A Jewish chaplain in France

Book I I LIBRARY

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BOOK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

BY

RABBI LEE J. LEVINGER, M.A.,

Executive Director Young Men's Hebrew Association, New York City, formerly First Lieutenant Chaplain United States Army

WITH A FOREWORD BY CYRUS ADLER, Ph.D.,

President of Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, Philadelphia

H3eto gork

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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Copyright, 1921, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and printed. Published October, 1021

By transfer Dept, of Labor FEB 15 1934

TO A GOOD SOLDIER WHO SENT ME TO FRANCE AND BROUGHT ME BACK AGAIN

MY WIFE

Foreword

The tendency to "forget the war" is not admirable. Such an attitude is in effect a negation of thought. The agony which shook mankind for more than four years and whose aftermath will be with us in years to come cannot be forgotten unless the conscience of mankind is dead. Rabbi Levinger's book is the narrative of a man who saw this great tragedy, took a part in it and has thought about it.

In all the wars of the United States Jews participated, increasingly as their numbers grew appreciably. They served both as officers and privates from Colonial days. But not until the World War was a Rabbi 'appointed a Chaplain in the United States Army or Navy for actual service with the fighting forces. President Lincoln appointed several Jewish ministers of religion as chaplains to visit the wounded in the hospitals, but the tradition of the Army up to the period of the Great War, rendered the appointment of a Rabbi as chaplain impossible. The chaplain had been a regimental officer and was always either a Protestant or a Catholic. The sect was determined by the majority of the regiment. When the United States entered the Great War, this was clearly brought out and it required an Act of Congress to render possible the appointment of chaplains of the faiths not then rep-

X FOREWORD

resented in the body of chaplains. Twenty chaplains were thus authorized of whom six were allotted to the Synagogue the remainder being distributed among the Unitarians, who were not included in the Evangelical Churches, and the other smaller Christian sects which had grown up in America.

In order to meet the requirements of the War Department and in consonance with the spirit of unity which the war engendered, it was necessary for the Jewish organizations to create a body which could sift the applications for chaplaincies and certify them to the War Department, as being proper persons and meeting the requirements of the law of being regularly ordained ministers of religion.

Judaism in America is far from being a united body. Its differences may not be such as rise to the dignity of separate sects but they are considerable in belief and even more pronounced in practice. Membership in the various Eabbinical and synagogue organizations is voluntary and each synagogue is autonomous. In the face of the awfulness of the war, these differences seemed minimized and through the cooperation of all the Eabbinical associations and synagogue organizations, a Committee was created under the general authority of the Jewish Welfare Board which examined the credentials of all Jewish candidates for chaplaincies and made recommendations to the War Department. So conscientiously did this Committee perform its duties that every Eabbi recommended as a chaplain was commissioned.

As the law exempted ministers of religion and

FOREWORD XI

theological students, no person could be drafted for a chaplaincy. Every clergyman who served was a volunteer. It is therefore greatly to the credit of the Jewish ministry in America that one-hundred and forty men volunteered for the service. As there are probably less than four hundred English speaking Rabbis in the United States, many of whom would have been disqualified by the age limit and some by their country of origin, the response of the American Rabbinate to this call, is a most gratifying evidence of their patriotism and of their sense of public service.

Rabbi Levinger 's narrative is his own, in the main and properly enough a personal one, but it is representative of the work of some thirty men some of whom ministered to the troops who did not go abroad whilst others had the opportunity of being in the midst of the Great Adventure. Every one who saw the troops overseas, could not doubt the real service of the chaplain or the appeal that religion made to the men in uniform. However the armchair philosophers may have viewed the war, it strengthened the faith of the men who were engaged ; hundreds of thousands of young men turned to the chaplain who would have been indifferent to him at home. That this was true of Jewish young men is certain and if there has been a reaction on the part of these young men who returned from the war, let it be blamed not so much upon religion, as upon the disappointment in the soldiers' minds at the attitude of the millions of their fellow citizens who remained at home and who want to " forget the war." ^The soldier who came back and found that

Xll FOREWORD

his fellow citizens had their nerves so over-wrought by reading of the war in newspapers that they immediately entered upon a period of wild extravagances and wilder pleasure, might very well have had his faith, newly acquired if you choose, shaken by this evident lack of seriousness on the part of his fellow countrymen.

I shall not commend Eabbi Levinger's book to his readers, because if the book does not commend itself, no approbation will. As an officer of the Jewish Welfare Board whose purpose was to join with other organizations in contributing to the welfare of the American soldiers and sailors and particularly to provide for the religious needs of those of the Jewish faith, I want to express the obligations of the Board to the Eabbis who without experience or previous training for the purpose, entered upon this service and carried it through with distinction. Had it not been for them, the overseas work of the Board would have been comparatively limited and many a Jewish boy would have been deprived of the comforts and solace of his religion.

I cannot help but think that the chaplain himself derived much benefit from his service. In sections of the synagogue, as I believe in sections of the church, men are on many occasions a minority in the congregation and ministration is largely to women and children. It meant something for the chaplain to have great congregations of men, and of young men at that, and I am inclined to think hardened his mental and even spiritual fiber. It emphasized itoo the importance of emotion and sentiment as against mere rationalism. The worship meant

FOREWORD Xiii

more than a preachment, and sympathetic human contact for a minute was worth a barrel of oratory.

The fine spirit of liberality which grew up among the chaplains of the various faiths, reflecting as it did the comradeship of the men themselves, should not and will not be lost. The brotherhood of man will be a mere abstraction until individual men can act as brothers to one another. The ministers of religion, if they have any Grod-given mission above all others, surely have that of leading men, however different their physical and spiritual equipment, into the bonds of a common brotherhood. By this way and this way alone will mankind arrive at lasting peace.

Cyrus Adler.

Preface

This book is the result of the profound conviction that we are forgetting or ignoring the lessons of the World War to Israel, America and humanity. During the war such words as morale, democracy, Americanism, became a sort of cant — so much so that their actual content was forgotten. Now that the war is over and their constant repetition is discontinued, the grave danger exists that we may lose their very real influence.

These personal experiences and conclusions worked out by an army chaplain as a result of his overseas service may have some historical value also, especially as the same ground has not yet been covered by any Jewish chaplain or welfare worker in the American Expeditionary Forces. The role played by Jews in the army and navy of the United States and the Jewish contribution to the morale of the forces overseas deserve preservation, both as a reminder to ourselves and to the nation.

When the possibility of this book was first discussed in Paris with the late Colonel Harry Cutler, Chairman of the Jewish Welfare Board, he spoke of writing a foreword for it. Since his lamented death, Dr. Cyrus Adler, his successor as acting Chairman, has consented to fulfill the same friendly task. In addition to Dr. Adler, I acknowledge my great indebtedness to Mr. Harry L. Glucksman, Executive Director of the Jewish Welfare Board, for

PREFACE

giving me full access to their records ; to Mr. John Goldhaar for his personal reminiscences of the welfare work overseas ; to Captain Elkan C. Voorsanger for the invaluable suggestions based upon his vast personal experiences; to Justice Irving Lehman, President of the Young Men's Hebrew Association, for his encouragement and friendly advice; to a host of coworkers and friends in both France and America for the brilliant deeds and cordial comradeship which are here embodied; and finally to my secretary, Miss Hattie Tanzer, for her invaluable assistance in seeing the book through the press.

Much of the material used here has already been published in the form of articles appearing at various times in the American Hebrew, American Israelite, Biblical World, B'nai B'rith News, Hebrew Standard, Jewish Forum and Reform Advocate.

Lee J. Levinger.

New York, May, 1921.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Chaplain's Function 1

II. The Jewish Holydays of 1918 in the A. E. F. 10

Chapter II

THE JEWISH HOLYDAYS OF 1918 IN THE A. E. F.

MY experiences as chaplain were as nearly typical as possible with any individual. A few of the Jewish chaplains saw more actual fighting than I did ; a few were assigned to the Army of Occupation and saw the occupied portion of Germany. But for nine months I served as chaplain in the American Expeditionary Forces, first at the headquarters of the Intermediate Section, Service of Supply, at Nevers; then with the Twenty- Seventh Division at the front and after the armistice at the rear; finally at the American Embarkation Center at Le Mans. I worked in cooperation with the Jewish Welfare Board; I saw Paris in war time and after ; I had two weeks ' leave in the Riviera.

My commission as First Lieutenant Chaplain U. S. A. came to me on July 4th, 1918 at Great Lakes Naval Station, just north of Chicago, where I was then serving as Field Representative of the Jewish Welfare Board. Two weeks later I reported at Hoboken for the trip overseas. There I had the good fortune to obtain a furlough of ten days before sailing so that I was able to be back in Chicago just in time to see my new born son and daughter. I left when the babies were a week old to report back to Hoboken again for my sailing orders and found myself at sea during the tense and crucial month of August 1918.

The trip was the usual one of those anxious days — thirteen days at sea, constant look-out for a submarine, but finally a mild disappointment when we sailed into harbor without even a scare. We carried our life preservers constantly and waited daily for the sudden alarm of a boat drill. Our ship, the Balmoral Castle, was one of a convoy of twelve, with the usual quota of destroyers accompanying us. Two days from England we met a flotilla of destroyers ; later two " mystery " ships joined us and in the Irish Sea we were greeted by a huge Blimp or dirigible balloon. With this escort we sailed down the Irish Sea, had a glimpse of Ireland and Scotland and finally disembarked at Liverpool. Our first impression was the flatness of a European metropolis when viewed at a distance and its entire lack of the jagged sky-line of an American city.

Our pleasurable anticipations of a view of Liverpool and perhaps a glimpse of London were rudely disappointed. We disembarked about noon, marched through side streets, which looked like sidestreets in any of the dirtiest of American cities, lined up at a freight station, and were loaded at once on waiting trains and started ofT for Southampton. AH that afternoon we absorbed eagerly the dainty beauty of the English countryside which most of us knew only through literary references. We were sorry when the late twilight shut off the view and we had to take our first lesson at sleeping while sitting up in a train, a custom which afterward became a habit to all officers in France.

Daybreak found us at Southampton in the rest camp ; evening on the Maid of Orleans, bound across the channel. We had not seen England, we had no

12 A JEWISH CHAPLAIN IN FKANOE

place to sleep and not too much to eat, even sitting room on the decks was at a premium, but we were hastening on our way to the war. At Le Havre we were again assigned to a British rest camp, where we appreciated the contrast between the excellent meals of the officers' canteen and the primitive bunks in double tiers where we had to sleep. After two days of this sort of rest and a hasty visit to the city in between, I received orders to report to the Gr. H. Q. Chaplains ' Office at Chaumont.

My first train journey across France impressed me at once with the unique character of the landscape. The English landscape is distinguished by meadows, the French by trees. The most realistic picture of the English landscape is the fantastic description of a checker-board in " Alice in Wonderland." In France, however, one is struck chiefly by the profusion and arrangement of trees. They are everywhere, alone or in clumps, and of all kinds, with often a formal row of poplars or a little wood of beeches to make the sky-line more impressive. In northern France the houses and barns are all of stone, peaked and windowless, with gardens that seem bent on contrasting as strongly as possible with the grayness of the walls. It seems as though tiny villages are every few feet, and always with a church steeple in the middle.

In Paris the first man I met was my old friend, Dr. H. G. Enelow, of Temple Emanu-El, New York, who was standing by the desk in the Hotel Eegina when I registered. As the next day was Sunday, Dr. Enelow was able to devote some time to me, taking me for a long walk on the left bank of the Seine, where we enjoyed the gardens of the Luxem-

JEWISH HOLYDATS OF 1918 IN A. E. F. 13

bourg and sipped liqueurs at a side-walk cafe at the famous corner of Boulevarde St. Michel and Germain. Paris in war-time was infinitely touching. It had all the marks of the great luxury center of the world: shops, boulevards, hotels, and show places of every kind. But many of the most attractive of its tiny shops were closed ; the streets at night were wrapped in the deepest gloom, with tiny shaded lights which were not intended to illuminate but only to show the direction of the street. The crowds were only a little repressed in the day-time, for the extreme crisis of the summer had just passed, but with dusk the streets became entirely deserted. Through Dr. Enelow I met also Dr. Jacob Kohn, who with Dr. Enelow and Congressman Siegel constituted the commission of the Jewish Welfare Board to outline its program for overseas work. Dr. Enelow introduced me also to Mr. John Goldhaar, the secretary of the commission, afterward in charge of the Paris Office of the Jewish Welfare Board, to whom I shall refer more fully in another connection.

At Chaumont the first man I met was my old class-mate of the Hebrew Union College, Chaplain Elkan C. Voorsanger, who was there temporarily detached from the 77th Division to arrange for the celebration of the Jewish holydays throughout France. He welcomed me, told me something of what my work was to be, and listened to my monthold news, which was all fresh to him. For a few days I lingered at the chaplains' headquarters at the old chateau of Neuilly sur Suisse, not far from Chaumont, where thirty chaplains received their gas mask training and instruction in front line work, and waited for assignments. The chateau was a queer angular mediaeval affair, set off by lovely lawns, with the usual rows of straight poplars all about. A few steps away was a little village with a quaint old twelfth century church, beautiful in feeling, if not in workmanship. We chaplains newly arrived in France, most of us young, and all eager to be at work, hung on the words of our leaders fresh from the line. We talked much of our ideals and our preparation, as most of the men were graduates of the Chaplains ,! Training School at Camp Taylor, Kentucky. My assignment came very soon to organize and conduct services for the Jewish holydays at Nevers, headquarters of the Intermediate Section, Service of Supply.

The entire American area in France had been charted out for the purpose of holyday services and the central cities designated, either those which had French synagogues to receive our men, or those points like Nevers where Americans were to be found and had to be provided for. I quote the official order which carried authority for our arrangements.

Wherever it will not interfere with military operations soldiers of Jewish Faith will be excused from all duty and where practicable granted passes to enable them to observe Jewish Holidays as follows: from noon Sept. 6th to morning of Sept. 9th and from noon Sept. 15th to morning of Sept. 17th. If military necessity prevents granting passes on days mentioned provision should be made to hold divine services wherever possible."

This meant that all those had leave who were not at the time in action or on the move. Chaplain Voorsanger, for example, was not able to have any service in the 77th Division as his troops were on the march on New Year's Day and in action on the Day of Atonement. Most of the central points designated for Jewish services were important cities with French synagogues, — Paris, Toul, Belfort, Dijon, Spinal, Nantes, Eonen, Tours*, Bordeaux and Marseilles. Three of the chief American centers had none, so Dr. Enelow was assigned to Brest, Dr. Kohn to Chaumont, and I was sent to Nevers.

I spent a single busy day in Tours after leaving Chaumont. I met the wife and father-in-law of Eabbi Leon Sommers and inspected their little synagogue with its seventy-five seats. The Eabbi was on duty in the French army where he had been from the very beginning of the war. I went to the army headquarters and arranged for the proper notices to be sent out to troops in the district, then with two or three Jewish families whom I met I discussed arrangements to accommodate the large number of Jewish soldiers who would come in. I was empowered to offer them the financial assistance of the Jewish Welfare Board in providing such accommodations as were possible.

One surprise of a kind which I afterward came to expect, was meeting an old friend of mine from Great Lakes, a former sergeant in the Canadian Army, mustered out of service because of the loss of several fingers and now back in France again as a representative of the Knights of Columbus. When he left Great Lakes for overseas, I had parted with one of the two knitted sweaters I possessed, so that if I did not see service at least my sweater would. Now I met the sweater and its owner again for a few brief moments. These fleeting glimpses of friends became a delightful but always tense element in our army life. Men came and went like an ever-flowing stream, now and then pausing for a greeting and always hurrying on again. A single day sufficed for my work in Tours and then to my own city for the holydays.

Nevers is a historic town of thirty thousand on the banks of the River Loire. The streets are as wide as alleys and the sidewalks narrow and haphazard, so that usually one walks in the street, whether it goes up hill, down hill, or (as frequently) around the corner. But the parks and squares are frequent and lovely, and the old buildings have a charm of their own, even if it is chiefly in the quaintness of their outlines and the contrast of their gray with the sunny skies of autumn. The air was always cool and the skies always bright. I stayed at the Grand Hotel de 1 'Europe, a rather small place, which one had to enter by a back door through a court. With the men at war, all the work was being done by women, while most of the guests were American officers on temporary or permanent duty at the post. The cathedral (every French city seems to have one) is interesting chiefly to the antiquarian, as it has several different styles combined rather inharmoniously, and the tower is not at all imposing.

Of course, a great many Americans were stationed in or near the city — railroad engineers, training camps of combat units newly arrived in France, construction engineers, quartermaster units, and two great hospital centers. Every company I visited, every ward in the hospitals, had at least a few Jewish boys, and all of them were equally glad to see me and to attend my services. In fact, my first clear impression in Prance was that here lay a tremendous field for work, crying out for Jewish chaplains and other religious workers, and that we had such a pitiful force to answer the demand. At that time there were over fifty thousand Jewish soldiers in the A. E. F. at a very conservative estimate, with exactly six chaplains and four representatives of the Jewish Welfare Board to minister to them. When I took up my work at Nevers, I was simply staggered by the demands made on me and my inability to fulfill more than a fraction of them.

At first came the sudden rush of men into the city for the first day of Eosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The hotels filled up almost at once ; then came others who could not find accommodations, and still others who had been confined to hospitals, had drawn no pay for several months, and could not pay for a hotel room or even a shave. The problem was solved by two very helpful officers who stayed up most of the night until they had provided enough room on the barrack floors and enough blankets for all who needed them. The accommodations were crude, but the men were soldiers and glad to get them. I was doubly proud, therefore, that this crowd of ours, without official control, coming for the festival and therefore released from the incessant discipline they had become used to, never once took advantage of their privileges. We troubled the authorities for their sleeping quarters and for special permission to be on the street after nine at night— but that was all. Many of the boys may have appreciated their leave more than the festival, but all justified the confidence shown in them by their conduct.

Imagine the difference between our services in France and those to which I have been accustomed in our rather tame and formal civilian congregations. My congregation there was composed almost entirely of men, and those men all very young. We were meeting in a strange land, amid an ancient but alien civilization, which some of us liked and some disliked, but which none of us could quite understand. We had no scroll of the Law, no ram's horn, not even a complete prayer-book for the festivals. We had no synagogue, and the places we used were lent us by people of another faith, friends and co-workers, indeed, but with little interest in our festivals or our religious needs.

Our services were held in the large Y. M. C. A. hut at the chief barracks. The large, bare room was turned over to us for certain hours ; the workers closed the canteen and attended the services. And in return I concluded one of the evening services fifteen minutes early so that the regular clientele would not miss their semi-weekly motion pictures. In fact, I found the Y. M. C. A. here, as everywhere, most eager to cooperate with me and to serve the Jews as well as the Christians in the army. My cantor for most of the services was Corporal Cohen of New York, although several other men volunteered for certain portions of the prayers. The head usher was Sergeant Wolf, who looked after the hall and the seating with the thoroughness characteristic of sergeants everywhere. Among the congregation were ten officers, two nurses, and three families of French Jews, as well as a mixed group of enlisted men from every branch in the army, from every section of America and every group of Jewry. The festival had caught us in a foreign land, in the service of America, and it had brought us together as nothing else could have done.

We wore our hats during the service because that was the natural desire of the majority, who were of orthodox upbringing. Of course, a soldier naturally wears his overseas cap under any circumstances and it would have needed a special ruling to bring them off. The service was read out of the little prayer book circulated by the Jewish Welfare Board, with which about a fourth of the congregation were already provided from the camps in the States. We read the abbreviated Hebrew service, then about half of the prayers in English, and had an English sermon. The only objection to these innovations came from the cantor, Corporal Cohen, a young man with a traditional Jewish background, who had gathered the other Jews in his company every Friday evening for a brief service and was generally looked up to (although not always followed) as a religious leader. My only way of convincing him was to inquire among some of the other men as to the number who did not understand Hebrew. When he saw that over half of the Jewish soldiers had no understanding of the Hebrew service he withdrew his insistent request for a strict traditionalism and I was saved the necessity of falling back on my military rank.

I was much amused after the several services at the number of young men who came to me, complaining about Cohen's rendering of the services and boasting of their own ability. I was able to give several of them the chance in the ensuing days and found out that it is easy to get a Hebrew reader, quite possible to find one who reads with feeling and understanding, but utterly impossible to pick up in the army a cantor with a trained voice.

Our arrangements were made under the approval of my commanding officer, the senior chaplain of the post, and few features of our service were more appreciated than the address of Chaplain Stull at our services on the second day of the festival. I had hesitated to invite him, and was therefore doubly surprised when he assured me that this was the third successive year that he had preached at a Jewish New Year service : two years before on the Mexican Border, the year before in training camp in the States and now in the American Forces in France, Chaplain Stull was a regular army chaplain of eighteen years standing, and his membership in the Methodist Episcopal church was less conspicuous in his makeup than his long experience in army life. His sermon was one of the outstanding events of our holy season. His explanation of the vital importance of the Service of Supply to the army at the front came with personal weight for he had just come back from the fighting forces to take a promotion in the rear. His moral interpretation of the significance of each man to the whole army was the sort of thing that the soldier needs and likes.

These services were unusual in that they were the first holy season which most of the men had spent away from home. The war was still on then ; the St.

Mihiel drive took place the day after Bosh Hashana; the news from the front was usually good and always thrilling. We at the rear were deeply stirred. Some of us had been wounded and were now recovering; some were in training and were soon to leave for the front ; some were in the S. 0. S. permanently. But the shadow of war was dark upon us all. We were in the uncertainty, the danger, the horror of it. We felt a personal thrill at the words of the prayers, — "Who are to live and who to die; who by the sword and who by fire." We recited with personal fervor the memorial prayer for our fallen comrades. Many among us were eager to give thanks at recovery from wounds. Therefore, the desire for a religious observance of our solemn days was all the greater. Men came in from a hundred miles, often walking ten miles to a train before they could ride the rest.