IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Be A Jewish Marine
Sam Jacobson, a lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps serving in Afghanistan, writes about accommodating himself to the Marine Corps rather than demanding accommodation in the September issue of Commentary Magazine:
The first week at United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School, our instructor platoon commander pulled me aside and asked whether I needed kosher meals. “Good evening, Sir. This candidate does not want the Platoon Commander to go out of his way for this candidate, Sir,” I stammered, standing at stiff attention, still tentative with my candidate-speak. “I don’t care what you want, Candidate. I’m just trying to find out if kosher meals are what you need.”
I wasn’t going to tell the captain that I grew up with a cut-and-paste Upper West Side–style Judaism, with friends who described themselves as “4-F peacenik yids.” Nor did I tell him that I kept kosher at my dad’s—on 96th and Columbus - but not at my mom’s - on 96th and Broadway. That I never ate swine, sometimes ate shellfish, occasionally filtered my tap water to rid it of treyf crustaceans, and am still an on-again-off-again vegetarian. I wasn’t about to tell the captain about my mishigas with Judaism. On the question of kosher meals, I believe I settled for a motivated (loud) and noncommittal, “Aye, Sir, good evening, Sir,” about-faced, and double-timed back to formation. …
Once a week, our drill instructors marched us into a series of rooms for “Prayer and Praise.” More than 200 funneled into the largest room, reserved for a generic Christian liturgy. A dozen chose the room for Mormons. A few made their way to the “no preference” room, and one, me, settled into a chair in a tiny office storage room set aside especially for the occasion of a religious outlier. Our class of almost 300 candidates started with three Jews. Two of them didn’t make it more than a few weeks, so I was alone when the chaplain came in to drop off a Tupperware box of materials labeled “For Jewish Personnel in the Armed Forces of the United States.” I flipped through a siddur and tried to remember what a good Jew would be doing on a Tuesday evening. But quickly I reverted to the only thing a Marine officer candidate knows how to do when left to sit in a room quietly, free from the screams of the gunnery sergeants. I slept, cheek mashed into the table, hands splayed out in front of me on the books and kippot and tallitot. …
After that first night alone, nine short of a minyan, I chose to spend the rest of my Tuesdays alternating between the large Christian auditorium service and the “no preference” room. …
My history in the Marines is a story of missed Fridays, and Saturdays, and holier days. For a Marine, the private sphere is so attenuated, and his public duties so large and ritualistically compelling, that religious observance becomes both more difficult and less desirable. Marines trade much of what goes by the name of individuality, or identity, for esprit. They love their rituals. And that includes the ritual hatred of the sometimes priggish sense of military propriety. … The unit’s rituals largely take the place of hard-to-accommodate religious customs. As an officer and platoon commander, I cannot imagine denying a Marine something so precious as the right to wear a kippah or other religious garb, but I also haven’t heard of a Marine ever wanting to. The chain of command rarely makes religious accommodations, because they are rarely requested. …
A Marine is a Marine first, and only secondly and peripherally a Buddhist or Jewish or Christian Marine.
Editorial Note: In contrast to the Marines, the Army bent so far backwards (seventh item) to accommodate Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan that he considered himself a Muslim first and foremost and a U.S. soldier second, with tragic consequences.
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