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Chassidic Story
# 278
(s5763-24/10 Adar 1)
PROTESTANT
'B' How
a Gulf War dog tag forced an American soldier to reclaim his Judaism.
PROTESTANT
'B' Retired Army Major Mike Neilander,
who now lives in Newport News, Virginia, and who is now a Judaic silversmith,
tells how the military's dog tag classification in the Gulf War forced him to
reclaim his Judaism. In the fall of l990, things were heating up
in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. I had been an Army Captain and a helicopter maintenance
test pilot for a decade and received notice that I would be transferred to the
First Cavalry Division which was on alert for the Persian Gulf War.
Consequently,
I also got wind of the Department of Defense "dog tag dilemma" from
other Jewish personnel.
Then, as now, Jews were forbidden by Saudi law
to enter the country. But our Secretary of Defense flat out told the King of Saudi
Arabia, "We have Jews in our military. They've trained with their units and
they're going. Blink and look the other way." With Kuwait occupied and
the Iraqis at his border, King Faud did the practical thing.
We shipped
out, but there was still the issue of classification. Normally the dog tags of
Jewish servicemen are imprinted with the word "Jewish." But Defense,
fearing that this would put Jewish soldiers at further risk should they be captured
on Iraqi soil, substituted the classification, "Protestant B," on the
tags. I didn't like the whole idea of classifying Jews as Protestant anything
and so I decided to leave my dog tag alone. I figured if I were captured, it was
in God's hands. Changing my tags was tantamount to denying my religion and I couldn't
swallow that.
In September, l990 I went off to defend a country that I
was prohibited from entering. The "Jewish" on my dog tag remained as
clear and unmistakable as the American star on the hood of every Army truck.
A
few days after my arrival, the Baptist chaplain approached me. "I just got
a secret message through channels," he said. "There's going to be a
Jewish gathering. A holiday? Simkatoro or something like that. You want to go?
It's at l800 hours at Dhahran Airbase."
Simkatoro turned out to be
Simchat Torah, a holiday that hadn't registered on my religious radar in
eons. Services were held in absolute secrecy in a windowless room in a cinder
block building. The Jewish army chaplain led a swift and simple service. We couldn't
risk singing or dancing, but the Rabbi had managed to smuggle in a bottle of Manischewitz.
Normally, I can't stand the stuff, but that night, the wine tasted of
Shabbat and family and Passover Seders of long ago. My soul was warmed by the
forbidden alcohol and by the memories swirling around me and my fellow soldiers.
We were strangers to one another in a land stranger than any of us had ever experienced,
but for that brief hour, we were home. Only Americans would have had the chutzpah
to celebrate Simchat Torah under the noses of the Saudis.
Irony
and pride twisted together inside me like barbed wire. Celebrating my Judaism
that evening made me even prouder to be an American, thankful once more for the
freedoms we have. I had only been in Saudi Arabia a week, but I already had a
keen understanding of how restrictive its society was.
Soon after, things
began coming to a head. The next time I was able to do anything remotely Jewish
was Chanukah. Maybe it was coincidence, or maybe it was God's hand that
placed a Jewish Colonel in charge of our unit. Colonel Lawrence Schneider relayed
messages of Jewish gatherings to us immediately. Had a non-Jew been in that position,
the information would likely have taken a back seat to a more pressing issue.
Like war. But it didn't.
When notice of the Chanukah party was
decoded, we knew about it at once. The first thing we saw when we entered the
tent was food, tons of it. Care packages from the states -- cookies, latkes,
sour cream and applesauce and cans and cans of gefilte fish. The wind was
blowing dry across the tent, but inside there was an incredible feeling of celebration.
The Rabbi talked about the theme of Chanukah and the ragtag bunch
of Maccabee soldiers fighting Jewry's oppressors thousands of years ago. It wasn't
hard to make the connection to what lay ahead of us. There in the middle of the
desert, inside an olive green tent, we felt like we were the Maccabees. If we
had to go down, we were going to go down fighting, as some of them did.
We
blessed the candles, acknowledging the King of the Universe who commanded us to
kindle the Chanukah lights. We said the second prayer, praising God for the miracles
he performed, bayamim hahem bazman hazeh, in those days and now.
And we sang the third blessing, the Sheheyanu, thanking God for keeping
us in life and for enabling us to reach this season.
We knew war was imminent.
All week, we had received reports of mass destruction, projections of the chemical
weapons that were likely to be unleashed. Intelligence estimates put the first
rounds of casualties at 12,500 soldiers. I heard those numbers and thought, "That's
my whole division!"
I sat back in my chair, my gefilte fish cans at
my feet. We were in the desert, about to go to war, singing songs of praise to
God who had saved our ancestors in battle once before. The feeling of unity was
as pervasive as our apprehension, as real as the sand that found its way into
everything from our socks to our toothbrushes. I felt more Jewish there on that
lonely Saudi plain, our tanks and guns at the ready, than I had ever felt back
home in shul.
That Chanukah in the desert solidified for me the
urge to reconnect with my Judaism. I felt religion welling up inside me. Any soldier
will tell you that there are no atheists in foxholes and I know that part of my
feelings were tied to the looming war and my desire to get with God before the
unknown descended in the clouds of battle. It sounds corny, but as we downed
the latkes and cookies and wiped the last of the apple sauce from our plates,
everyone grew quiet, keenly aware of the link with history, thinking of what we
were about to do and what had been done by soldiers like us so long ago.
The
trooper beside me stared ahead at nothing in particular, absent-mindedly fingering
his dog tag. "How'd you classify?" I asked, nodding to my tag. Silently,
he withdrew the metal rectangle and its beaded chain from beneath his shirt and
held it out for me to read. Like mine, his read, "Jewish."
Somewhere
in a military depot someplace, I am sure that there must be boxes and boxes of
dog tags, still in their wrappers, all marked "Protestant B."
[Submitted
by Rafoel Leitner from an article in Hadassah Magazine, based on Debra Darvick's
forthcoming book.You may distribute this e-mail as long as full attribution is
given, including Ascent's e-mail and internet addresses. BUT PLEASE DO NOT PUBLISH
THIS STORY IN PRINT OR ELECTRONIC FORM WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION.]
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