis, and anti-military sentiment at HUC-JIR is not one of them.

The first is that, for most rabbinical students, there are so many interesting alternative career paths that the military chaplaincy simply is seldom on a student’s radarscope. Of course congregational work is the primary interest of most students; certainly that’s the case at HUC-JIR, where the suggestion is planted even before a student matriculates the that congregational rabbinate is “where it’s at,” where one can have the most impact on the most Jews in the most profound way. Beyond that, Hillel and college chaplaincy work, and various organizational and teaching-type positions take front and center in the rabbi-to-be’s consciousness. The military, if one take notice of it at all, seems a distant and uninteresting alternative. Why? This brings me to the second big reason rabbis are hard to recruit”¦

The second reason is the perception that there are very few Jews in the military service. Since men and women study for the rabbinate to make a difference for Jews, of course they want to be where there are a lot of Jews. But since many Jews don’t know a Jew who is in the military…there is a perception that there aren’t many out there. And unfortunately, there IS some corrolation between the perception and the reality. The Jews who ARE out there in the military, are sometimes difficult to find. Let me give you an example.

Earlier this summer, a base far from my own, a base that has not had a rabbi assigned in anyone’s memory, decided to do something good for the Jews and paid for me to come TDY to conduct a Shabbaton. This was no cheap trip by the time we paid for the commercial airfare, lodging and per diem. Although the local Jewish lay leader could identify some eight Jews on base (which meant there would be more when counting spouses…even if the spouses were not all Jewish, presumably we could have fashioned a program that would have been meaningful for them). Guess what? Only one of them, apart from the lay leader, cared to participate at all. None of the rest even RSVP’d or showed up.

Folks, I know I’m ‘preaching to the choir’ (to borrow an expression from our neighbors) on this; if you’re perusing this website, you probably are not the Jew who doesn’t show up on the rare occasion when a Jewish activity is offered. I’m guessing that you’re the one who does show up, and you were probably the lay leader who made it happen. But since the article on which I’m commenting has to do with the shortage of rabbis in the military, I feel compelled to point out that it’s not some anti-military conspiracy at HUC-JIR that’s keeping rabbis out of the military chaplaincy. It’s the difficulty in finding, and reaching out to the Jews that there are, that keeps the rabbis away and frustrates those who DO join up. So what can you do?

The lay members of the congregations in the military must be more (dare I use the term?) ‘evangelical’ about reaching out to other Jews. You run into the inactive Jews all the time. Okay, sometimes you’re not going to get them to come no matter what. But you’ve got to keep trying! When you meet other Jews and there are activities on base, urge them to attend and participate. Twist arms! When you can get a visiting rabbi, start a conversation with the other Jews on base as to what s/he can do to serve the group when visiting.

TO borrow a line from a movie, “If you build it (a congregation), they (the rabbis) will come!”

Thanks for all you do!

Don Levy

Ramstein, Germany