G.I. Stein: Local Woman Heads for West Point
July 10, 2008 - Aaron Passman

It takes a lot of chutzpah to apply to just two colleges—especially when your safety school is Stanford. But that’s exactly what Anna Stein did, withdrawing her application there in December after receiving her appointment to the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.

“I want to serve my country,” said the teen. “For me, this is the most direct route to do that.”

The recent graduate of the Episcopal Academy in Merion reported for basic training on June 30, bringing only the essentials—socks, underwear and running shoes, among other things—with the academy taking care of providing the rest. She’ll spend the next seven weeks enduring “Beast Barracks,” the basic-training process when cadets make the transition from civilian life to the military. She will also spend a week at Camp Buckner, an encampment some 12 miles from the academy.

Read more at the Jewish Exponent.

Below is the URL to the guest post on my blog from a Jewish soldier now in Iraq.  I asked him to write about being Jewish in the military and he did a terrific job!

http://mrslieutenant.blogspot.com/2008/07/guest-post-from-iraq-people-like-him.html

SAN FRANCISCO—Jake Yelner thought he’d pulled a fast one on his mother.

He enrolled at Diablo Valley College near his hometown of Lafayette, in the East Bay—but he never showed up for classes. His mom finally busted him, dragging him to campus to prove that he wasn’t a student.

“He never went to school at all, that little brat,” Yolanda Vega recalled. “I gave him two choices: go back to school or join the military. And if you do join, I said, I’d love it if you joined the Air Force.”

Yelner joined the Air Force on Oct. 7, 2003, and more than once raised his hand to serve on dangerous missions.

A weapons crew load member, he volunteered to provide escort duty to contractors in Iraq and volunteered to be sent to Afghanistan this year for a program to help residents build roads and buildings and set up water supplies.

On April 29, Senior Airman Jonathan A.V. “Jake” Yelner, 24, was killed when his vehicle struck a roadside bomb near Bagram, Afghanistan, north of Kabul. He was assigned to the 28th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D.

“He loved wearing the uniform. He loved serving his country,” his mother said. “I’m sure as a 24-year-old he had no idea he was going to die. He went to help the people of Afghanistan, to help build their homes. He’d say ‘Mom, I’m making a difference.’ “

Yelner, who was Jewish and Puerto Rican, attended Catholic schools throughout his childhood and graduated in 2002 from De La Salle High School in Walnut Creek. He also embraced his Jewish heritage and completed the bar mitzvah coming-of-age ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, his mother said.

More here.

See my blog post at MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL: JewsinGreen.com: U.S. Jewish Military Personnel Today – Part I

Writer Mindy Salazar speaks with Sarai Kashnow about the challenges of being a military spouse, the “toughest job in the military.”

Sergeant Joseph Kashnow, and his wife, Sarai, both in their twenties, did not have a typical “shanah rishonah” (first year of marriage). Only three months after getting married in January 2003, Joe was deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Far from family and her new husband, Sarai lived near the Fort Carson Army base, one of the few Orthodox military wives in the US Army.

The Kashnows have faced many challenges, yet they are proud of being able to serve their country without compromising their religious devotion. (An estimated 4,000 Jewish soldiers serve in the US Army, which has nearly 500,000 active members. That’s 4,000 who identify as Jews; there are, of course, those who choose not to identify as such.) When I sit down to talk with Sarai in her cozy apartment, she lovingly flips through the scrapbooks she made of Joe’s time spent in the Army, from basic training through his return from Iraq. The scrapbook is filled with photos of different Army bases, letters sent to each other, Joe’s order papers and newspaper articles about him and his injury.

On September 17, 2003, an explosion sent shrapnel through the floor of Joe’s Humvee, shattering his leg. Joe subsequently returned to the US and underwent a series of surgeries; unfortunately, he eventually lost his leg. Joe was awarded a Purple Heart for his heroism and, together with Sarai, established a special foundation to assist Jewish soldiers. The couple, who currently live in Baltimore, Maryland, have been blessed with a son.

Jewish Action: How did you meet Joe?

Sarai Kashnow: I knew Joe’s parents before I met him. I was living in Baltimore and I got to know the Kashnows, who were members of the community. They used to invite for me for Shabbos. I had seen pictures of Joe on the wall but I never expected to meet him. The Kashnows told me that Joe had signed up for the US Army and would be leaving for Kentucky for basic training. They asked me to write to him, and I said, “Great, I love the military; I’ll write letters to a soldier. Why not?” We sent three or four letters to each other. He came home and we decided to go out. After three weeks of dating, I knew I was going to marry him.

Continue reading here.

In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, Chaplain (Colonel) Sanford Dresin, having just received semichah from Yeshivas Chasam Sofer in Brooklyn, New York, became an Army chaplain. After serving two years on a United States Army base in Fort Meade, Maryland, he knew that if he remained on active duty, the next stop would be Vietnam. He chose active duty.

In Vietnam, the self-described “traveling rabbi” went from base to base, from Saigon to the Central Highlands, flying helicopters in and out of hostile areas in order to offer Jewish soldiers moral support and divrei chizuk, words of inspiration. They eagerly welcomed his visits. “Some would actually risk driving down a road amid [enemy] fire to come to a class,” says Rabbi Dresin. “One night, down in the Mekong Delta, in the middle of singing Lechah Dodi during Kabbalat Shabbat, we started getting rocketed. Everyone just continued singing. I told them this was a case of pikuach nefesh and we better head for the bunkers.”

Continue reading here. This article offers a minor glimpse into how the military and a chevra kadisha interact at Dover AFB to perform taharah to the extent the military can accommodate, thanks to Rabbi Dresin.

In perhaps a first, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force will be Featured Jew General Norton Schwartz.

Mazel tov to the General for his achievement!

Chaplain Shulman has provided us with a number of high quality images of the Seder he conducted in Iraq.  He also photographed the Haggadah autographed by President Bush, Senator Levin, and Admiral Mullen.  There’s even a nice picture of Chaplain Shulman with General Petraeus.

The care Chaplain Shulman delivers *all* troops in Iraq is by all accounts highly commendable.  We are very lucky to have such a gregarious rabbi representing the tribe in the Army.

By Morris B. Margolies, Special to The Chronicle (of Kansas City)

In the summer of 1952, peace talks between the Americans and the North Koreans were in progress at Panmunjom. I was stationed near Taegu, not too far away, as a chaplain for the Tenth Army Corps. From my headquarters I set forth every morning in a jeep on the way to Army units miles distant, where I led Jewish soldiers in prayer. Because I covered about 300 miles every week along bumpy and narrow mountain roads, some cutesy soldier painted the legend “Rough Ridin’ Rabbi” on the back of my jeep. Above the words was a really rough sketch of a Jew wearing a tallit with his hands outstretched.

The week before I was to return to the states, I held my last service for the smallest of the congregations — four men and one woman, an Army nurse, who were also the farthest away from by HQ. For months our attendance had been at 100 percent. But at this final service, one of the men was missing — as I soon learned, permanently so. He had been killed by a land mine four days earlier. His body was already aboard a transport plane on the way home.

We could not get into a prayer mode in any routine fashion. The prayer book somehow failed to say what was in our hearts. The nurse, a lieutenant named Sarah, spoke: “Does God really listen to prayer, Rabbi?” And she wept. Almost immediately the rest of us broke into tears. The tears flowed freely, punctuated only by sobs that still ring in my ears. When all was quiet, I said, “Sarah, I think you now have the answer to your question.”

I then asked our tiny group to join me in reciting the Kaddish, even though we had no minyan. Our service ended. I remained in the tent for about an hour talking with the men. Sarah had had to leave.

I came back to my jeep and was stopped short. The outstretched hands of the Jew in the tallit had been replaced by wings. Sarah stood a few feet away. “Drive back carefully, Rabbi,” she said. And she waved farewell.

Senator Barack Obama’s supposed “kerfuffle” over his great-uncle’s participation in the liberation of Buchenwald (he said Auschwitz) offers a unique opportunity to revisit more history of liberation during World War II.  Regardless of where one sits politically, I think it is in bad form for pundits to start trying to diminish the role that Charles Payne, his great-uncle, played in WWII Europe.  I’m sorry to say that many of our Jewish youth aren’t familiar with camp names and locations, and neither should we jump all over Senator Obama when his great-uncle perhaps saved many of our people.

From the 89th Infantry Division’s historical website:

Concerning the service of Mr. Charles Payne: C.T. Payne was a soldier in the 89th Infantry Division. He served in the 355th Infantry Regiment, Company K. The 355th Infantry Regiment was the unit to liberate Ohrdruf. Mr. Payne was there.

For those who seek to minimize the horrors of Ohrdruf since it was a ‘work’ camp and not a ‘death’ camp, we have but one word: shame. Ironically, this argument has been made to us time and time again by various Holocaust-deniers and other pro-Nazi groups. We will let the testimony of survivors and veterans speak for themselves.

This had a silver lining.  This treasure trove of a website is one of the best WWII historical sites I have ever seen.  It’s worth the visit.

I had the honor of listening to Alexander Rosner, one of the Schindler Jews, at a local college a few years ago.  In his speech, as Rabbi Murray Kohn relates on the 89th website, Mr. Rosner spoke of the high regard he had for American soldiers who liberated both he and his father from Dachau (many of the Schindler Jews had been marched there from Auschwitz at the end of the war, which was not depicted in the film).  Let’s remember that fact, and give Senator Obama’s great-uncle the credit he deserves.