COLORADO SPRINGS — Rachael Rubens served “four years, one month and a day” in the U.S. Army as a finance officer at Fort Carson and in Iraq.
And what little the 27-year-old former Army captain can recall about the four Hanukkahs she spent in the service is depressing, she said — vague images of lighting candles alone at home.
“I’ve never felt so segregated for being Jewish — not by design, by ignorance,” she said.
Rubens’ experience of isolation left her with a desire to shed light this Hanukkah, which begins at sundown today, on the situation of U.S. Jewish soldiers far from families and strangers to the local Jewish communities.
Rubens is asking Jewish congregations and organizations near military bases to build a few more bridges.
Military chaplains estimate that U.S. Jewish soldiers are less than one-half of 1 percent of personnel, and so a Fort Carson-sized base might reasonably have 200 to 400 Jews. The bases themselves don’t release names or numbers.
When Rubens first arrived at Fort Carson and inquired about resources available for Jewish soldiers, she said, she didn’t get much of an answer.
“I was pretty much handed a phone book,” Rubens said. The base had no ready list of Jewish community resources, she said. Colorado Springs’ well-meaning Christians wanted to help by introducing her to Jesus.
Jewish soldiers, although they’re asked by the Army along with everyone else about their religious preference, often don’t reveal it.
Temple Beit Torah’s Rabbi Don Levy, a former member of the Navy and, later, a U.S. Air Force chaplain, said many Jewish soldiers don’t disclose their religious preference because of concerns they will somehow be singled out in a negative way.
“Jews who go into the military suddenly find themselves surrounded by Christians who are exuberant and holistic in their faith. It informs everything about them,” Levy said. “Jews feel a little bit lonely.”
Christmas is a major Christian festival. Hanukkah is a minor Jewish festival, the rabbi said, but “it is still a big deal socially” to be cut off from old ties and traditions around the holidays.
While in Colorado Springs, Rubens eventually tracked down Jewish services at the U.S. Air Force Academy and at two small Colorado Springs synagogues, Temple Beit Torah and Temple Shalom, where she could attend because, she said, she was an officer, living off base and in possession of a car.
“Enlisted soldiers don’t have that,” she said.
In Iraq, where Rubens served a year and a half, ending in September 2008, she would travel when possible to larger bases where services were held for the Jewish high holy days of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana, and for Passover.
“It was the biggest de-stressor for me during my whole service,” Rubens said.
In Iraq she was the recipient — as were all the soldiers in her unit — of a U.S. church’s Christmas care package, full of thoughtful gifts. But it made her wonder, she said, where the larger Jewish community’s support for its soldiers at Hanukkah was.
Recently, after Rubens returned from a Hebrew studies program in Israel, she learned that Fort Carson had a new chaplain, a rabbi, who had arrived in August.
Chaplain Maj. Howard Fields believes he is the first rabbi serving as chaplain there since 1983. Yet Fields emphasizes that he serves as chaplain equally to soldiers of all faiths.
Fields said he doesn’t think Jewish soldiers are as cut off as Rubens believes. “Here (near) Fort Carson, there are lovely synagogues downtown that have been very welcoming (to soldiers).”
Fields also said that, in his experience — five deployments and 19 months in Iraq and Afghanistan — Jewish soldiers do get care packages at the high holidays.
Still, Rubens said, the need for a better-coordinated effort by the military and locals to help Jewish soldiers — with both the information and means to be part of a greater Jewish community — is ongoing.
She said it isn’t just the synagogue Jewish soldiers need. They want to know about Jewish cultural events. They could, for example, make good use of a shuttle bus to get them from base to a Jewish film festival or other events held by Denver’s vibrant Jewish community.
“Here’s the problem: even finding the Jewish soldiers,” Rabbi Levy said. “I meet them by accident.”
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
