c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs is struggling with a major crisis. Critics charge the school is super-saturated with an unconstitutional, over-the-top conservative Christian atmosphere that subjects non-evangelical cadets to religious abuse, spiritual coercion and outright bigotry.

Following an investigation, on Monday (Aug. 29) the Air Force issued guidelines that hopefully will eliminate the egregious excesses that have stained the academy’s reputation.

So it is nice to report that on Sept. 18, the Naval Academy in Annapolis will be dedicating its new and impressive Commodore Uriah P. Levy Jewish Center. The 35,000-square-foot building faces Chesapeake Bay and abuts Mitscher Hall, a prominent Academy facility.

The center’s sanctuary has 410 seats, as well as offices, a library, classrooms, social hall, kitchen and mess hall. The worship area contains hand-cut stones suggesting the stones of Jerusalem’s sacred Western Wall. Rabbi Irving Elson, a Naval Academy chaplain, said: “The concept of the center is like a student life center, where it all comes together.” It is expected the Levy Center will become an integral part of academy life, attracting 1.5 million visitors each year.

There are currently about 125 Jewish midshipmen at the Naval Academy. Retired Vice Adm. Bernard Kauderer, who graduated from the academy in 1953, and later was commander of the U.S. Pacific and Atlantic Submarine Forces, said the Levy Center “will serve not only as a house of worship for the Jewish midshipmen but also as a living monument to the Jewish graduates of the academy who have served in the (U.S.) armed forces.”

The center was built with private funds contributed by the Friends of the Jewish Chapel in partnership with the Naval Academy Foundation. The center’s driving force is Harvey Stein, an Annapolis businessman for whom the Levy Center is a direct result of his personal “re-discovery” of Judaism in recent years.

The center is named the Philadelphia-born Levy (1792-1862), who served as a combat naval officer in the War of 1812 against Britain. Levy ultimately attained the rank of commodore and is credited with ending the Navy practice of flogging seamen. But his military career was never easy.

Levy, a victim of anti-Semitism from Navy colleagues, was court-martialed six times, and at age 24, he killed Lt. William Potter in a duel. Potter had called Levy “a damned Jew.” Five years before his death, Levy recalled that he was “forced to encounter a large share of … prejudice and hostility …” during his career.

Levy admired Thomas Jefferson, especially the president’s call for religious liberty and separation of religion and state in America. When Levy discovered that Monticello, Jefferson’s Virginia home, was in disrepair after Jefferson’s death, the Jewish naval officer purchased the presidential home and rehabilitated it. Then Levy presented Jefferson’s refurbished estate as a gift to the government.

But anti-Semitism in the Navy did not end when Levy died during the Civil War. Until 1938, Jewish midshipmen were required to attend Sunday church services. In reaction, Midshipman Seymour Epstein and Baptist Chaplain William Thomas invented the “Jewish church party” to fulfill the academy’s requirement. Each Sunday morning, Jewish cadets would gather at the academy’s entrance gate and march together to Annapolis’ Congregation Keneseth Israel for services. It was not until 1972 that the academy ended mandatory attendance at worship services. But even today, midshipmen must be present for a controversial “non sectarian” prayer at daily lunches.

Howard Pinsky, a 1962 Naval Academy graduate and president of Friends of the Jewish Chapel, recently told the “Jerusalem Report” that when he “entered the Navy … there was still a pretty strong vestige of anti-Semitism. There was no provision for kosher food or yarmulkes. I saw Jews passed over for promotions or not given jobs that led easily to promotions. It took a change of culture about diversity in the late ’80s and ’90s for things to get better.”

One sign of improvement is Ensign Eric Kinzbrunner, a 2005 Annapolis graduate from Coral Gables, Fla. Kinzbrunner was raised in a Hasidic synagogue, and during his four years at the academy he became even more religiously observant. The young naval officer said the academy “for the most part was very accommodating” regarding kosher food and his absence from classes on the Jewish holidays.

I am sure that Levy, the first Jewish Navy career officer, would be pleased with the center that bears his name.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s Senior Interreligious Adviser and a former Air Force chaplain, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

KRE/JL END RUDIN