Legal action to compel the U.S. Army to permit a Lubavitcher Hasid, who went to medical school at the Army’s expense, to wear a beard and a skullcap during his three-year commitment to military service as a doctor, has been dropped after the Army yielded on the issue, Howard Zuckerman, president of the National Jewish Commission on Law and Public Affairs (COLPA), reported.
Zuckerman said the case of the young Hasid-doctor was unusual in that when he made his agreement to get his medical training expenses in exchange for the three-year commitment, he was not particularly observant and that, accordingly, when he made the pledge and enrolled at the medical school of Iowa University in Des Moines, the issue of beard and skullcap was not involved. He enlisted in the army in 1978.
However, the man, whose name was withheld at his request, and who is now 29 years old, became acquainted during his first year at school with Lubavitcher Hasidim he had met at the local Chabad House. His religious convictions deepened to the point that he became a Hasid and began wearing a skullcap at all times.
The skullcap caused no problems for him during his first tour of active duty during December, 1979, at Madigan Army Medical Center at Fort Lewis, Washington, in the state of Washington. Zuckerman explained that active duty includes stints in military hospitals during medical school attendance for those in the program in which the Army pays for medical education taken in civilian medical schools.
BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM
In March, 1981, he made another tour of active duty, this time for 45 days, at Tripler Army Medical Center in Hawaii. By that time, his deepening religious convictions led him to decide he would wear a beard, in addition to the skullcap. Tripler Army officials allowed him to continue to wear his beard but ordered him to report for duty in civilian clothes, so that his conflict with the Uniform Dress and Army Code, which bans beards and skullcaps, would not be noticeable.
In April, 1981, he submitted a formal request for permission to wear a beard and regulation Army medical uniform while on active duty in the Army. In a letter from Army authorities, dated August 24, 1981, he was informed his request “was not favorably considered.” When his request was refused, he continued to wear civilian clothes.
After his graduation from medical school in the spring of 1982, he was ordered to report for active duty at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Officials there told him he would be permitted to report for duty, wearing a beard, if he would wear civilian clothes. He considered this a temporizing arrangement and did not report as scheduled.
On August 20, 1982, he was notified that his orders to report for active duty as a military doctor had been revoked pending results of a hearing on his request to wear a skullcap and a beard. A special board was convened last September 21 at Fort Totten in Flushing, N.Y. to consider his request.
HEARING BY A SPECIAL BOARD
The hearing board comprised three voting members, each of them a Major, one non-voting member who served as a recorder, and two non-voting chaplains, one Catholic and one Jewish. The Catholic chaplain had the rank of Major and the Jewish chaplain was a Lt. Col.
At the hearing, the Hasid-doctor declared it was a religious requirement for him to wear a beard. He testified he had consulted three rabbis and that each stated it was forbidden for him to shave his beard, despite his promise to serve in the Army. The Jewish chaplain explained to the three voting members that, under Jewish religious law, once a Jew accepts a rabbi, he is required to follow that rabbi’s teaching and may not “shop around” for a different rabbi with a different opinion.
The board denied his request for an exemption to the Dress and Grooming Code and ruled that his insistence on wearing a skullcap and a beard constituted an intent to renege on his contractual agreement to serve in the Army in exchange for Army payments of his medical schools costs.
The board also found that his asserted religious beliefs about wearing a beard and a skullcap were not sincere because Jewish law does not condone violation of contractual obligations. The board also held that by disregarding his contractual obligations, he was exposing himself to disciplinary and legal action.
TURNS TO COLPA FOR HELP
The Hasid-doctor, who now maintains his permanent residence in the Lubavitcher compound in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, turned to COLPA for help. COLPA initiated an administrative complaint, the procedural prerequisite to a federal lawsuit. Zuckerman said the Army reconsidered its position and COLPA dropped the proceedings.
Zuckerman noted that the case of the Hasid-doctor is somewhat unusual in that he did not have the option, generally available to officers in the armed forces who encounter such impasses, of simply resigning their commissions. The Hassid-doctor, committed to three years of army service, would be subject to possible court martial, possible suit for breach of contract and to any Army effort to recoup its outlay for his medical education, threats to him which he could not eliminate by resigning from the army.
The initial proceedings on his problem were initiated by Daniel Chazin, COLPA general counsel, and David Butler, a COLPA member.
Zuckerman, updating a similar lawsuit against the Air Force, which has refused to allow a clinical psychologist to wear a skullcap while on duty, said the lawsuit iscurrently pending before the Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. The plaintiff, Captain Simcha Goldman, won a fovorable decision in federal district court in New York, but the Air Force appealed. Goldman is being represented by Nathan Lewin, COLPA vice president, and Butler.
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.
