Jewish cadets at Academy remember religious slights small and large

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Jewish cadets at Academy remember religious slights small and large

By Robert Wiener, New Jersey Jewish News, January 26, 2006

Simmering discomfort by some Jewish and other non-Christian cadets over religious practice at the Air Force Academy heated up in 2004, when a 1977 graduate from New Mexico, Mikey Weinstein, began speaking publicly about the plight of his two sons, Casey and Curtis.

Casey Weinstein, one of 20 Jews in the 1,000-member class of 2004, complained he faced a "hostile environment" in which faculty members and fellow cadets tried to convert him to Christianity.

Among other things, he and others were offended by official academy sponsorship in 2004 of The Passion of the Christ. Many Jewish critics said the film by Mel Gibson was a hostile depiction of Jews' role in the persecution and death of Jesus.

A fellow cadet, Ariel Kayne, told NJJN he felt pressured to see the film, even though coping with the evangelical environment around him "was never a key issue for me. I recognized that as a Jewish cadet there were times when I had to suck it up."

"But," said Kayne, who grew up in a Reform Jewish family in Wilmington, Del., "there were issues. Sometimes they would have special training from 4 to 10 p.m. on a Friday, and I couldn't just leave at 6:30 and say, 'I'm going to shul.' One time a Christian second classman said, 'We give you a day for religion. That's Sunday.'

"It is hard to complain when you're a cadet," he said. "You want to be supportive. You don't want to be causing trouble. We know, and the Christians know, when push comes to shove, we're not going to play the Jewish card and say, 'I can't fight because it's Friday night.'"

Curtis Weinstein is currently a fourth-year cadet at the academy. For his father, "what's going on there is an absolute outrage."

According to a June 6, 2005, article in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Curtis Weinstein told his father he was "going to beat up the next one who calls me a f--n' Jew or says that we killed Jesus."

"I had lots of issues there," said Rabbi Irvin Ehrlich of Temple Beth Torah in Colorado Springs, who served as Jewish chaplain at the academy between 1986 and 1994.

"Some of the things the academy did were absolutely inexcusable," such as instructing cadets in the "Christian way to fold the American flag…with the triangular shape representing the trinity and the 12 folds symbolizing the 12 apostles," he told NJJN.

Since 2004, Ehrlich said, he has sensed that "the reelection of George Bush has emboldened the evangelical Christian movement" at the academy. "Like Bush, it, too, has proclaimed a mandate for this country."

Its "right-wing Christian philosophy," said the rabbi, has permeated the officer corps at the nation's military academies and their mission to train cadets to be future officers. "They are taught that to survive in war they must be team players. So, Jewish cadets might be granted Friday nights off to attend services, but then they are told they are letting their entire squad down by not being there to help get ready for the big inspection on Saturday morning."

The rabbi said that when he was chaplain he requested "that the Jewish cadets be given two days off for Rosh Hashana and one for Yom Kippur, and they balked at that, but I don't understand why. When was the last time cadets didn't get the day off for Christmas and Easter?" he asked rhetorically.

"Have there been some instances where people stepped over the line? You bet," said Johnny Whitaker, the academy's director of communications. "But they have been taken care of - like an instructor who was a little heavy-handed by evangelizing in the classroom - that's not appropriate and we've taken care of that," he told NJJN in a telephone interview.

"We've had some commanders who were moving too far to the right, but when we discovered that, we took action and fixed the problem," said Whitaker. "Is it perfect? Probably not. We're dealing with people, so we are always going to have the occasional problem."

Whitaker said the 44 Jewish cadets who currently attend the academy were given hours off to attend High Holy Day services on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, but he noted that "we can't give cadets three days off because they have to go to school, they have to do their military training, and some of them are on athletic teams and have to go to games."

The academy spokesperson said he was "not naive enough to believe there hasn't been more talk about evangelism" since the Bush reelection. "President Bush is very open about his faith, the national discussion has been raised, and the issue is certainly much more open than it had been in previous years. But we've been dealing with this very candidly for over a year."

From his post in Denver as regional director of the Mountain States Anti-Defamation League, Bruce DeBoskey told NJJN the situation at the academy is changing slowly in recent months with the replacement of its two top officers, the superintendent and the commandant.

"My impression is that the focus from the very highest levels of the Air Force to the academy is to stay the course and work on a process of changing the culture so there is less religious intolerance."

DeBoskey said he has not received any complaints of religious coercion in recent months. But he disagrees sharply with the members of Congress who complained that the new guidelines have put Christian chaplains there under attack.

"They have a right to practice whatever the tenets of their religion are. But there is a time and a place, and the academy is a place where there are restraints in place because of the separation of church and state," said DeBoskey.

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