Sitting at the front of a small room inside a nondescript building at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Navy Lt. Aaron Kleinman was dressed in a uniform rarely seen on these grounds: On top of his gray suit, dress shirt and tie, Kleinman’s head was covered by a kippah and his shoulders, torso and back were draped with a large, dark green and olive-colored military-style tallit.
Kleinman was leading a small explanatory prayer service on Sept. 25, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, part of a larger High Holy Days program for the camp’s Jewish Marines. It was the first-ever High Holy Day program of its kind at this base, where nearly 40,000 service members work and live.
Kleinman serves as an Orthodox rabbi and chaplain in addition to his Navy rank, and on this day spoke of forgiveness by describing an experience involving his 9-year-old son, Mati, the eldest of his three children.
Mati, Kleinman told the group, has a habit that can make his father lose his cool. One year, at synagogue on the Shabbat preceding Rosh Hashanah, Kleinman said Mati approached him somewhat awkwardly and said, “I’m sorry. I’m really trying not to, but sometimes it’s hard.”
As Kleinman spoke to the group, his emotions at the memory of his son’s earnest words were evident. His congregation at this small breakout service included a female Marine, a former Navy pilot and his wife, a chaplain-in-training and his girlfriend, plus a young Jewish man who’d come as a guest from Los Angeles. Kleinman told the group: “God doesn’t expect us to be perfect. He expects us to look at ourselves honestly and say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m really trying not to, but sometimes it’s hard.’ ”
That, Kleinman said with moist eyes, is what the High Holy Days are all about. We want to be better, or at least “want to want to be better.” But, he admitted, it’s often hard and we need help. It’s a message that can resonate with anyone during the High Holy Days, but maybe it strikes a particular chord for Jews in the military “who want a connection” in the midst of an environment that can be “spiritually corrosive,” as Kleinman wrote later in an email. “It is easy to feel tremendous distance from God [in the military],” he wrote.
Using Torah to teach leadership
Kleinman is one of only nine Jewish chaplains among the Navy’s close to 800 active-duty clergy. He is also an expert marksman and former naval aviator, having served 14 years on active duty (including four years studying at the Naval Academy) before joining the reserves, then re-enlisting as clergy. As a result, Kleinman is just as fluent in the language of his fellow soldiers as that of Torah.
An avid reader of Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of Our Fathers,” the Jewish compendium of ethical teachings from the sages, Kleinman, during a June tour of the base, referenced a quote, attributed to Hillel, that helps him explain why he felt drawn to chaplaincy: “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”
“In a place where there are no leaders, strive to be that leader,” Kleinman said. “I got into this because there was a need, and no one else was stepping in.”
Lt. Eric Berman studies Torah with Lt. Aaron Kleinman, a rabbi, who is currently serving as a chaplain at Camp Pendleton.
Jews in the military are, in Kleinman’s words, a “low density, high demand” faith group. There aren’t tons of them (it is estimated that fewer than 5,000 are currently on active duty, of which 2,000 serve in the Navy) and they’re spread out across the globe, wherever America’s armed forces are stationed.
“You’re talking all the major rivers, lakes and waterways in the continental U.S., all up and down the East and West Coast,” Kleinman said, listing the vast territory protected by America’s sailors and Marines. “Hawaii, Okinawa, the Mediterranean — we now have a presence in Australia, Europe. That’s a lot of area for nine Jewish chaplains to cover.” Kleinman’s job includes the constant possibility of relocation — he goes wherever there is a need.
And, many servicemen and women could use a rabbi to lean on, particularly one like Kleinman, who has seen combat and understands the physical and mental demands of military life.
On an earlier visit to Pendleton on a scorching summer day, Kleinman’s routine schedule seemed anything but routine to a civilian.
He socialized with Marines in the gym and those training in the Corps’ martial arts program, then delivered the benediction at a change-of-command ceremony and observed a combat medical evacuation team’s training mission at a site built to resemble a typical Middle Eastern desert village dotted with light-brown two-story structures, mirroring what an actual combat zone might be like.
Kleinman was 17 when he entered the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., in 1991. He served as a Navy pilot in both Iraq and Afghanistan and speaks with the authority and confidence of a fighter who has trained for and experienced combat.
The tone of his rabbinic teaching, as a consequence, sounds very different from that of a typical community rabbi. He’s more deliberate, perhaps.
“If you strive for the good of the assembly, you should do so for the sake of heaven,” he said, sharing with a lunchtime Torah study group in June what he calls “Kleinman’s version” of an excerpt from “Pirkei Avot.”
“Because if you’re expecting gratitude or thanks, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” Kleinman said.
He says his combat days are behind him. These days, his work is to help the men and women at Pendleton — both Jews and non-Jews, alike — with their personal, emotional, familial and theological issues, all of which continually get tested by the demands of the life of a Marine.
From phonebooks to the Naval Academy
Drinking an iced coffee outside a Dunkin’ Donuts at the base, Kleinman tried to explain why he felt compelled as a teenager to pursue the less-traveled path of enrolling at the United States Naval Academy.
He grew up just a few miles from Virginia’s Naval Station Norfolk, a massive base a few hours south of Washington, D.C. His childhood was a mix of military ethos in a Jewish home where, as he put it, the expectation was, “The dumb ones became lawyers [and] the smart ones became doctors.”
His stepfather, who was in the Navy, had worked side jobs to help bring in extra money for the family. One of those jobs, Kleinman recalled, was delivering phonebooks. One day, Kleinman tagged along with his stepdad and three Navy buddies who were helping three women make their deliveries across Virginia Beach.
As Kleinman remembers that day, the women were moving slowly while they tried to figure out how and where to deliver the books. So his stepdad and the three sailors intervened, reading through the distribution list and, in 20 minutes, delivering a semi-trailer truck’s worth of phone books.
“That kind of motivation, that kind of take-charge attitude, that kind of, ‘let’s get the job done and cut through the nonsense,’ was highly appealing to me,” Kleinman said.
As he neared high school graduation, and as his friends were looking at schools like the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary, Kleinman instead applied to and was accepted by the Naval Academy.
At that time he was not a kippah-wearing Orthodox Jew, as he is now, but Kleinman said his fellow sailors in the Navy knew he was Jewish.
And in the military, what happens when people know you are a Jew?
“Mazel tov, you’re a rabbi!” Kleinman said. “You represent Judaism, and you represent God, no matter how much or little you know.”
Being the “official expert on all things Jewish,” as the chaplain described his academic and active-duty experience, may not have been what put “rabbi” onto his list of possible post-combat careers — but it didn’t bother him, either.
“I didn’t have the language of kiddush ha Shem [sanctifying God’s name] at the time,” Kleinman said, discussing his early days with the Navy, “but I understood very quickly that I represented Judaism as a whole to basically everybody who saw me.”
In 2000, Kleinman served aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, piloting an E-2C Hawkeye—an $80-million aircraft that provides crucial communications and surveillance support against threats on the ground and in the air within enemy territory. He was deployed to help enforce “Operation Southern Watch,” which created a no-fly zone over the skies of southern Iraq to buffer Kuwait’s northern border and to protect Iraqi Shiites from Saddam Hussein, the country’s former Sunni dictator.
Two years later, in 2002, Kleinman shipped out on the USS John F. Kennedy, flying more than 60 missions, again on an E-2C Hawkeye—this time over Afghanistan as part of “Operation Enduring Freedom,” in which U.S. and coalition forces attempted to rout Al Qaeda and the Taliban following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
Kleinman would not elaborate on the substance of his missions, but he did say, when asked, that he had some “close calls” piloting the Hawkeye.
“There’s not a carrier aviator who has not had close calls,” Kleinman said. “It’s a dangerous job. No one goes through flight school without losing friends.”
In 2003, while still on active duty, he began enrolling in online classes with Yeshiva Pirchei Shoshanim — an online-learning program based in Lakewood, N.J. — but even before that he had served as president of the Jewish Midshipman Club at the Naval Academy and as the “Jewish lay leader” aboard the USS John F. Kennedy.
Talking about his experience transitioning from combat to clergy, Kleinman didn’t use the language of “spirituality” or “theology” — instead, he talked about “obligation,” “demand” and “service.”
The armed services needed more Jewish chaplains, Kleinman said, and they still do. As a committed Jew in search of a post-combat role, he said, the opportunity was there waiting for him.
So in 2005, after leaving active duty and joining the reserves, Kleinman began learning full-time with Pirchei Shoshanim from his home in Jacksonville, Fla. No longer satisfied with unofficially representing Judaism to America’s military, he was ready to become official.
Nowadays he conducts regular Torah study with those who want and tries to find ways to draw lessons that will be relevant in their service. During a summer lunchtime session in his office inside Pendleton’s assault amphibian (beach-invasion warfare) school, Kleinman was dressed in a standard-issue camouflage uniform as he sat with two Marines and a local rabbi, David Becker, at a table in his office.
“Verses 31 through 34 please, Jen,” Kleinman said glancing at Lt. Cmdr. Jennifer Wilkes.
“When he finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open,” Wilkes read from the Hebrew-English Torah Kleinman distributes at each of his weekly lunchtime study sessions.
Kleinman was leading Wilkes and others through Korach, that week’s Torah portion. In it, God violently quells a rebellion led by Korach by splitting the earth beneath him and his followers, plunging them into a massive pit.
“They and all that was theirs descended alive,” Wilkes read aloud.
“That’s terrible!” Lt. Eric Berman exclaimed. “Why would God do that?”
“As leaders,” Kleinman said, “just understand, one who leads others down the wrong path is held to a higher standard than one who simply goes down the wrong path.”
Low density, high demand
Kleinman has no illusions, based on his experience both as a pilot and chaplain, regarding the religious challenges that an observant Jew faces in the military.
“There are areas where one will have to compromise to the extent of taking advantage of lenient opinions,” Kleinman said, referring to more lax rabbinic interpretations of Jewish law. “But I’ll tell you, it’s possible.”
There are kosher MREs (meals, ready-to-eat), and any chaplain, Jewish or non-Jewish, should be able to procure things like prayer books and tefillin. Kleinman playfully joked about Southern Baptist chaplains — or perhaps just the one at Pendleton, with whom he is close — when he said that a Jew in need of tzitzit could even seek the assistance of Baptist clergy.
“And if he’s a normal Southern Baptist,” Kleinman said with a grin, “His response will be, ‘What are those?’ ” Good chaplains, Kleinman added, should “leap at the opportunity” to learn more about the various faiths of those they serve. For him, that has meant sailors and Marines who are Muslim, Mormon, Wiccan and more.
Yet, Kleinman said, for a Jewish recruit to speak up about his or her religious needs can be daunting.
“When one is starting out at boot camp, and one thinks a gunnery sergeant is God,” he said, “it’s much more difficult for a junior enlisted person to maintain a persistent and professional manner about seeking” religious needs.
His advice to Jews who want not only to practice, but also to seize the opportunity to represent Judaism to the military, is this: Be proud and unapologetic about your convictions.
He told a story of one Jewish naval flight officer who, after walking four miles in the rain on Shabbat to a mandatory meeting, so impressed his fellow non-Jewish officers that he picked up the nickname “Shabbos.”
He also described an officer serving on a U.S. base in Okinawa, Japan, who, after telling his commander that he could not fly missions on Shabbat unless it was a life-or-death matter, was given a firm, “We’ll see,” which, in the military, is apparently a very encouraging response.
But for every story about a sailor who successfully balances Jewish and military life, he said, there are many recruits who simply cannot juggle the demands of both simultaneously.
He said he witnessed this in his first post as chaplain, at Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois, when he received a phone call from a young man who, in despair, told him that he had ceased observing Shabbat and kashrut.
“This is two weeks before Yom Kippur, and he wants to know if God can forgive him,” Kleinman said. “That’s one of the more heartbreaking calls I’ve gotten.”
The Jewish Marines community
On the recent High Holy Days at Camp Pendleton, Kleinman and local rabbi David Becker organized four days of holiday and Shabbat programming that drew 40 service members, their spouses, children and even a two-star general.
Becker, the director of the Yeshiva Pirchei Shoshanim’s West Coast operations and a chaplain candidate for the U.S. Army Reserve, raised $15,000 for this first-time event at Pendleton, and invited a group of Orthodox families from Los Angeles and Jews from San Diego to celebrate, pray, eat and network with Pendleton’s Jewish Marines. Kleinman and Becker aim to connect the Jews of Pendleton, most of who have little or no Jewish communal life, with Jewish communities in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.
One of those Jews, Lance Cpl. David Branson, a 21-year-old geospatial intelligence analyst, was attending his first Rosh Hashanah service in three years when he walked into Blinder Memorial Chapel Fellowship Hall at Pendleton on Sept. 25. Raised in a Conservative Jewish home in the suburbs of New York City, Branson enlisted with the Marines in May 2013; he said he recently had begun considering becoming more religiously observant.
On the Saturday evening after Yom Kippur, Branson approached Kleinman outside the chapel and inquired about keeping kosher at Pendleton. Kleinman, Branson said, told him that it’s possible, but that it requires the sacrifice of becoming 100 percent kosher, not just a little, or even a lot. “It’s all or nothing,” Branson said, if he wants the military to take his diet seriously enough to provide him with kosher food for religious reasons.
The thin, soft-spoken New Yorker said that the Rosh Hashanah prayer services were the first Orthodox ones he had ever attended, and that though he had to follow along in English, he found that “having an aliyah was pretty cool” during the Torah reading.
For Yom Kippur, Branson accepted an invitation to stay with a family in Valley Village whom he met at Pendleton.
Four years ago, another Marine, Cpl. Juan Carlos Estremera, 25, was stationed at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, a small desert town near Joshua Tree. A Jew who first learned of his religious roots at 13, Estremera has culled most of what he knows so far about Judaism from services here and there, research online and resources from Chabad. Estremera is a radio technician, and he said that at Twentynine Palms he was unable to take leave for Yom Kippur and fasted alone in the midst of a workday.
And while Rosh Hashanah services at Okinawa — where he used to be stationed — had been larger than the ones he attended a few weeks ago at Pendleton, the program led by Kleinman and Becker, Estremera said, left its mark on him.
“I did a lot of soul searching,” he said afterward. “The feel of the community was something I hadn’t felt in a little over a year, since I had left Okinawa.”
Prior to one holiday meal, Kleinman addressed a group of Marines, their families and the visiting Jews from around the region by saying, flat out, that because there are so few Jews in the Marines and the Navy, they need to seek each other out and stick together.
“One of the main challenges in being Jewish in the military is maintaining a sense of community,” Kleinman wrote to the Journal in a follow-up email. “Usually there are simply not enough Jews around. With the thousands of personnel stationed at Camp Pendleton [Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, a base east of La Jolla], we have an opportunity to build a real community here, as well as tie them into the greater San Diego and L.A. Jewish communities.”
Living the (military) life
The June morning when Kleinman sat for an interview at Camp Pendleton was a “fortunate” one, he said.
“I got to sleep in until zero four-thirty,” he said. “Normally I’m up about zero four hundred.”
No joke. On Monday through Friday, Kleinman leaves his home near San Diego State University in eastern San Diego, where he lives with his wife, Hillary, and their three children, and bikes to the trolley, which takes him to the train, which drops him in Oceanside, still a few miles from Camp Pendleton, and from there he bikes to work, and typically begins his day at zero seven forty-five (aka 7:45 a.m.).
He is in outstanding physical condition, so the four miles on his bike before the workday starts is no matter. Chaplains, he said, are expected to have a respectable physique and maintain the same dress and cleanliness standards as every other Marine. That’s not a problem for Kleinman, who daily works in one to two hours of physical exercise at the base, often going on runs with and providing moral support for the Assault Amphibian School Battalion and Field Medical Training Battalion.
“Sometimes, I’ll be pulling up behind a 19-year-old corporal or private first class and say, ‘Hey, I’m a 40-year-old naval officer. You cannot let me beat you on this run,’” Kleinman said proudly. “That gives them that extra motivation. They like to see a chaplain that can hang with them.”
Although he is certainly happy to be addressed as “Rabbi,” he takes “Sir” and “Chaps” as well. After all, many — in fact, most — of the Marines who need his guidance are not Jewish and not even looking for biblical wisdom. They often just are looking for a safe place to open up.
On a whiteboard outside Kleinman’s office, he lists his personal cell phone number with a message that anyone can call him should they need anything. And he means anything. As a chaplain, Kleinman is allowed to ensure complete confidentiality to those who come to him, even when a Marine expresses suicidal or even homicidal tendencies.
He is, though, if he deems it appropriate, expected to refer such people to the professional medical and psychiatric staff who work on base.
“They just need a listening ear,” Kleinman said. “Someone they can tell this stuff to who’s not going to laugh at them, who’s not going to make fun of them, who’s not going to call them weak.”
He said he has met with Marines of high rank, men “who would never shed a tear,” who break down in front of him, hoping for nothing less than a nonjudgmental Chaplain, and nothing more than a caring person.
“I don’t have to say anything for half-an-hour,” Kleinman said. “He’ll get up and say, ‘Hey, thanks Chaps. That was great. I feel much better.’ ”
On an average day, Kleinman finishes work around 5 p.m., then heads out on the long trek home.
As for his own needs, Kleinman said he is very close with several rabbis, whom he depends on for moral, emotional and religious guidance. But military life, Kleinman admitted, can make family life a challenge.
“The toughest job in the military is definitely [the relationship with] the spouse,” the rabbi said, adding that finding balance can often be easier for active-duty personnel when they are deployed abroad, since they don’t have to perform the juggling act of balancing family and military that is so present when they are home — particularly when deployment takes a Marine 7,000 miles away.
No illusions
Kleinman’s job certainly has its perks, or at least its dinner table stories.
To make sure that Jewish sailors would be able to fulfill the central commandment of Rosh Hashanah, Kleinman was able to convince the commanding officer aboard a nuclear powered aircraft carrier to allow him to blow the shofar within the reactor’s operating station, which is basically the ship’s ground zero.
In 2010, while deployed as a chaplain at U.S. Fleet Activities Yokosuka, a Naval base in Japan, during the High Holy Days, Kleinman had to dunk in the Tokyo Bay because there is no mikveh in Yokosuka. And there was the time when, for Sukkot, Kleinman built a sukkah on a base in, of all places, Bahrain.
He feels confident he’s doing exactly what he’s meant to be doing — providing help and counsel to a “highly motivated group of people who love America and want to give something back.”
“The opportunity to make a kiddush ha Shem, to sanctify God’s name, is really incredible for those who choose to and who can,” Kleinman said of Jews considering volunteering.
Yet, he admits, serving both Judaism and the U.S. military, being a man of the armed forces and of God — this life of obligation is not the easy road.
“It’s difficult.”
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