May 14, 1998

Ever wonder what the Talmud says about genocide? That’s the question U.S. Major Brett Oxman posed to his troops while on a recent peace-keeping mission in Bosnia.

An army chaplain based in the Royal Air Force at MildenHall, England, Oxman is one of the many U.S. military rabbis who are bringing Jewish ethics to soldiers through the Orthodox Union’s (OU) Pardes Project, an ethics building program based on informal and energetic discussion groups. Found on U.S. navy, air force and army bases from Eglin, Florida to Garmisch, Germany, the Pardes Project is increasingly turning Jewish troops on to theology.

"For the majority of soldiers in the armed forces, religion and ethics are mostly a series of fables. Passover means little more than Charlton Heston," said Oxman, who has been a chaplain for over a decade. "Through the Pardes Project, I was able to make millennia-old Jewish ethics seem relevant to the lives and situations of the troops. Against the backdrop of the Bosnian holocaust, we discussed the ethical issues in relation to genocide."

Oxman, who hosts Pardes sessions for servicemen and women on a monthly basis, continued, "The vast majority of Jews who join the military are basically ignorant of their faith and heritage. These Jewish soldiers know they’re not Christian and often want to find out what it means to be Jewish," said the Orthodox 40-year-old chaplain.

First Lieutenant Donald Levy, a Reform Jewish chaplain who began using Pardes a year and a half ago, hosts sessions regularly at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Out of 8,500 active duty personnel on the base, only an estimated 40 are professedly Jewish. (Religious identification on military applications is optional.) Yet Levy is inspired to teach Jewish ethics precisely because of the small number of Jews on the base.

"If the rate of intermarriage is 50 percent in the general Jewish population, it’s close to 100 percent among Jews in the armed forces," said Levy. "Many members in our Pardes group have been out of the Jewish communities for most of their adult lives stationed all over the world -- from a mountain top in Alaska to an Indian reservation out west. The one thing that they have in common is that they are all out of the Jewish mainstream," said Levy. "When we host a session, many of them are surprised at the breadth of Jewish literature."

Because there is no Jewish chaplain at the Kingsbay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia, Robert Harris, a first class petty officer, organizes Pardes discussions on his own. "We constantly have to stop the discussions to go onto the prayer services. Some of the discussions can go on forever," says Harris whose group consists mostly of retired servicemen and women.

In the forefront of Jewish outreach for over three decades, the OU created the international adult education program in an attempt to combat the profound ignorance afflicting the majority of American Jews. Part of the OU’s Department of Jewish Education, the Pardes Project is used by more than 15,000 Jews in schools, homes and synagogues in more than nine countries, including Australia, Singapore, South Africa, and Germany and on more than 50 college campuses.

The Pardes Project, which is free of charge, provides participants with free sourcebooks on ethical issues including eco-consciousness and the human being’s responsibility to the environment, forgiveness and the Holocaust, tolerance, conflict and self-actualization, to name a few. Written in a user-friendly, self-teaching style, Pardes seeks to promote lively discussion and controversy. "We present both sides of the coin because we want participants to get engrossed and personally involved in the material," said Rabbi Yaacov Haber, creator of the Pardes Project. "For every topic, we present a range of opposing opinions."

"Most Jews in the military do not get to see a rabbi," said Rabbi Haber who is also the Director of OU Department of Jewish Education. "But the advantage of programs like the Pardes Project is that anyone -- even with no Jewish background – can participate. The program transcends knowledge, age and denomination."

For free sourcebooks on any of the topics or information about any of our programs, call 1-8004CHAVER.

The Orthodox Union, celebrating 100 years of service to the Jewish community of the United States and countries throughout the world, is a world leader in youth work, advocacy for the disabled, synagogue services, adult education and political action. Its kosher supervision label, the OU, is the world’s most recognized kosher symbol and can be found on over 200,000 products in 56 countries around the globe.

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