WWII vet who liberated holocaust victims from Nazi train dies

Story here.

Stories of Jewish WWII Vets

Bill Harris and Albert Miller are documenting the stories of Jewish WWII vets in Chicago. 

Veterans and Survivors

The Sun Sentinel  has a story about some of the few people who are both American War Veterans and Holocaust survivors.  

Jewish Soldiers of WWI

Tablet magazine has a story.

A Succah in Afghanistan

Lieutenant Commander Rabbi Neal Kreisler's story here. 

Ohr Kohane's story

or rather, his mother's. . . here.

War and Peace: The Jewish Version

JID has an interesting discussion about the Jewish idea of war and peace. 

Jewish Soldiers in Germany

JTA has an interesting story about Jewish Soldiers in the German military today. 

Jewish Soldiers in South Korea

JTA reports about South Korea honoring Jewish Soldiers from the Korean War.

Jewish Soldiers in Argentina

Argentina is honoring their Jewish veterans from the Falklands War. Apparently there was significant anti-Semitism there even as recent as the Falklands War. 

In Ft Bragg

I am in Fort Bragg for about a month doing some school.  Routine stuff. I'll post if anything interesting comes up. 

Memorial Day

Jonathan Miller's touching plea for remembrance on Memorial day. 

Megilot for the military?

Someone (the Robert M. Beren Academy) is fundraising to get megilot to the US military.  It would have been nice to have a real megilah when I was deployed. Being in Iraq, next door to Iran, made the megilah that much more meaningful. I remember reading the megilah, for a few soldiers from a small booklet that came in a care package. But we did get many many boxes of mishloach manot from wonderful Jewish Americans. It was really nice of them. Thanks!

Match made in Afghanistan

Announcement here (ht tabletmag).  

New book

Forthcoming book on General Grant and the Jews. If I ever get a copy, I'll review it here.

Jewish documents from Afghanistan

An treasure trove of Jewish documents from Afghanistan is on the auction block.

Ed Koch and the Jewish military experience

This podcast has Ed Koch, former mayor of my city, telling a tale of being drafted during WWII with a cohort of other kids from NY, about a quarter who were Jewish.  While the non-Jews were good at the physical stuff, the Jews were better at the more academic stuff, like map reading. One of the soldiers in his training platoon kept insulting the Jews during the training sessions. Koch, at one point threatened the guy and they fought.  Koch lost the fight, but standing up to the guy put an end to the slurs.

Incidentally, the motif of the Jewish soldier not being so good at the physical stuff, but really good at the "theory" is reminiscent of Micha Joseph Berdyczewski's short story "Military Service". The story, originally in Yiddish, is over 100 years old, and took place in Czarist Russia, but still a good read. (To read that story, download Yiddish Tales from Google Books and go to page 281.)

Oh, and while experiences vary, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't much much much better at the academic theory stuff than the physical stuff.

Happy Purim everyone.

Congregation B’nai Kabul

Tablet mag has the story here.

Two soldiers going in different directions

Two interesting stories. While PVT Ari Mandel went from being religious to non-religious via the US Army (story here and here in Yiddish), 2LT Jake Kohlman seems to be going the other way and becoming religious via the Jewish services at Fort Benning. Fort Benning, by the way, has a rather large group of people who attend the Jewish services there (see this post).  

Jewish Airman killed in Afghanistan

HY"D. Story here. 

New Chumash

The military is getting a new chumash.  If I ever get one, i'll review it here.