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Michael Feldberg
Lincoln's fight for Jewish chaplains
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
For Jews who wish to observe the rituals of their faith,
wartime may pose seemingly insurmountable challenges.
The exigencies of war can make the observance of the
Sabbath, holy days and the kosher laws very difficult.
Jewish soldiers must, on occasion,
subordinate religious observance to combat. Despite the
frequent priority of war over religion, there are times,
such as the funeral of a fallen Jewish soldier or at the
bedside of a wounded Jew, when religion can shape war
policy.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Jews could not serve as
chaplains in the U.S. armed forces. When the war
commenced in 1861, Jews enlisted in both the Union and
Confederate armies. The Northern Congress adopted a bill
in July of 1861 that permitted each regiment's
commander, on a vote of his field officers, to appoint a
regimental chaplain so long as he was "a regularly
ordained minister of some Christian denomination."
Only Representative Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, a
non-Jew, protested that this clause discriminated against
soldiers of the Jewish faith. Vallandigham argued that the
Jewish population of the United States, "whose
adherents are . . . good citizens and as true patriots as
any in this country," deserved to have rabbis minister to
Jewish soldiers. Vallandigham thought the law, which
endorsed Christianity as the official religion of the United
States, was blatantly unconstitutional. However, there
was no organized national Jewish protest to support
Vallandigham and the bill sailed through Congress.
Three months later, a YMCA worker visiting the field
camp of a Pennsylvania regiment known as "Cameron's
Dragoons" discovered to his horror that the officers had
elected a Jew, Michael Allen, as regimental chaplain.
While not an ordained rabbi, Allen was fluent in the
Portuguese minhagim (ritual) and taught at the Philadelphia
Hebrew Education Society. As Allen was neither a
Christian nor an ordained minister, the YMCA
representative filed a formal complaint with the Army.
Obeying the recently enacted law, the Army forced Allen
to resign his post.
Hoping to create a test case based strictly on a
chaplain's religion and not his lack of ordination, Colonel
Max Friedman and the officers of the Cameron's Dragoons
then elected an ordained rabbi, the Reverend Arnold
Fischel of New York's Congregation Shearith Israel, to
serve as regimental chaplain-designate. When Fischel, a
Dutch immigrant, applied for certification as chaplain, the
Secretary of War, none other than Simon Cameron, for
whom the Dragoons were named, complied with the law
and rejected Fischel's application.
Fischel's rejection stimulated American Jewry to action.
The American Jewish press let its readership know that
Congress had limited the chaplaincy to those who were
Christians and argued for equal treatment for Judaism
before the law. This initiative by the Jewish press
irritated a handful of Christian organizations, including the
YMCA, which resolved to lobby Congress against the
appointment of Jewish chaplains. To counter their
efforts, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites,
one of the earliest Jewish communal defense agencies,
recruited Reverend Fischel to live in Washington, minister
to wounded Jewish soldiers in that city's military hospitals
and lobby President Abraham Lincoln to reverse the
chaplaincy law. Although today several national Jewish
organizations employ representatives to make their
voices heard in Washington; Fischel's mission was the
first such undertaking of this type.
Armed with letters of introduction from Jewish and
non-Jewish political leaders, Fischel met on December 11,
1861 with President Lincoln to press the case for Jewish
chaplains. Fischel explained to Lincoln that, unlike many
others who were waiting to see the president that day,
he came not to seek political office, but to "contend for
the principle of religious liberty, for the constitutional
rights of the Jewish community, and for the welfare of
the Jewish volunteers."
According to Fischel, Lincoln
asked questions about the chaplaincy issues, "fully
admitted the justice of my remarks . . . and agreed that
something ought to be done to meet this case." Lincoln
promised Fischel that he would submit a new law to
Congress "broad enough to cover what is desired by you
in behalf of the Israelites."
Lincoln kept his word, and seven months later, on July
17, 1862, Congress finally adopted Lincoln's proposed
amendments to the chaplaincy law to allow "the
appointment of brigade chaplains of the Catholic,
Protestant and Jewish religions." In historian Bertram
Korn's opinion, Fischel's "patience and persistence, his
unselfishness and consecration … won for American
Jewry the first major victory of a specifically Jewish
nature . . . on a matter touching the Federal
government." Korn concluded, "Because there were Jews
in the land who cherished the equality granted them in
the Constitution, the practice of that equality was
assured, not only for Jews, but for all minority religious
groups."
Michael Feldberg is the director of the American Jewish Historical Society. Comment on this article by clicking here.
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