A hotel seder (ritual meal) for the large Jewish military congregation of Fort Sam Houston, Tex., and solo seders for small groups of men on duty at isolated posts are among the worldwide Passover arrangements made for Jewish military personnel by the National Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) and local communities throughout the US. Observances will be conducted by full-time and part-time Jewish chaplains and Jewish military lay leaders, using kosher supplies and religious materials provided by JWB’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy and the JWB Women’s Organizations’ Services.
JWB’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy and the JWB Women’s Organizations’ Services have sent Passover supplies for servicemen and their dependents to more than 600 overseas and domestic military installations and to Veterans Administration hospitals and other federal facilities for hospitalized veterans. Chaplain Seymour Moskowitz is the Jewish chaplain at Fort Sam Houston, Tex., a major training installation for the US Army with a large Jewish congregation. Six hundred men, women and children are expected to take part in Passover services this year. Chaplain Moskowitz said.
Chaplains Marc A. Abramowitz, Harold Axel-rod and Albert M. Dimont, the Jewish chaplains in Vietnam, will conduct large-scale seders in various areas. Solo seders–packaged Passover meals from JWB–have been distributed to the men in Vietnam who will not be granted leave to participate in the mass Festival of Freedom observances.
FROM THAILAND TO THE U.S.
The JWB Women’s Organizations’ Services, whose Solo Seder program is aided by B’nai B’rith chapters, has shipped special packets of holiday foods and literature for Jewish servicemen stationed at other isolated areas throughout the world and men on duty at remote weather and radar stations, as well as Jews in the Peace Corps and US Diplomatic Corps.
Chaplain Louis Engelstein of Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., will be in the Azores on a special mission to conduct a seder and other Passover services for the US AFB personnel there. Chaplain Herbert A. Yoskowitz, Jewish chaplain in Korea, said that children of the base’s Sunday Religious School are arranging a pre-Passover model seder at which they will ask challenging questions of their elders.
The Jewish chaplains and Jewish military lay leaders served by JWB’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy will also conduct Passover services in Vicenza, Italy; Frankfort, Heidelberg, Ramstein, Kaiserslautern, Munich and Stuttgart, Germany; the United Kingdom, Okinawa, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama Canal Zone. Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Alaska and installations in the continental US. Jewish patients in VA hospitals will also participate in festival observances conducted by chaplains. In some hospitals, recordings of the Passover service will be brought to the patients’ bedsides over hospitals’ public address systems.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
