Martin Hershkowitz knows what it means to be a volunteer – he serves as a volunteer cyber-crime investigator for the FBI and for the Maryland Community Services Division. He served in the military, rising to the rank of colonel, and is still very involved in military life in Maryland.
He also knows how hard it can be to find chaplains of any faith for America’s uniformed personnel.
But when Hershkowitz spoke to Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Chesky Tenenbaum about volunteering for the Maryland Defense Force – one of 25 state militias in the country – he came up against an obstacle of a different kind.
Tenenbaum was worried about his beard.
The rabbi, who serves as one of the chaplains at the Shady Grove Rehabilitation Center in Rockville, Md., met Hershkowitz while he was recuperating from spinal surgery. They instantly became friends due in no small part to their shared love of serving other people.
Still, when Hershkowitz broached the idea of his friend joining the military chaplaincy, all Tenenbaum could think of was how hard it was for his uncle, Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, to become a chaplain in the U.S. Army. Today, Goldstein is a colonel and the only member of the armed forces with a beard, but the quest to get an exemption for his facial hair almost drove him from the military.
Hershkowitz, though, did not give up and, assured that Tenenbaum was interested in the chaplaincy if there was a way for it to work, began working to make the rabbi’s exemption a reality. He was bolstered by the knowledge that Maryland Defense Force units would soon be returning to Maryland from tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and that their Jewish personnel would be in desperate need of a Jewish chaplain.
He first contacted Chaplain Charles Nalls, a lieutenant colonel, who then contacted Col. William Sean Lee, the chaplain of the Maryland National Guard Joint Force Headquarters. Eventually, Lee gave the go-ahead for Tenenbaum to receive an exemption just like his uncle.
Next week, Tenenbaum will be commissioned as a captain and chaplain in the Maryland Defense Force during a ceremony at the Lubavitch Center Upper Montgomery County in Gaithersburg, where he serves as youth director. After taking his oath of office, he’ll be Maryland’s very-first Chasidic chaplain.
Hershkowitz said that now he is working on getting other states to accept chaplains of the bearded variety.
(Source: Chabad.org)
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4 Responses
Amazing! The United States Army has been historically anti-semitic and now they are allowing this. Boruch Hashem!
When has the U.S. Military they been anti-semitic???
The US Navy had traditionally ALWAYS allowed beards until Nancy Reagan put a stop to the practice. This was told to me by a sailor who was on active duty when the g’zeira was instituted. The rule against beards is not an anti semitic one, beards are just seen as un-military (although they were accepted in the Navy {at least by enlisted men} as being very seaman like).
the Reisha Rov’s son fought the legal battle for wearing a beard in the air force in the court system (and lost; a law was subsequently passed allowing it). the air force was the only part of the us military officially forbidding facial hair.
though the army was historically antisemitic till well after WWII (it only became anti semitic after WWI), a friend of mine who served in iraq and davens in my shul (dont ask — lets just say he’s a baal teshuva of sorts who wants his children to grow up jewish) says its more of a bureacratic issue than out and out anti semitism today. though of course, it crops up every now and then, just like in american society in general.
and by the way, historically, the %age of jews in the us military was always more than the %age of jews in the population. tell that to the next anti semite that challenges jewish patriotism.