A Jewish Chaplain in France

by Lee J. Levinger

In the army and especially in overseas service men went naturally to the nearest chaplain or welfare organization for any benefit except worship, and sometimes for that also. From my first religious service in a hospital with the crowd of non-Jews and sprinkling of Jews in the Red Cross room, I found that the men went to the entertainment hut for whatever it might offer. Every large service afterward, especially if held in a convenient place, included a proportion of non-Jews, and invariably they were both respectful and interested.

The burial work of the Twenty-Seventh Division at St. Souplet was the climax of coöperation among chaplains, where the five of us represented five different churches. Our service was a three-fold one, as was the later one held at the larger cemeteries at Bony and Guillemont Farm. I have already referred to the meetings held by the chaplains of our division to discuss our common work and arrange to do that work most effectively together. My very last duty in France was to read the burial service over four Christian sailors drowned outside Brest harbor.

Such incidents as these were not exceptional at the front or among men who have been at the front and have learned its lesson; I give them especially because they are typical. The men who were under fire together grew to overlook differences as barriers between man and man. They knew the many times that their lives depended on the courage and loyalty of the next man in the line—be he rich or poor, learned or ignorant, pious or infidel, virtuous or wicked. They grew to respect men for themselves, to serve them for themselves alone. The men used any stationery that came to hand, writing home indifferently on paper labeled Y. M. C. A. or K. of C., or Salvation Army, or Red Cross, or Jewish Welfare Board; they attended a picture show or boxing match under any auspices and were willing to help at any of the huts that served them. In the same way the welfare workers and chaplains overlooked one distinction after another, at the end serving all alike and regarding their status as soldiers alone. Once when I dropped into a strange camp two boys whom I had never seen crowded through the press of men in the Y. M. C. A. hut; they had seen the insignia of the 27th, and being fresh from hospital, appealed to me to help them back to the division that they might return home with their own units. I was never surprised when non-Jews came to me for advice in ordinary cases, but I have had such extreme instances as a Jew and non-Jew coming together, to ask advice in a case where both felt they had been discriminated against by their commanding officer. In hospital work, in front line service, even in the ordinary routine of the rest area, we came closer to one another than ever in civil life.

As I said above, the logical climax of friendly coöperation comes when ministers of different faiths assist each other in their own work. I shall never forget a day in that busy October at the front when I met a Baptist chaplain belonging to our division. "Hello," he said, "I've just come to headquarters here to look for you and a priest." "All right, what can I do for you?" "Well," was his reply, "our battalion goes into the line tonight, and I wanted the Jewish and Catholic boys to have their services, too. If you can come over at four o'clock, I'll have the priest come at six." And so I came there at four, to find the fifteen Jewish soldiers grouped about a large tree near the battalion headquarters; the chaplain had notified them all. And, as the barn was both dirty and crowded, we held our little service under the tree, even though the rain began in the middle of it. Two of those boys did not come back three days later, and one was cited for heroism, so that I have often remembered the immeasurable service which the coöperation of that chaplain meant for his men.

On a minor scale such things took place constantly. One day, going to a distant battalion in a rest area, I not only went to the Y. M. C. A. man, who arranged for my services in the school-house, and to a Jewish corporal, who passed the word around to the men of my faith, but I arranged also that the "Y" man should conduct the Protestant service the following Sunday, and that the Catholic chaplain on coming should find arrangements made for his confessions and mass. A classic incident of the war is the story of Chief Rabbi Bloch, of Lyons, a chaplain in the French army, who met his death before Verdun in the early days of the war while holding a cross before a dying Catholic lad. The incident was related by the Catholic chaplain of the regiment, who saw it from a little distance. But by the time the gigantic struggle was over such incidents had become almost matters of everyday. I, for one, have read psalms at the bedside of dying Protestant soldiers. I have held the cross before a dying Catholic. I have recited the traditional confession with the dying Jew. We were all one in a very real sense.

A Christian chaplain preached the sermon on the second day of my Jewish New Year service in Nevers. Similarly, I was a guest, with the other members of the divisional staff, at the splendid midnight mass arranged by Father Kelley in the little village church of Montfort. For the first time in its history, the church was electrically lighted by our signal corps; the villagers and the soldiers were out in force; colonels assisted as acolytes; and the brilliant red and gold of the vestments, with the pink satin and white lace of the little choir boys, stood out brilliantly from the dark garments of the French and the olive drab of the Americans. Father Kelley delivered a sermon of profound inspiration, as well as a brief address in French to the villagers, whose guests we were. The staff were seated in a little chapel, at one side of the altar. The next day my orderly overheard two of the soldiers arguing about me. One insisted: "I did see the rabbi there right on the platform." "You didn't," said the other, "even if this is the army, they wouldn't let him on the platform at a Catholic mass." It reminded me of the incident in Paris when I had visited the Cathédral of Notre Dame, accompanied by my chauffeur, a Catholic boy, and I had given him a lecture on the architecture and symbolism of that splendid structure. It was only afterward that the humor of the situation struck me—a rabbi explaining a cathedral to a devoted Catholic.

Every chaplain with whom I have compared notes has told me of similar experiences. Chaplain Elkan C. Voorsanger, for example, at the time when he conducted the first official Jewish service overseas at Passover 1918, received four other invitations in various sections of France both from army officials and Y. M. C. A. secretaries. At one point the Young Men's Christian Association even offered to pay all his expenses if his commanding officer would release him for the necessary time. I have mentioned that Rabbi Voorsanger had no regular services in the 77th Division during the fall holydays of 1918, due to the military situation. There was one exception to this, however, a hasty service arranged at one of the brief stops during the march by Father Dunne of the 306th Infantry, and that service arranged by a priest was conducted by the rabbi in a ruined Catholic church. Chaplain Voorsanger is full of praise for the thirty chaplains of various religions who worked under him when he was Senior Chaplain of the 77th. Their enthusiastic support as subordinates was fully equal to their hearty coöperation as equals.

Peculiarly enough, the Christian Science chaplain in our division was the only one who found it difficult to become adjusted with the rest. This could hardly have been personal, as he was generally respected. It may have been due in part to the general suspicion of some for the ministers of a new faith which had lured away a few of their adherents. But it seemed due chiefly to the ideas and the method he represented. He was handicapped for the necessary work of caring for the sick and wounded by a unique attitude toward physical suffering, different from the rest of us and different from that of most of the soldiers themselves. As a consequence he could serve most of them only as a layman might. Certainly he could give no religious treatment of disease, as the medical department was supreme in its own field. In addition, he could conduct general services only with difficulty. To the rest of us a service meant the same thing,—a psalm, a prayer, a talk, perhaps a song or two. But the Christian Scientist could not give a prayer. Prevented from using his ritual by the fact that the service was to be non-sectarian, he had not the power of personal prayer to fall back upon. He was not a minister in the same sense as the rest of us, and the army had no proper place for either a healer or a reader.

With this single exception, I feel certain that every chaplain in France had the same sort of experience. When I first arrived in France I was one of thirty-five chaplains assembled at the chaplains' headquarters for instruction and assignment. Our evening service was conducted in front of the quaint, angular château on a level lawn surrounded by straight rows of poplars. One evening Chaplain Paul Moody, of the Senior Chaplain's office, gave us an inspirational appeal derived from his own experience and his observation of so many successful chaplains at the front. Afterward, informally, a Catholic told us briefly what we should do in case we found a dying Catholic in the hospital or on the field, with no priest at hand. Then I was asked how best the others might minister to a Jewish soldier in extremity. I repeated to them the old Hebrew confession of faith; Shema Yisroel adonoi elohenu adonoi echod, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One." I told them to lead the boy in reciting it, or if necessary just to say it for him, and the next morning when I brought down copies of the words for them all I was deeply touched by their eagerness to know them. These men did not go out to convert others to their own view of truth and life; they were ready to serve pious souls and to bring God's presence near to all. Christian ministers were eager to help Jews to be better Jews; rabbis were glad to help Christians to be better Christians. We learned amid the danger and the bitterness to serve God and man, not in opposition and not even in toleration, but in true helpfulness toward one another. I doubt whether these men, once so willing to serve men of all creeds at the risk of their lives, are foremost in the ranks of Jewish conversionists to-day.

Much of this spirit of genuine religion and of equal regard for all religions was due to the example and personal influence of the Senior Chaplain of the American Expeditionary Forces, Bishop Charles H. Brent, now the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Western New York. Bishop Brent utilized his great ability, his high spirituality and his personal acquaintance with the Commander-in-Chief all for the welfare of the men in the service. Assiduous in his personal devotions, definite in his personal preaching, when he turned to his duties as Senior Chaplain he simply forgot his own affiliations in the interest of all religions alike. Catholic and Protestant had equal faith in the impartiality and justice of his acts. He was especially careful in behalf of the Jewish men because he knew that they were a minority and might otherwise be neglected. The official orders and the detailed arrangements for the various holydays were a serious consideration with him. His spirit animated his entire staff. Chaplain Voorsanger felt it from the outset. Chaplain Paul D. Moody, Bishop Brent's assistant in the chaplains' office at General Headquarters, was animated by it equally with his chief. Chaplain Moody, a son of the great evangelist and now in one of the important Presbyterian churches in New York City, was fond of telling how the various commanding officers would often greet him as "Father" or "Bishop."