THE RELIGION OF THE JEWISH SOLDIER
Much has been written of the soldier's religion, most of it consisting
of theoretical treatises of how the soldier ought to feel and act,
written by highly philosophic gentlemen in their studies at home or by
journalistic travelers who had taken a hurried trip to France and
enjoyed a brief view of the trenches. The soldier himself was
inarticulate on the subject of his own soul and only the soldier really
knew. Here and there one finds a genuine human document, like Donald
Hankey's "Student in Arms," which gave the average reaction of a
thinking man subjected to the trials and indignities of the private
soldier in war-time, in words far above those the average soldier could
have used. Theorizing about the soldier was worse than useless; it often
brought results so directly opposite to the facts that the soldier
himself would have been immensely amused to see them.
As a matter of fact, the soldier had the average mind and faith of the
young American, with its grave lapses and its profound sources of power.
He was characterized by inquiry rather than certainty, by desire rather
than belief. His mind was restless, keen, eager; it had little
background or stability. It was dominated by the mind of the mass, so
that educated men had identical habits of mind with the ignorant on
problems of army life. The moral standards of the soldier were a direct
outgrowth of the morals of sport and business rather than those of the
church. He had a sense of fair play, of dealing with men as men, but no
feeling whatever of divine commandments or of universal law.
A significant incident, bringing out the peculiar ideals of the soldier,
is related by Judge Ben Lindsey in his book, "The Doughboy's Religion."
He tells how a number of Y. M. C. A. secretaries conducted
questionnaires at various times as to what three sins the soldiers
considered most serious and what three virtues the most important,
hoping to elicit a reply that the most reprehensible sins were drink,
gambling and sexual vice. But hardly a soldier mentioned these three.
The men were practically unanimous in selecting as the most grievous
sin, cowardice and the greatest virtue, courage; as second, selfishness
and its correlative virtue, self-sacrifice; and as third, pride, the
holier-than-thou attitude, with its virtue, modesty. The result, to one
who knew the soldier, would have been a foregone conclusion.
The soldier was honest, he gave no cut-and-dried answers but his own
full opinion, based upon the circumstances of his own life. At the front
courage is actually the most important attribute of manhood and
cowardice the unforgivable sin. One coward can at any moment imperil the
lives of his entire unit by crying out in surprise on a night patrol, by
deserting his post as sentinel or gas guard, by infecting with the
spirit of panic the weaker men who follow any contagious example.
Selfishness likewise was more than serious; it was vital. The selfish
man was one who ate more than his share of the scanty rations on the
march, who did not carry his full pack but had to be helped by others,
who was first in line at the canteen but last to volunteer for
disagreeable duty. Pride, on the other hand, was not dangerous but
merely irritating in the extreme to an army of civilians, of Americans
with the spirit of equal citizens, who felt that they were doing
everything for their country and resented equally the autocratic and the
patronizing manner. Besides the soldier saw examples of these his
highest virtues about him constantly. Courage became a commonplace;
self-sacrifice an everyday matter. Officers often shared the discomforts
and exceeded the dangers of their men. When one reads the accounts of
citations for the D. S. C. and Medal of Honor, one wonders that human
beings could do such things. And when we who were at the front recall
the utter democracy of those days, how salutes and formality of every
kind were forgotten while only leadership based on personality could
prevail, we realize anew the emphasis of the soldier on modesty and his
resentment of the attitude of many a civilian and even a few military
men in patronizing him either as a common soldier or as a miserable
sinner.
As to religious tendencies, the soldier had, first and foremost, hope.
He looked forward to better things both for himself and for the world.
He had the religious longing and the religious certainty that the future
will witness the dawning of a better day. He had a vast respect for
manhood, though his democracy did not go so far as to include other
nations, whom he very largely despised on account of their "queerness"
and his own ignorance. He had an abiding hatred for anything which
smacked in the slightest degree of hypocrisy or "bluff." I mention this
in my next chapter in connection with preaching to soldiers, but
preaching was not the only field in which it applied. The soldier laid
an inordinate value upon personal participation in front line work,
ignoring the orders which necessarily kept the major part of the A. E.
F. in back area work, in supply, repair, or training duty. I know of one
chaplain, for example, who joined a famous fighting division shortly
after the armistice, through no fault of his own but because he had been
previously detailed to other duty, and who found his service there full
of obstacles through the suspicion of the men--because he who was
preaching to them had not been under fire when they were. Of course,
this worked favorably for those of us whom the boys had personally seen
under fire at the first aid post or in the trenches.
This very respect for deeds and suspicion of words, especially of polite
or eloquent words, made for suspicion of the churches and churchmen. We
had so pitifully few chaplains to a division, and some of them were
necessarily assigned to hospitals in the rear. Only here and there did a
Y. M. C. A. or K. of C. secretary go with the men under fire. True, they
had nothing to do there, as there was no canteen or entertainment hut at
the front; true, strict orders forbade their entering certain territory
or going over the top. The soldier asked not of orders or duties; he
knew only that this man, who in many cases seemed to consider himself
superior, who preached and taught and organized, had not slept night
after night in the rain, had not fallen prone in the mud to dodge the
flying missiles, had not lived on one cold meal a day or had to carry
rations on his shoulder that he and his comrades might enjoy their
scanty fare.
Therefore the soldier cared little for creeds of any kind. He could not
apply any particular dogmas to the unique circumstances in which he
found himself--he had probably never applied them to any great extent
even in the more commonplace circumstances of peace--and he was
suspicious of many of those who attempted to apply them for him. The
soldier needed religion; he wanted God; he cared very little for
churches, creeds or churchmen.
In most characteristics the Jewish soldier was one with his Christian
brothers. He differed only in those special facts or ideas which showed
a different home environment or a different tradition. For example, the
usual Christian minister used the word, "atonement" with a special
meaning which was understood, if not accepted, by every Christian
present, but which meant nothing whatever to the Jew, except through the
very different association with the Day of Atonement. So any analysis of
the religion of the Christian soldier would begin with his attitude
toward the atonement, but with the Jewish soldier this must be
omitted--he had no attitude at all. The Jewish soldier was guided by the
same general facts in his attitude toward the Jewish religion which
animated the Christian soldier in his attitude toward the Christian
religion; the difference was largely that of the religion which they
considered rather than of the men themselves.
Of course, it was hard to be a good Jew in the army. The dietary laws
were impossible of fulfillment, and the Talmudic permission to violate
them in case of warfare meant less to the average soldier than the fact
that he was breaking them. The Sabbath could not be kept at all, even in
rest areas where there was no immediate danger to life. No soldier could
disobey an order to work on the Sabbath; if the work was there, the
soldier had to do it. In many ways Judaism was difficult and
Christianity just as difficult. For example, I know of one division
where the Passover service was held under difficulties, as the unit was
about to move, and where the Easter service had the same handicap, as
the men had just finished moving and were not yet established in their
new quarters. Most of the obstacles to religious observance were common
to all religions.
A few Jews denied or concealed their religion in the army as elsewhere.
Some few enlisted under assumed names; a number denied their Judaism and
avoided association with Jews, perhaps fearing the anti-Semitism which
they had heard was rife in military circles. Their fear was groundless
and their deception, as a rule, deceived nobody. The American army as it
was organized during the war had no place for prejudice of any kind.
Efficiency was the watchword; the best man was almost invariably
promoted; in all my experience abroad I have never seen a clear case of
anti-Semitism among higher officers and only seldom in the ranks.
Occasionally also I met the type of Jew who admitted his origin but had
no interest in his religion. Such a one--a lieutenant--who was known as
a friend of the enlisted men generally and especially of the Jewish
ones, assisted me greatly in arranging for the services for the fall
holydays, but did not attend those services himself. He represented the
type now fortunately becoming rarer in our colleges, the men who have
too much pride to deny their origin but too little Jewish knowledge to
benefit by it. It is noteworthy that this particular man was stationed
in the S. O. S. and had at that time never been at the front. Most men
turn toward religion under the stress of battle; those who have never
been in battle presented in certain ways a civilian frame of mind.
Most of the Jews in the army were orthodox in background, rather than
either reform or radical. Perhaps the orthodox did not have the
numerical superiority they seemed to possess; in that case I saw them as
the most interested group, the ones who came most gladly to meet the
chaplain. Not that the other two groups were lacking in this army, which
took in practically all the men of twenty-one to thirty-one years in
America. The dominating group, however, was orthodox in background,
though most of them were not orthodox in conviction. Causes are not far
to seek--they had never studied orthodoxy; they were young men and had
few settled religious convictions; they were in the midst of a modern
world where other doctrines were more attractive. The fact is that their
convictions were usually directed toward Zionism rather than toward one
or another form of Judaism itself. Again, they were without reasons for
their interest. Zionism appealed to them simply as a bold, manly, Jewish
ideal; they did not enter into questions either of practicability or of
desirability. In other words, they were young men, not especially
thoughtful, who were interested in Jewish questions only as one of many
phases of their lives. They had their own trend, but were glad to accept
leadership of a certain type, adapted to their own lives and problems.
All these Jewish soldiers welcomed a Jewish chaplain. The Catholics and
Protestants had chaplains, and all Jews except the negligible few who
denied their faith were very glad to be represented also, to have their
religion given official recognition in the army and to see their own
chaplain working under the same authority and along the same lines as
chaplains of other religions. Most of the Jewish soldiers had personal
reasons also to greet a chaplain. In many of the occasions, small and
great, when a Jewish soldier desired advice, aid or friendship, he
preferred a Jewish chaplain to any other person. As a chaplain he had
the influence to take up a case anywhere and the information as to
procedure, while only a Jew can feel and respond to the special
circumstances of the Jewish men. On the other hand, not all Jewish
soldiers were eager to welcome the Jewish Welfare Board although they
all liked it after it had arrived and made good. Some were afraid of any
distinction in these semi-military welfare organizations, feeling that
the two already in the field, the Y. M. C. A. and K. of C., were quite
adequate. The Jewish Welfare Board, however, made such an impression at
once on both Jews and non-Jews that even the doubtful ones became
reconciled and felt that Jewish work in the army was more than justified
by results. As always among Jews, who lay great emphasis on non-Jewish
opinion, one of the chief causes of the popularity among Jews of Jewish
war work was its popularity among Christians. When a Jewish boy found
his building overcrowded by non-Jews, when he had to come early to get a
seat at the picture show among all the Baptists and Catholics, when he
saw Christian boys writing to their parents on J. W. B. stationery, he
thought more of himself and his own organization. This same fact refuted
the argument against segregation; men of all faiths used the J. W. B.
huts, just as they did those of the other welfare organizations. They
were one more facility for men of every religion, even though organized
by Jews and conducted from a Jewish point of view.
In their religious services, as in most other things, the Jewish boys
liked practices which reminded them of home. Just as many of them
enjoyed a Yiddish story at an occasional literary evening, so they all
appreciated the traditional Seder at Passover more than all the shows
and entertainments which were provided at the Passover leave. They
preferred to have many of the prayers in Hebrew, even though I seldom
had a Jewish congregation in the army in which more than one third of
the men understood the Hebrew prayers. They liked the home-like and
familiar tone of the Jewish service on both Sabbaths and festivals. They
preferred to wear their caps at service and to carry out the traditional
custom in all minor matters.
But at the same time they had no objection to changes in traditional
practice. The abbreviated prayerbook of the Jewish Welfare Board was
much appreciated, even though one or two of the boys would state proudly
that they had also a special festival prayerbook. The short service was
practical and the boys therefore preferred it to the longer one of the
synagogue. They understood that, with the large number of non-Jews at
our services and the usual majority of Jews who could not read Hebrew,
it was necessary to read part of the prayers in English. They liked an
English sermon, too, although the chaplain skilled in army methods
always gave a very informal talk, far from the formal sermon of the
synagogue. And when interested they asked questions, often interrupting
the even flow of the sermon but assisting the rabbi and congregation to
an understanding of the problem at issue.
One of the chief characteristics of an army congregation was its
constant desire to participate in the service. The soldiers liked
responsive readings; they preferred sermons with the open forum method;
they were ready to volunteer to usher, to announce the service
throughout the unit, or for any job from moving chairs to chanting the
service. At the Passover services at Le Mans, we had all the volunteers
necessary among the crowd for everything from "K. P." (kitchen police)
to assist in preparing the dinner to an excellent reader for the
prophetic portion. The services meant more to the soldiers as they
became their own.
Another characteristic of services in the army was the large number of
non-Jews attending them. I have come to a Y. M. C. A. on a Sunday
morning directly after the Protestant chaplain, when most of his
congregation joined me, and my group in consequence was nine-tenths
non-Jewish. At first this factor was a source of embarrassment to many
of the Jewish men. They came to me beforehand to whisper that a few
non-Jews were present, but I took it as a matter of course, having
learned my lesson with my first service in France. Later even the most
self-conscious of Jews accepted the presence of non-Jews at a Jewish
service just as Christians expect those of other denominations than
their own. When Jewish services often have from ten to eighty per cent.
of non-Jews in attendance, the Jewish soldiers are doubly glad to have a
partially English service and a sermon. They want the Christians to
respect their religion as they do their own, an end usually very easy of
attainment. And while a few Jews would have preferred to drop the
special Jewish characteristics of our service, I have never heard a
critical word from a Christian about our wearing our hats, our Hebrew
prayers, and the rest. Often, in fact, I have had to answer respectful
questions, giving the sort of information which broadens both sides and
makes for general tolerance.
At the front, even the most thoughtless desired some sort of a personal
religion. In the midst of the constant danger to life and limb, seeing
their comrades about them dead and wounded, with life reduced to the
minimum of necessities and the few elemental problems, men were forced
to think of the realities of life and death. With these eternal
questions forced upon them, the great majority must always turn to
religion. The men _prayed_ at the front. They wanted safety and they
felt the need of God. After a battle they were eager to offer thanks for
their own safety and to say the memorial prayers for their friends who
had just laid down their lives. Perhaps the most religious congregation
I have ever had was the little group of men who gathered together under
the trees after the great battle at the Hindenburg Lane. The impressions
of the conflict had not yet worn off. The men were, in a way, uplifted
by their terrific experiences. And the words they spoke there of their
fallen comrades were infinitely touching. The appeal of a memorial
prayer was so profound in the army that many of the Protestant chaplains
followed the Episcopal and Catholic custom and prayed for the dead
although their own churches do not generally follow the custom.
But with all this deep yearning for personal religion, the men adopted
fatalism as their prevalent philosophy. For one thing, it seemed to
answer the immediate facts the best. When five men are together in a
shell hole and a bursting shell kills three of them and leaves the two
unharmed, all our theories seem worthless. When one man, volunteering
for a dangerous duty, comes back only slightly gassed, while another
left at headquarters is killed at his dinner by long distance fire, men
wonder. And when they must face conditions like this day after day,
never knowing their own fate from minute to minute, only sure that they
are certain to be killed if they stay at the front long enough, they
become fatalists sooner or later. As the soldiers used to say, "If my
number isn't on that shell, it won't get me." I argued against fatalism
many times with the soldiers, but I found when it came my own turn to
live under fire day after day that a fatalistic attitude was the most
convenient for doing one's duty under the constantly roaring menace, and
I fear that--with proper philosophic qualifications--for the time being,
I was as much of a fatalist as the rest.
At the rear the personal need for religion was less in evidence. The
men who had gone through the fire were not untouched by the flame, and
gave some evidence of it from time to time. The men who had not been at
the front, who comprised the majority in back areas, had no touch of
that feeling. They all shared in the yearning for home and the things of
home and for Judaism as the religion of home, for the traditional
service of the festivals, for the friendship, ministrations and
assistance of the chaplain. Judaism meant more to them in a strange
land, amid an alien people, living the hard and unlovely life of the
common soldier, than it ever did at home when the schul was just around
the corner and the careless youth had seldom entered it. The lonely
soldier longed for Judaism as the religion of home just as under fire he
longed for comfort from the living God. And the military approval of all
religions on the same plane, the recognition by the non-Jewish
authorities of his festivals and his services, gave Judaism a standing
in his eyes which it had lacked when only the older people of his own
family ever paid much attention to religion. Thus Judaism as an
institution, as the religion of home, had a great place in the heart of
the soldier in France.
Some of the men, especially at the first, felt that they were being
neglected by the Jews of America, that our effort was not commensurate
with that which the Christian denominations were making to care for the
soldiers of their faiths. We must admit sadly that they had some
justification for such a view. Our representatives arrived in France
late though not at all too late for splendid results. American Jewry was
almost criminally slow in caring for our hundred thousand boys in
service abroad. A few of the soldiers carried this complaint even to
the point of bitterness and estrangement from Judaism. Here and there I
met an enlisted man who challenged Jewry as negligent. Usually these
were not our most loyal or interested Jews, but they were Jews and
should not have been neglected. The men who entertained real loyalty to
their faith were usually active already in some minor way and ready to
cooperate with the Jewish Welfare Board when it was in a position to
back them up. Most of the men, however, were eager to forgive as in a
family quarrel as soon as our welfare workers arrived in France and
showed immediate accomplishment.
Our Jewish boys came back from overseas with certain new knowledge of
life and new valuation of their religion. Beginning merely as average
young men in their twenties, they acquired the need and appreciation of
their ancestral faith, though not in a conventional sense. They are not
to-day reform Jews in the sense of adherents of a reform theology;
neither are they orthodox in the sense of complete and consistent
observance. They have felt the reality of certain truths in Judaism, the
comfort it brings to the dying and the mourner, the touch of home when
one celebrates the festivals in a foreign land, the real value of Jewish
friends, a Jewish minister, a Jewish club to take the place of the home
they missed over there. That is, Judaism means more to them both as a
longing and an institution.
But not all the things which we customarily associate with Judaism have
this appeal to them. Some seem to them matters of complete
indifference, and the usual emphasis on the wrong thing makes them feel
that the synagogue at home is out of sympathy with their new-found
yearning. If we give them what we consider good for them, they will take
nothing. If we give them what they want--the religion of God, of home,
of service--and with all three terms defined as they have seen and felt
them, then they will prove the great constructive force in the synagogue
of to-morrow. The Jewish soldier had religion; if he was at the front,
he has had the personal desire for God; in any case he has felt the
longing for the religion of home. He was often proud of his fellow Jews,
sometimes of his Judaism. He did heroic acts gladly, feeling the added
impetus to do them because he must not disgrace the name of Jew.
_Kiddush ha Shem_, sanctification of the name of God, was the impelling
motive of many a wearer of the D. S. C., though he may never have heard
the term. The recognition by church and synagogue of the world-shaking
events of the war must be accompanied by an equal recognition of the
influence of war on the minds and hearts of the men who engaged in it,
and for whom those world-shaking events have become a part of their very
being.