Free Republic

GI Jews: Jewish Americans in World War II” begins as many Holocaust documentaries do, with a history of the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany mixed with what is now standard archival footage of Brownshirts and Kristallnacht. Throw in interviews with some Jewish celebrities — in this case, Carl Reiner and his friend Mel Brooks wearing his old Army jacket — and it has all the workings of a typical PBS documentary. But the film, which premieres April 11, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, quickly takes an unexpected turn. Jewish-American soldiers, the viewer learns, weren’t only fighting...

NORFOLKCommodore Uriah P. Levy He left home when he was 10, running away to become a cabin boy, and eventually became the first Jewish commodore in the Navy, the highest rank available at the time. On Sunday, the Jewish chapel at Naval Station Norfolk – the oldest land-based Jewish chapel in the Navy – was rededicated to Commodore Uriah P. Levy, 50 years to the day after it was first named after him. Born in Philadelphia in 1792, Levy had a career that spanned pirate-chasing to authorship – he wrote “A Manual of Internal Rules and Regulations for Men-of-War.” It...

Following is a letter written by a Jewish Confederate soldier, Isaac J. Levy (pictured at left) of the 46th Virginia Infantry, from camp in Adams Run South Carolina, describing to his sister how he and his brother Ezekiel ("Zeke") observed Passover during the Civil War Passover: A Reminiscence of the Warby J.A. Joel, "The Jewish Messenger", April 1866 In the commencement of the war of 1861, I enlisted from Cleveland, Ohio, in the Union cause, to sustain intact the Government of the United States, and became attached to the 23rd Regiment, one of the first sent from the "Buckeye State."

Howard Perl, 48, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer, never saw himself as much of a worship leader. Then again, he never thought he would be shipped to Iraq after 30 uneventful years in the Army reserve, spend Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New year, under a rain of mortar fire, or lead Friday night worship in Camp Taji, an Army post 12 miles north of Baghdad, when there wasn't a rabbi around to do the job. In a year full of bizarre firsts, Perl says one stands out. ''It will be pretty cool to be able to celebrate Passover in Baghdad,'' said...

WASHINGTON - A concentration camp survivor who joined the U.S. Army out of gratitude, fought in Korea and spent 2 1/2 years in a Chinese prisoner of war camp was awarded a Medal of Honor on Friday, 55 years after his heroism. ADVERTISEMENT President Bush gave the nation's highest military honor to Hungarian-born Tibor Rubin, 76, in the White House East Room. The medal recognizes him for overcoming dangers as an infantryman, trying to save fellow soldiers in battle and as a prisoner of war, even as he faced prejudice because he was Jewish and a foreigner. "By repeatedly risking...

WEST POINT, N.Y. - When Adam Sasso arrived at the U.S. Military Academy in the summer of 2001, he expected to find intense challenges, close friendships and rigorous academics. But he was pleasantly surprised to also find at the army's elite college a Jewish community he describes as "very committed." There are fewer than 90 Jews in West Point's 4,000-person student body, but they constitute a particularly tight-knit and active group: Jewish cadets gather for Friday night services, perform with a Hebrew choir and attend parties sponsored by the campus Hillel chapter. Moreover, students, alumni and Jewish staff say that...

Rabbi Irving Elson, a Jewish chaplain for the U.S. Marines, was on his way to lecture students in a rabbinical seminar in New York when he learned that a Jewish marines officer was among the casualties in the Fallujah battles. Elson, a tall, mustached man in marines uniform, who recently returned from active service in Iraq, tried to persuade the rabbinical students to join the marines after their ordination. He believes that "every young Jewish man and woman ordained to be rabbis should aspire to serve in the U.S. Marines." "Believe me, the challenge to serve in the armed forces...

Joe Kashnow, age 25, was a cavalry scout with the United States Army on an escort mission in Iraq. He was driving in the left lane of a highway on the road to Baghdad, where buried in the median was an artillery shell controlled by remote detonator. As Joe's humvee drove by, an explosion sent shrapnel through the floor of the vehicle, shattering Joe's leg. Altogether it will take 10 reconstructive surgeries on Joe's right tibia bone -- including multiple metal spikes and bone grafts -- and ongoing rehab to save his leg and get him walking again. While recuperating...

Recent news from Iraq doesn't sound too good. The killing of allied soldiers and civilians goes on. Random attacks on American civilians have become the norm, frustrating the rebuilding of a war-torn country. Plans for the freedom of Iraq and its neighbors are being set back. Allied goals for leaving the Iraqi people with the choice of democracy and free elections have become a nightmare. What will become of this region? Over 597 U.S. troops have died since the war began in March 2003. Do we have the power to truly liberate the region? Here in the U.S. we are...

In 1862, in the heat of the Civil War, General Ulysses S. Grant initiated one of the most blatant official episodes of anti-Semitism in 19th-century American history. In December of that year, Grant issued his infamous General Order No. 11, which expelled all Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi: The Jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department [the "Department of the Tennessee," an administrative district of the Union Army of occupation composed of Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi] within twenty-four hours from the receipt...

Orthodox Warrior Keeps Kosher on the Front Lines By DAVID KLINGHOFFER Mikhail Ekshtut is a warrior. His mom is a worrier. So when the Air Force Reserve called Ekshtut up to active duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, he had a problem. One of the relatively few Orthodox Jews in the American military, Technical Sergeant Ekshtut hesitated to commit an untruth. But he also guessed that his mother would be consumed by anxiety if she knew where her boy was headed. So he told a little white lie. "My mom thinks I'm in Turkey," he told the Forward, "so...

Refael and Margaret Chaiken were supposed to be seven months into a five-year army commitment by now, studying to be much-needed interrogators in the war on terrorism. Instead they are civilians looking for jobs. The two were discharged after disobeying orders by skipping class so they could attend services for Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. "Our religion itself says if you are saving somebody's life, you have to [cease the observance])," Refael Chaiken said. "No one can convince us not going to class, when you can make it up, falls under that category." The army calls...

WEST POINT, N.Y., Dec. 4 (JTA) — There’s a joke at the U.S. Military Academy that 50 percent of the first graduating class was Jewish — and that it’s been downhill for Jews ever since. The joke is true, at least on the face of it: Simon Magruder Levy was indeed half of West Point’s two-person graduating class in 1802, and Jews have made up a much smaller proportion of graduating classes since. But Jewish life appears to be alive and well among the 80 or so Jewish cadets currently enrolled at the hilly campus beside the Hudson River. “It’s...

NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (JTA) — When Rabbi Mitchell Ackerson blew the shofar this past Rosh Hashanah, it reverberated throughout one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces. More than 100 Jewish members of the U.S. forces stationed in Iraq attended the High Holiday services at the former Iraqi dictator’s Baghdad compound. They seemed shocked and awed, not least by the echo. “It was a 25-foot ceiling, so it really goes,” Ackerson said, describing the shofar’s blast in a telephone interview from Baghdad on Monday. Many of the young Jews also “kept looking at all the marble, the gold, the fancy chairs,”...

Maj. David Rosner, shown here in a C-130 tranport plane, has worked on both the military and post-war operations in Iraq. When Rabbi Mitchell Ackerson blew the shofar this past Rosh Hashanah, it reverberated throughout one of Saddam Hussein´s former palaces. More than 100 Jewish members of the U.S. forces stationed in Iraq attended the High Holiday services at the former Iraqi dictator´s Baghdad compound. They seemed shocked and awed, not least by the echo. "It was a 25-foot ceiling, so it really goes," Ackerson said, describing the shofar´s blast in a telephone interview from Baghdad on Monday. Many of...