Rabbi Menachem Stern's stringy brown beard is hardly an unusual sight in his Brooklyn neighborhood. But in trying to become a chaplain in the U.S. Army, Mr. Stern has gotten tangled in a military bureaucracy that has made exceptions for other beards, but not his.
Rabbi’s Beard Doesn’t Make Cut
Rabbi Menachem Stern’s stringy brown beard is hardly an unusual sight in his Brooklyn neighborhood. But in trying to become a chaplain in the U.S. Army, Mr. Stern has gotten tangled in a military bureaucracy that has made exceptions for other beards, but not his.
The 28-year-old rabbi was notified last year that he had been accepted as a chaplain in the Army Reserve.
Almost immediately, Army officials contacted him to say the acceptance was a clerical mistake, and that unless he was willing to shave his beard, he couldn’t join.
As a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi, Mr. Stern refused, saying the beard is a tenet of his faith.
For nearly a year now, the Crown Heights resident has been trying to get a waiver to the regulation barring beards.
“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “I’m not asking them to bend any rules, but, rather, do what’s been done before and issue a waiver. What’s taking them so long?”
The Army, whose grooming rules allow only trim, tidy moustaches, has granted exemptions in the past, as recently as this year, when it allowed a Sikh dentist to serve with a beard and turban.
Mr. Stern is getting political support from New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat who has urged Army Secretary John McHugh to let him serve, arguing that “no American should have to choose between his religion and service to our country.”
Army spokesman George Wright said for those entering the service, “current policy on beards precludes his commissioning as an officer and becoming a member of the Chaplain’s Corps.”
Mr. Wright wouldn’t address the case of the Sikh dentist, but some of Mr. Stern’s supporters say the Army has told them the exception was made for him because he had already been training at government expense.
Army regulation 670-1 states that “males will keep their face clean-shaven when in uniform or in civilian clothes on duty,” and that “handlebar mustaches, goatees, and beards are not authorized.”
Mr. Wright said the regulation is currently under review. Another section of Army policy allows those granted exceptions to the beard rule before 1986 to keep them.
That’s how Col. Jacob Goldstein, a long-serving chaplain, sports a bushy white beard. He was granted a waiver when he joined the Army National Guard in the late 1970s. He has served around the world, including at Ground Zero and Guantanamo Bay.
He expects the Army will eventually relent and resolve its facial-hair phobia.
“The military is a huge bureaucracy, and it takes time to move a bureaucracy, especially when you want to change the regulations and the culture,” he said.
“Look at some of our past generals’ beards, like Ulysses Grant. In the Civil War, a lot of those guys in the military leadership looked like Hasidic individuals.”
One of them, Ambrose Burnside, even gave rise to the term sideburns because of his elaborate whiskers.
Today, there is still one section of the U.S. military that’s frequently bearded: Special Forces.
Working in hot spots such as Afghanistan, many members of those elite units grow beards to make themselves less conspicuous to locals.
Rabbi Sanford L. Dresin, a retired chaplain who works with a Jewish group that endorses rabbis for chaplain positions, called the Army’s refusal of Mr. Stern an injustice.
“Here’s a man who really wants to serve his country, and there is a very great need for rabbis in the military right now,” said Mr. Dresin, who sports a Vandyke.
not surprized
Think about it, every single one of the thousands of guys in the army has to shave and have a very short “army” haircut. Do you really expect them to make an exception for one Rabbi?? (dont bring examples from someone u know that has a beard and a uniform, there are different divisions etc…)
then maybe I’d women in the army can have hair then maybe they can work out beards too.
me
Mendy you are definitely making a big Kidush Hashem
Kol Hakavod and Zei Matzliach
yosy
here is a suggestion:
Why don’t you join the army of Hashem – there they let you have a beard, and they even encourage it!?
Vos tut ah frumer yid tzu mishen zoch mit ah goyishe armei!?
Meileh – I understand if there was a draft, and there is a requirement to serve, etc. OK. But, in absence of that – vos iz der inyan to “serve and protect” di zelbeh vos volt fartrunken (R”L) ah yid in the drop of a hat!?
Case in point: Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin.
Aaron Drew
To #3:
What kind of question is that? Are you really saying that Yidden (frum or not frum) who serve in the army shouldn’t have a Shliach of the Rebbe to guide them. Who are you to ask how a person tries and does his best to fulfill his shlichus. How many stories have we heard about people who are brought down to this world for one purpose. Maybe his purpose is to join the Army help another yid maybe even help Klal Yisroel if he can gain enough influence in the ranks. Its a shame that you feel it necessary to belittle someone’s attempt at doing a greater good.
Get Nat Lewin
That 1984 law seems discrimitive. Many firms would like to take a crack at a it. I would recomend Nathan Lewin. He prevously won the right for a soldure to wear a yamulka and got the law changed by showing a camafloged yarmulka in the senate.
to 4-aaron drew
If there is such an inyan to serve in the army – why didn’t the frierdiker rebbe or the rebbe instruct chassidim to become chaplains or soldiers in the army?
Yes, they were directed to provide the needs of the soldiers regarding yiddishkeit and torah u’mitzvoseha – BUT…not that they themselves become soldiers also!?
As the rebbe himself told an interviewer from an Israeli newspaper – the reason why he does not go to Israel, and preach from there – he answered: words from afar are heard better than words from close by.
A frum yid has no place amongst goyim, in a goyishe army. If you are really interested in doing “mivtzoiyim”, then there are countless ways to be able to accomplish it without having to become a soldier in the army.
mvh
#5, what are you talking about? The soldier who wanted to wear a yarmulke LOST his case. Congress then changed the law to allow it; no lawyer “got” it changed! There is no case to be made here; the army can make whatever rules it likes, and has no obligation to make exceptions for anybody. This is a matter for politics, not the law. The army needs to be lobbied to change its rules, and if they won’t do so then congress should be lobbied to change the rules for them.