What would cause a thirty-four-year-old pacifist rabbi, married with two young children, to enlist in the Navy as a chaplain in 1943, during WWII?

Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn’s grandfather Benjamin was born in Russia in the only part Jews were allowed to live. An area that city Jews were exiled to, so Russians could rid themselves of business competition and the “evil” Jewish influence.

Benjamin relocated at a young age after his father died, later married, and became an Orthodox rabbi. In the day, Orthodox rabbis were scholars, teachers, and judges. He immigrated to the United States in 1890 at the age of eighteen or nineteen, about the time modern Zionism began.  A year later, his wife and Roland’s father Reuben, arrived in America. They settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was invited to be the leader in the Orthodox community. He had twelve children, spoke no English, only Yiddish, and severe poverty never left.  Still, that was better than staying in Russia where at the age of 12-25 they could be drafted into the army for a term of 25 years. While at first one might believe it was some measure of social equality, in fact it was a method of detaching them from their religious group and forcing them to convert to Christianity.

While he seldom preached, Roland’s grandfather was a powerful orator few could equal.

Reuben Gittelsohn, Roland’s father, was born 1878 in Lithuania. He too spoke no English when he arrived upon these blessed shores, and he learned to take full advantage of what America had to offer. He was the only professional of his eleven siblings. Before becoming a successful doctor were years of abject poverty and a time of extreme religious turmoil in the Jewish community. They remained in Cleveland, in constant threat of violent riots and discrimination against Jews, and Zionism became his passion.

Roland’s mother Anna had been born in Russia and her family immigrated to the United States when she was very young and the family had settled in Missoula, Montana, a city with only seven Jewish families where they were mostly ostracized from society. She met Rueben in Cleveland, fell in love and were married just months later. They had two children, Roland and Natalie.

Roland learned to love Judaism from his father and developed compassion for the less fortunate and the desire for equality for all men. He graduated from Reserve University in 1931 and then Hebrew Union College where he was ordained in 1936, peace then his mission. In America, that has always been an uphill battle.

He questioned his followers about being forced into the World War. As a pacifist rabbi, he was influenced by the history of WWI though he was too young to feel it’s direct impact. Zionism was like the mother’s milk he was weaned on, and it remained his calling till his death at the age of 85. He was the founding president of the Association of Reform Zionists of America.

Roland learned pacifism and cherished that absolute belief starting in high school. He felt it represented among Judaism’s highest ideals. Quoting Zechariah, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit – said the Lord of Hosts.”  His absolute pacifist beliefs were cherished, not a convenience.

In contrast, the United States had a mindset of spending more money on weapons then on people and society. And such, he considered there would be more war in the future. Government expenditures approaching WWII were almost four-times that of before WWI. Investments for war, versus funding for society, paled in comparison. Fifteen times as much. Armaments sold for war became the cause for war. Propaganda was used to convince citizens to want to drop bombs and artillery shells, and to buy delivery systems to deploy them. Not a problem for the military industrial complex and banks as they controlled the press, movies and other means of communications.

In his intended words on Iwo Jima, the rabbi wrote just that.

We will not forget that some of you were burnt with oil that came from American wells, that many of you were killed by shells fashioned from America steel, we promise that when once again men seek profit at your expense, we shall remember how you looked when we placed you reverently, lovingly, in the ground.

Judaism teaches that it is the denial and delay of justice that brings the sword. The festering of immoralities allowed, instead of their elimination. To Roland, war was immoral, and he was repulsed by glorification of its atrocities. Early into WWII he preached “If we do nothing else, we must stay out of this war.” He later learned a life lesson, to never consider his beliefs or views to be beyond all possibility of change. 

It was a critical moral dilemma, but he renounced pacifism and sought a military commission. The military services, with ever increasing enlistments of Jews, were calling for more Jewish chaplains and each rabbi was free to make that decision based on their individual conscience and conviction. A refusal by Roland to except the challenge might mean someone more exempt would be called to serve under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. Possibly more important to Roland was his responsibility to young Jewish men in need of his services. In late 1942, he applied and was later commissioned a lieutenant in the Navy.

He had seen Hitler’s successes on the battlefield, and his victory would mean Jewish annihilation, so he joined the Navy because his wife liked Roland in blue, and he had no want to carry a knapsack or dig foxholes, but that didn’t last. In the end, he was assigned to be the first Jewish chaplain in the Marine Corps, wearing khaki and green and a knapsack, and foxholes became tools of the trade on Iwo Jima where he wrote his famous eulogy. That was just the beginning of his incredible life.