Chaplain Speaks to Veterans
Army chaplain talks of service to war’s Jewish troops
by Norm Oshrin
Special to NJ Jewish News
10.30.07
Clad in khaki camouflage fatigues, from the boots on his feet to the kipa atop his head, Colonel Ira Kronenberg told a Monroe Township audience about the challenges facing the approximately 800 Jewish military personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As a chaplain in the U.S. Army reserves, the military man and ordained rabbi has officiated at Passover, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot services in the region, bringing a touch of home and tradition to front-line soldiers.
“The Jewish kids range from those who know nothing [about Judaism] and are Jewish in name only, to those with a yeshiva education,” Kronenberg said, in an Oct. 14 talk at The Ponds arranged by Concordia Unit #5266 of B”nai B”rith International.
Overall, Kronenberg said, support for American efforts in the Gulf region remains steadfast among Jewish troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“It”s stronger than that of the general [military] population,” he said. “They are very proud to be over there serving their country.”
Kronenberg spoke of one 22- or 23-year-old soldier, whom he remembered as “a typical wise guy who knows everything, with nothing scaring him.”
During a Passover service held in what once was Saddam Hussein”s palace, Kronenberg said, the soldier “came to the seder and started to recite Mah Nishtana,” the ritual Four Questions.
“I started to cry. It really hit me that far away from home,” said Kronenberg, who would normally have been celebrating the holiday back home in Passaic with his wife, Faigie, and their four children.
The chaplain also told of another soldier who, two months after being interviewed at the seder by a TV reporter, was killed by an IED (improvised explosive device).
The network “played the interview on the day of the funeral,” Kronenberg said. The soldier “said he was proud of the fact he was Jewish, serving in the American army and taking care of people.”
Kronenberg, who was ordained at Yeshiva University”s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, attended chaplain duty school at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn in 1972 and soon was serving as a chaplain in Vietnam. After he was discharged, he was named director of religious services at the Daughters of Miriam/Gallen Institute in Clifton senior center, where he has served for 31 years. He attributed his affinity for the army to his mother”s service in the Women”s Army Corps during World War II.
In an interview before his official presentation on Oct. 14, Kronenberg characterized the groups to which he has spoken as, for the most part, “conservative, not anti-war.”