Yom Kippur

Holiday Duty

How those in the military
balance the High Holidays with
their responsibilities.

T

Alan Muskovitz

ABOVE: Colten
Baitch, an Orthodox
Jew, observed
the High Holidays
as best he could
while on a mission
in Afghanistan in
2010. He still serves
as a drill sergeant
in South Carolina.

32

he challenges of getting ready for the High
Holidays. Maybe, in your case, it’s the added
stress of preparing Rosh Hashanah dinner
for a house full of guests or the ordering of the
right-sized deli tray for the break-fast. Then there’s
the pressure of arriving at synagogue services at
the exact right time to secure the highly coveted,
easy-to-exit parking space.
Now, imagine the challenges of getting ready
for the High Holidays while in the uniform of one
of our U.S. Armed Forces stationed thousands of
miles away from home during WWII, the Vietnam
War or in the middle of intense fighting in
Afghanistan. It’s a different perspective I recently
had the privilege of learning more about.
This year, Art Fishman, 91, senior vice com-
mander of the Jewish War Veterans State of
Michigan, drove to Rosh Hashanah services at
Temple Shir Shalom in his 2017 Chevy Equinox.
On Rosh Hashanah Sept. 8, 1945, Art arrived at
services at the City of Shanghai Synagogue in a
rickshaw.
“On the day before Rosh Hashanah, my execu-

September 13 • 2018

jn

tive officer on the destroyer the U.S.S. Robinson
informed me that after my morning duty, I was to
stop by the supply officer and get a winter dress
uniform,” Art said. “I was being granted time off
to leave the ship to attend High Holiday services.”
It would be a nice respite from his assignment
aboard the Robinson — mine-sweeping operations
along the Yangtze River.
Art recalls paying somewhere between 5 and 10
cents (not including tip) for his rickshaw ride. A
pretty inexpensive chauffeur ride to hear a shofar.
Following services, Art, along with about 40 other
Jewish service men, were treated to lunch that
included “Russian vodka mixed with orange juice
in Coke bottles.”

MAKING AN IMPACT

The late Rabbi Allan Blustein, former director
of pastoral care at Sinai Hospital in Detroit from
1981-1991, always dreamed of being in the Army.
That desire to give back to his country was, to
a great extent, born out of his witnessing as a
young man the extraordinary care his father, a
WWI veteran, received in the V.A. hospital in his
hometown of Chicago. That opportunity to serve
would come in 1958, when Allan heard the Army
needed Jewish chaplains.
Having only been ordained as an Orthodox rabbi
since 1957 from the Hebrew Theological College
in Skokie, Allan, newly married, gave up being a

pulpit rabbi in Chicago and enlisted in the Army in
1958. A series of health issues — serious enough
to keep him from the frontline in Vietnam but not
out of uniform — would not deter him from mak-
ing a profound impact over the course of his 22½-
year military career; especially during the High
Holidays.
The rabbi’s widow, Judy, 80, of West Bloomfield,
shared the following moving experiences with me
about her husband that took place over the course
of his tour of duty in Europe in the 1960s.
While stationed in Orleans, France, the rabbi
would be in receipt of extra kosher food supplied
by the Jewish Welfare Board in New York that
arrived in time for the High Holidays, specifically
earmarked for Holocaust survivors. “He had the
Jewish GIs make the deliveries because they were
too young to know very much about the war,” Judy
said. “He wanted his soldiers to see the survivors
face to face.”
While based in Nuremberg, Germany, Judy
told me, just prior to Rosh Hashanah, her hus-
band “would take Jewish troops to several hidden
gravestones in the forests where he would read the
names of the Holocaust victims and lead the GIs in
saying Kaddish for them.”
Also, in each of their three years there, Judy
recounted how, before the High Holidays, her hus-
band would “take our three young daughters to the
Nuremberg Palace of Justice. He sat each of them