Archive for category: D’vrei HaShomrim

Ribono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe.

As we deliberate this morning and plan for the future of the Jewish War Veterans of America, let us pause and reflect on both the coming year as well as the year past. The coming Rosh Hashanah conveys a powerful and meaningful message for all attending this important JWV event.

The words Rosh Hashanah mean more than only a New Year. The wisdom of the Hebrew language conveys that Shanah has additional and more subtle meanings. The word Shanah can also mean to repeat or to change.

As we reflect on the events of the past year as well as on our own behavior, we are called upon to engage in introspection and to ask ourselves what is worth repeating and continuing into the coming year and what must be changed for the coming year. This message calling for the contemplation of the need for change or repetition applies not only to individuals, but to organizations as well.

The Shofar that was sounded here this morning at the opening of this session will again be sounded on Rosh Hashanah. The Shofar must serve, recalling the words of Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, as a wakeup call to all who hear its penetrating sounds.

The Shofar provides a resonating message from the Ribono Shel Olam, the Commander of the Universe to the U.S. “Commander in Chief ” and to all who command and aspire to command.

Ksiva V’Chasima Tovah

May you and all you hold dear be inscribed in the coming year for a sweet, happy and healthy New Year.

Volume 75. Number 3. 2021

By Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz

Like many Jews, Passover is my favorite holiday. The Seder is a fun family night filled with great food and lively conversation. Preparations for Passover force me to do a good spring cleaning. Though I dislike the process, I love the result. The weeklong celebration, bookended with holy days, gives me time to reflect on the meaning of Passover and the values embedded within it.

Our Celebration of Spring, one of the alternate names of Passover, is aligned with the seasons of the year. The connection between Passover and springtime is further reinforced with this blessing that can first be recited during the month of Nisan, the month in which Passover falls, upon seeing fruit trees blossom. “Blessed are You, Lord our G-d, Sovereign of the Universe, who has made nothing lacking in this world, and created in it goodly creatures and goodly trees for humans to enjoy.”

Also, through the exodus from Egypt, the Passover story, the Israelites become reborn as a free people.
I find the connection between Passover and rebirth inspiring. It encourages me to look around and identify other places where this rejuvenation is taking place. Luckily, in my position as Director of Operations at JWB Jewish Chaplains Council, I don’t have to look far to find Jewish life in the military constantly in a state of renewal and rededication. I will share just a few examples of the new buds of Jewish life popping up around the globe at military installations.

• Every Jewish community knows that educating the next generation through Hebrew schools is a must. Yet service member families expect that dedication to country comes at the cost of Jewish education for their children. JWB is at the forefront of changing this reality. This year, we piloted five Hebrew school classrooms, with a hybrid of in-person and remote learning. The response has been overwhelmingly positive and an expansion to more installations is planned for this fall. Soon, every Jewish child growing up in an active-duty military family will have access to their Jewish history, culture, and values.

• Military Jewish lay leaders take on the responsibility of leading the Jewish community in the absence of a local Jewish chaplain. While there are more than 60 lay leaders serving around the globe, the recruitment of lay leaders has been sporadic. This spring, two JWB Chaplain candidates, Ensigns Stefanie Gedan and Alex Hamilton, are facilitating a Lay Leadership Training Course. Over 20 new lay leaders are participating. This is the largest influx of JWB lay leaders at one time, since World War II.

• JWB chaplains remain the number one facilitators of meaningful Jewish life throughout the military. As we enter our second year of a COVID Passover, JWB chaplains are reaching out and creating spiritual Passover celebrations for more Jewish service members and their families than in-person gatherings could ever reach. Through video conferencing and recorded Seders, no Jewish military family will miss out on Passover this year.

At each Passover Seder table we place a filled cup for Elijah, in the hope that the prophet will visit our homes, heralding the coming of a brighter tomorrow. At JWB, while we too anticipate Elijah’s visit, we know that JWB chaplains and lay leaders, along with our Hebrew School teachers, are bringing forth the blossoms of Jewish life today.

Rabbi Tracy J. Kaplowitz, Ph.D., is the director of operations of JWB Jewish Chaplains Council®, a signature program of JCC Association of North America. Rabbi Kaplowitz served nine years as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. She was attached to Dover AFB, DE, where she supported the Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs in caring for our country’s fallen heroes during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Kaplowitz was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and holds a doctorate in sociology of education from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Volume 75. Number 1. 2021

By Chaplain Lt. Col. Yaakov Bindell
New Jersey was one of the early states to get hit with the coronavirus. As the disease spread across the state, the New Jersey National Guard was swiftly called to action. As the State Command Chaplain of New Jersey, within just a few weeks, my job duties suddenly changed from training and developing chaplains, to leading chaplains through one of the biggest challenges this country has seen in over 100 years. I quickly organized groups of chaplains to go visit soldiers and airmen at COVID-19 testing sites, field hospitals, mortuary affairs operations, veteran homes, and long-term care facilities across the state. While I could share countless stories of heroism during the early stages of the pandemic, I feel most inspired by how our service members helped their fellow veterans during the pandemic.

During the early stages of the pandemic, there were many deaths at veteran homes across the state. While soldiers tried to help in any way they could, seeing our state’s heroes make their last stand in the face of COVID-19 took a heavy toll on the soldiers assigned to the homes. In order to make sure the veterans who died during this tough time were properly honored, several soldiers working in a dementia unit called Old Glory provided flags in honor of the veterans.

But these soldiers and airmen didn’t just go out of their way to make sure the dead received their due honor, they also provided assistance for the living veterans at the homes. At the beginning of the pandemic, for safety reasons, visitors were not allowed to see their family members in person. After several lonely months of not being able to see their family and relatives, veterans were finally given a special day when they would be allowed to see family, albeit only from a window. This day was hugely important for the veterans. Until then, their companions were their adopted military helpers and staff. Despite only being able to see family members through a thick window barrier, soldiers and airmen stepped up to make it the best experience possible. They helped veterans communicate with their families by making sure all cell phones were ready and that windows were clean so residents could see their family members clearly. You could feel the excitement of that momentous day from the firsthand account of one chaplain. “This mission was so encouraging to the soldiers and airmen. It was like they were walking on air. And for good reason! The event wasn’t scheduled to take place until the end of the day, but the whole day was full of excitement and preparation.”

The connection between service member and veteran has always been strong but this pandemic has brought us even closer than we could have imagined. For instance, when Memorial Day arrived after months of little human contact, the ceremonies held at the veterans homes were powerful and emotional events for service members and veterans alike. As military members and veterans, we remember the dead and fallen every year, but this year is different. We have lost so many heroes to COVID-19. However, the virus has not only taken our veterans. Many others have died in this most unusual and surreal war. Something that makes this war different than the wars we as service members are used to is that non-service members and family members are in just as much danger as the servicemembers themselves.

I have also been impacted by the deaths this war has caused. The morning I was asked to write this article, I found out the mother of a soldier had passed away. By noon that same day, I had to make a shiva call to a friend of mine whose father had passed away. That evening I got a call that a cousin of mine had passed away. It has been a tremendously difficult year of death and sickness. I hope and pray that the Jewish New Year brings health and recovery to our great nation. The High Holidays are almost upon us. This year, let us pray for life and good health. And at this year’s Yizkor service, let us remember and honor those who have left us. Shana Tova and may you all be inscribed in the Book of Life.

Volume 74. Number 3. 2020

By Captain Arnold E. Resnicoff, Chaplain Corps,
U.S. Navy (Retired)

On a Navy ship, before an important announcement over the public address system, the boatswain’s mate sounds the bosun’s call with a pipe/whistle, followed by the words, “Now Hear This.”

This sound to get our attention always reminded me of the shofar blast, and the words reminded me of the beginning of the Shema: “Hear, O Israel.”
In both these phrases, the word “hear” means much more than the physical act of hearing. The word is a command, closer to the old English word hearken. It means listen, understand, and obey. It is similar in some ways to another military phrase, “attention to orders.”

On the radio the word roger, which stood for the letter R in an older version of the phonetic alphabet, indicates message received. However, received means both heard and understood. Wilco (from “will comply”) adds the third layer, meaning the message was heard, understood, and will be obeyed. Although film actors often say “roger, wilco,” that would be redundant… although not as bad as the actors who say “over and out,” rather than choosing one or the other!

The idea that a military command includes all three of these ideas – hear, understand, and obey – is longstanding tradition, and the Navy reply, “aye, aye,” specifically affirms all three components: I hear, I understand, and I will obey. In other words, I have received the order, understand it, and will carry it out.

In the Bible, the Israelites at Mount Sinai, after receiving God’s commandments through Moses, respond “naaseh v’nishmah,” meaning “we will do and we will hear/understand.” That reply is the Biblical equivalent of “aye, aye” or “wilco.” However, commentators note that because the word do precedes the word understand, the theological and philosophical lesson is that we often hear more deeply and understand more fully only after we take action to incorporate the commandments into our lives.

On a ship, after “now here this,” we pay attention, preparing ourselves to understand the orders that come next, and then take action to follow those orders. In prayer, whether in synagogue or not, we should do the same when we hear the Shema. We should struggle to hear the words, to understand their meaning, and then to obey them through the way we live our lives.

When we hear “The Lord is our God,” that means that the false gods of ancient times, or the false gods of modern times like money or power, are not our God. But it also means we are not God. Truly hearing that one idea should change our lives.

When we hear “God is one,” we should understand that one God means we live in a world created with one plan. Ancient people who believed in many gods could not learn from history because they could not be sure the gods they dealt with on one day were the same ones as on another.
In a way, Jews introduced the idea of history with the idea of monotheism. We believe we can learn lessons of the past. We hear by searching for history’s lessons and then making those lessons a part of our lives.

“God is one” also teaches that God is uniquely whole, unlike human beings who are flawed and fragmented. Our nation’s founders dreamed that we should pursue “a more perfect union” when it came to our nation. We must do the same as individuals, pursuing integrity, the integration of our dreams, our words, and our actions, and trying to do a more perfect job of walking the talk.

In 1987, I was honored to give the prayer for the first United States Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust ceremony ever held in the Capitol Rotunda. These ideas drove the words of my prayer:
“ …if the time has not yet dawned when we can all proclaim our faith in God, then let us say at least that we admit we are not gods ourselves. If we cannot yet see the face of God in others, then let us see, at least, a face as human as our own.”

If we truly hear the words of the Shema, if we hearken to those words, struggling to understand their meaning with all our heart, our soul, and our might, with every fiber of our being, not only will our lives be changed, but so will our world.

Rabbi Resnicoff, a lifetime JWV member, began his Naval career as a line officer and then served in chaplain assignments including Command Chaplain, U.S. European Command, the “top chaplain” for military personnel of all services and all faiths in an area that at the time included 93 nations spanning 13 million square miles. Following retirement, he served as National Director for the American Jewish Committee and Special Advisor for Values and Vision to the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force. On October 23, 1983, he was present in Beirut during the Beirut Barracks bombing. His eye-witness report was read by President Ronald Reagan as a keynote speech in Washington, DC.

Volume 74. Number 1. 2020

This article is being written during the month of Elul, the month that precedes Rosh Hashanah. Each morning in Elul, at the conclusion of the weekday service, the Shofar is sounded. It is the view of the Rambam, the great rabbinic sage, that the blast of the Shofar serves us as a wake-up call, reminding us that Rosh Hashanah, also known in the Torah as the Day of Judgement, is just around the corner. This is a time that reaches out to us, calling for self-scrutiny and introspection in preparation for what is coming. Just as a marathoner does not run an event without warming up and stretching, Elul is the time given to us for a spiritual warm-up.

Those of us who have served in the armed forces are well acquainted with the difficulties and challenges that came with that service. A key for dealing with both routine and extraordinary crises is the quality of our resilience and our ability to cope and rebound. Those who take their religious faith seriously are endowed with “Spiritual Resilience.” As a Vietnam veteran, my Jewish faith helped me cope and overcome the often traumatic episodes I encountered in combat as well as in daily life.

The process of developing spiritual resilience goes hand in hand with introspection and self-scrutiny. The military provides us with a model in the form of tactics in the short-term and strategy for the long-term. The process consists of asking ourselves a few challenging questions such as: where am I now on life’s continuum, where do I want to be, and how do I plan to get there. This process must be undertaken in small and thoughtful bites. If my ultimate goal is too ambitious, it will only lead to frustration; if not ambitious enough, it will lead to complacency. This undertaking fits into another theme of the month of Elul, that of Teshuva or repentance. Teshuva is a four step process: identifying inappropriate behavior, regretting it, abandoning it, and then requesting forgiveness from The Almighty.

Elul is the month that comes with the opportunity to seek out and identify the special and unique role for which we were created. As the Talmud Sanhedrin teaches, every person must recognize that ‘the world was created for me, not to exploit it – but rather to provide the opportunity to make a contribution to the betterment of society and the human condition. Should we fail, the world will be bereft of that unique offering only we are capable of contributing.

May you and all those you hold dear be inscribed for the coming year in The Book of Life for a happy, healthy, prosperous, and meaningful New Year.

Volume 73. Number 3. 2019