Yeshiva U. Volunteer Plan for Military Chaplaincy Reported Successful

The one-year experiment in voluntary recruitment of military chaplains for rabbinic students at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University, instituted last January, has resulted thus far in a 50 percent increase in the number of such students who will enter military service, an official of the university reported today.

The voluntary approach replaced a self-imposed draft system initiated by the three major Jewish seminaries during the Korean War, according to Dr. Emanuel Rackman, assistant to the president for Yeshiva University Affairs. The other two are the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Reform Jewish Institute of Religion-Hebrew Union College. Ordained clergymen are exempt from the draft. Dr. Rackman said that the students at the Yeshiva University Seminary had long felt that as volunteers they were better able to serve the spiritual needs of Jewish servicemen and that the draft system was a less effective means of recruitment than a voluntary approach.

The Jewish Theological Seminary reported, in a statement, that Rabbi Eli Bohnen, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, named a special commission earlier this year to re-study the Conservative policy on the chaplaincy draft and to make recommendations for future procedures to the executive committee of the Rabbinical Assembly at the organization’s next annual convention on March 25. It had previously been reported that the issue would be debated at the convention.

The Seminary said that, during this period, the faculty and administration of the Seminary, under the direction of Rabbi David C. Kogen, administrative vice-chancellor, had been exploring with members of the Seminary’s junior and senior classes the feelings of the rabbinical students about chaplaincy service, with a view toward confirming or modifying present procedures after the Rabbinical Assembly acts upon the report of its committee, which has not yet been submitted.

Under the draft system, ordained students were required to take a physical examination for possible chaplaincy duty before they could take pulpits. Physically fit students are available for assignment, through the Jewish Welfare Board’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy, for military duty. This procedure remains in effect with the Conservative and Reform seminaries. The Yeshiva University experiment will be reviewed at the end of the year.

The Conservative program is handled through a joint Chaplaincy Availability Board of the Seminary and the Rabbinical Assembly, which was created in 1950 during the Korean War, to certify qualified candidates to the JWB commission. Last year, the Chaplaincy Availability Board recognized selective conscientious objectors, those who objected to a particular war, on an experimental basis. The board assigned such young men to equivalent service, the Seminary statement said. Other exemptions were men who had suffered in a concentration camp, men who had completed regular military service before entering the Seminary, and men who received, after ordination, an academic appointment to teach Jewish studies at the university level.