At Shabbat services, which I conducted every Friday night and Saturday morning, between 75 and 100 Jewish soldiers attended.
By DAVID GEFFENUpdated: JUNE 3, 2021 14:46BUFFALO GRAZING in the Wichita Mountains near Lawton, Oklahoma – which had 18 Jewish families(photo credit: DUGGAR11/FLICKR)
Forty-nine years ago I was the Jewish chaplain at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the largest artillery base in the US Army. I had served for two years. On July 4, 1967, I was to be discharged.TV news in Oklahoma was limited. Printed news was worse. The New York Times never made it out to Fort Sill. What we knew was that every eight weeks about 5,000 young men and women arrived at our installation after completing their eight weeks of basic training. Having been placed in artillery, they came to us for eight weeks of intensive training and then were off to Vietnam.At Shabbat services, which I conducted every Friday night and Saturday morning, between 75 and 100 Jewish soldiers attended. Our trick to help attract them was a kiddush of corned beef sandwiches. I’m not sure if we provided free Coca-Cola but there was Mogen David wine.The bread, special-order rye bread, came from an Oklahoma City bakery. The corned beef was shipped up to us monthly by the Jewish community center in Dallas-Fort Worth. We froze the corned beef – whole ones – and each week my chaplain’s assistant, a Vietnam veteran whose roots were in Brooklyn, defrosted one and sliced it beautifully. The mustard came from the Fort Sill commissary, the wine from the Jewish Welfare Board.On June 5, my wife Rita and I heard a few rumors about a war over in Israel. Back then we had little or no news at all. Neither my parents in Atlanta, Georgia, nor my wife’s parents in Queens, New York, wanted to alarm us. Our two babies were Avie, then under two, and Elissa, then just seven months old.Around 8 p.m. on June 6, we received a call from my JWB supervisor in New York saying that war had broken out in Israel. “Miraculously, the Israel Air Force has wiped out the Egyptian Air Force,” he said. “Ground battles are fierce in the northern part of the country and Israeli troops are advancing on Jerusalem.”In 1963 and 1964, Rita and I had studied in Jerusalem, so we were familiar with what was then a small city and we sensed that reunification might be possible, putting to rest the tragedy since 1948 of two Jerusalems.The next morning, June 7, I was in my office inside a little building of ancient vintage at Fort Sill assigned to the Jewish chaplain. Its kitchen was strictly kosher and the refrigerator was filled with canned vegetables (a barter item for kosher wine), and canned Manischewitz kosher chicken provided by the JWB (the kosher boys ate one meal a day in our office).The phone rang. It was the Federation director from Tulsa.“Chaplain, Israel needs money,” he stressed. “Perhaps you could solicit both the Jews and Christians in your area.”
Off I went.Lawton, Oklahoma, the city next to Fort Sill, had 18 Jewish families. None were wealthy like the oil-rich Travis family in Tulsa, whose brother-in-law Dr. Bernard Revel built Yeshiva University.I moved from store to store (there were no Jewish professionals in Lawton) and raised about $4,000. One of my Lawton Jews suggested I contact some local Christians. One had already called me. So for the following two hours I focused on Christians and raised another $9,000 in checks that I sent by registered mail to Tulsa.The following day as I was heading to the post office to get my mail, I heard Jay Bushinsky of CBS News reporting from the Western Wall. All of a sudden, shofar sounds filled my car and spilled out from its open windows into the Oklahoma atmosphere.Bushinsky announced, wonderfully, “The Kotel is in the hands of Israel!”I cried and recited sheheheyanu. A dream come true, and I am alive to experience it.Rita made little blue-and-white flags and put them on our kids’ cribs. For that Shabbat evening’s tefillot, I had one of Fort Sill’s bakers make a cake without lard in new pans. I got him to decorate the cake with blue-and-white icing and with my help, “Mazel tov, Israel” was written on it.At services I told the soldiers present how Israel had defeated the Jordanians, the Syrians and the Egyptians. Then I said loudly, “The Kotel belongs to Israel and the entire Jewish people.”They jumped up and cheered loudly. Together, we recited sheheheyanu.For 44 years, our family now numbering 17, has celebrated here in Israel.This Atlanta cracker still finds it hard to believe.In memory of my late chaplain’s assistant, Sgt. Michael Kauffman, a most committed Jew and highly honored Vietnam veteran.
