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Jewish groups ask Pentagon to stop Messianic chaplains from wearing Jewish insignia
(JTA) — For more than a century, U.S. military chaplains have worn insignia identifying their faith — a cross for Christians and tablets with a Star of David for Jews. Now Jewish chaplaincy groups are asking the Pentagon to intervene after chaplains from Messianic Judaism, a Christian movement that blends Jewish practices with belief in Jesus, began wearing the Jewish symbol.
The effort is being led by the Aleph Institute, a Chabad-affiliated organization that endorses Jewish chaplains for the U.S. military.
Aleph asked the military to investigate the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, which endorses Messianic chaplains, and to revoke its endorsement authority if it continues allowing clergy to wear Jewish insignia traditionally reserved for Jewish chaplains.
“It is clear that [the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations] is acting in a manner incompatible with the interfaith cooperation and respect that has defined 150 years of U.S. military chaplaincy,” Aleph wrote in a letter to the Armed Forces Chaplains Board.
In a view shared by many Jews, Aleph suspects that the Messianic movement is a facade — a deceitful tactic aimed at proselytization.
“They have engaged in heavily deceptive behavior, all for the purpose of trapping unsuspecting Jews into the belief that Jesus is part of Jewish theology,” Aleph’s letter said. “Due to persecution, forced conversion, and extreme tactics employed by many Christian countries over the millennia proselytization of Jews is considered an antisemitic tactic.”
Military chaplains serve as clergy and counselors for members of the armed forces, providing worship services, pastoral counseling and religious accommodations for troops and their families. Because chaplains may be the only clergy available in combat zones or remote postings, their insignia — patches and small metal pins worn on their uniforms — function as a quick signal of religious identity.
Aleph and other Jewish chaplaincy groups say the chaplaincy system is being undermined by the Messianic movement, whose adherents may identify as Jews but are not recognized as such by any denomination of Judaism.
Rabbi Sanford Dresin, Aleph’s vice president of military programs and a retired Army chaplain, warned in a separate letter that using Jewish symbols could mislead Jewish troops about who represents Judaism.
“The entire spectrum of American Jewry unequivocally opposes any insignia to be designed for wear by Messianic chaplains other than the cross,” Dresin wrote. “Any insignia containing a traditional Jewish symbol would be misleading to Jewish service members, and would be deceptive in nature.”
Other Jewish chaplaincy organizations have joined Aleph’s effort.
Rabbi Laurence Bazer, who endorses Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis and cantors as military chaplains through the Jewish Chaplains Council, said Jewish groups are working together on the issue.
“In dealing with the Messianic chaplains and insignias, we stand with our partners, Aleph Institute, and others in our position,” Bazer said. “We’re in partnership, and we’re working toward resolving this so they are not using any sort of Jewish symbol.”
Modern Orthodox leaders have also raised concerns.
In a January letter to the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, the Rabbinical Council of America warned that the use of Jewish symbols by non-Jewish clergy could create confusion in the military chaplaincy system.
“In the military setting, insignia are not private expressions of belief,” RCA leaders wrote. “They are government-authorized identifiers that communicate a chaplain’s religious endorsement and pastoral role. The use of Jewish symbols by chaplains not endorsed by recognized Jewish bodies creates a serious risk of confusion and misrepresentation and conveys an appearance of official Jewish authenticity that does not exist.”
Messianic leaders reject the criticism and say their chaplains are simply following existing military policy.
Barney Kasdan, a leader of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations who oversees the group’s military chaplaincy endorsements, said Messianic chaplains identify as Jews and therefore wear the same insignia as other Jewish chaplains.
“The tablets — the Ten Commandments — is the traditional Jewish insignia,” Kasdan said. “We identify as Jews, and as far as the Department of Defense is concerned, if you’re a Jewish denomination you wear the Jewish insignia.”
Kasdan said the organization currently has five Messianic chaplains serving in the military and three candidates in training. The group became an officially recognized chaplaincy endorser with the Department of Defense in 2017, he said.
Kasdan said Messianic leaders would be open to adopting a separate insignia if the Pentagon created a policy allowing one.
“We would be happy with our own distinctive insignia design that is different from the tablets,” he said. “But right now we’re just following the current policy.”
Messianic chaplains also say the Christian cross does not reflect their religious identity.
“A cross does not reflect who we are culturally,” Kasdan said. “If a chaplain wearing a cross is leading a Jewish-style service — reciting the Shema, using a siddur — Christians would say that’s misleading.”
The dispute comes at a moment when the military chaplaincy is under heightened scrutiny amid broader political debates about religious expression in the armed forces. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has signaled support for expanding religious expression protections for service members and chaplains, though the Pentagon has not announced any policy changes related to chaplain insignia.
Asked about the Jewish groups’ concerns, a Pentagon spokesperson said the department had received the correspondence but declined to comment further.
“As with all correspondence, the Department will respond directly to the authors as appropriate,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “At this time, we don’t have anything to provide on this.”
One of the chaplains cited in Aleph’s complaint is James Burling, who serves with a Marine combat training battalion at in North Carolina. His religious training comes from Christian institutions, including a master of divinity from Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian university, and graduate studies in pastoral counseling at Southern California Seminary.
Burling said in an interview that he wears the insignia his endorsing organization directs him to wear.
“I wear the insignia I am directed to by my endorser,” he said. “He directed me to wear the stone tablets with the Star of David on top.”
Burling describes himself as Jewish but says his religious practice takes place in Messianic congregations.
“I identify as Jewish,” he said. “But as far as what I practice, I attend a Messianic synagogue.”
He said he does not attempt to convert Jewish service members and instead focuses on pastoral care.
“If I meet Jewish Marines, I make sure they have what they need,” he said. “I give them Tanakhs. I make sure they have their scriptures. I don’t push anything on them.”
Burling pointed to a San Diego rabbi, Yoram Dahan, as someone familiar with his Jewish learning and involvement in the community. But Dahan said that while Burling had studied Torah with him, he never understood Burling to be Jewish.
“James studied Torah with us and he was very serious about it. He loves Israel. But of course he is Christian,” Dahan said.
“If he says he is Jewish, it is not true and it’s not good,” Dahan added. “The Messianics are a very dangerous group.”
Kasdan said Messianic chaplains hope the issue can be resolved cooperatively.
“We want to work in the spirit of cooperation and peace,” he said. “We’re just trying to serve the military and their families.”
But Aleph and other Jewish chaplaincy groups say the stakes go beyond theology.
Because Jewish service members may rely on insignia to identify clergy who represent their faith, particularly in remote or high-stress military settings, they argue that Jewish symbols should remain reserved for chaplains representing Judaism.
“This is not a theological dispute or an effort to exclude any individual from service,” the RCA letter says. “It is a matter of accuracy in government speech and the protection of religious freedom for a minority faith community that depends on clear institutional signals.”
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Whatever you think of Ilhan Omar, these threats are unconscionable
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to build a case to strip Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of her citizenship and eventually deport her.
It is my hope that American Jews — even those who do not like Omar and can recite every questionable comment she has made over the past 15 years to illustrate why — will understand this as offensive and outrageous not only because they are Americans, but because they are Jews.
The Trump administration may claim that it is building a case against Omar due to paperwork (reports suggest that they are interested in whether her father listed her age as 17 on her citizenship application when she was really 18). It is similarly filing dozens of lawsuits attempting to denaturalize citizens by trying to prove they lied in the process of gaining citizenship. However, that this is happening now, ahead of the midterm elections against a sitting member of Congress, a high-profile progressive whom the president has said should “go back” to her country of origin, suggests that it is, to put it mildly, politically motivated.
Evidently, the Trump administration sees citizenship not as a right or a responsibility but as a reward, one that can be taken away if that is seen as useful to the president and his adherents. That use could be silencing political opposition or something as simple (and callous) as an opportunity to brag about the sheer number of attempted denaturalizations.
Jews, too, have found themselves on the wrong end of political denaturalization. I do not mean to compare the Trump administration to the Nazis, but the stubborn fact is that Jews were indeed stripped of their citizenship as part of a political project in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. And in the early 20th century in the United States, it was Jews who politicians claimed were incapable of assimilating, of ever really being a part of the United States. These arguments culminated in legislation that kept out Jews who could have found refuge here. The threat of denaturalization and the experience of perpetual otherness is a grievous part of modern Jewish history; we should be offended by its presence in our political present.
Jewish tradition as well as history encourages us to stand up to authority when that authority is wrong. Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman; Nathan yells at King David for sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband killed; Moses famously urges Pharoah to change his oppressive ways. Even God is on the receiving end of pushback when Abraham pleads and negotiates to spare Sodom.
I do not think one needs to be Jewish to be outraged by the attempt to denaturalize Ilhan Omar. I think it is also bone-chilling as an American who believes we, including our elected officials, have the right to openly oppose our president, and I am worried as a person who thinks it would be good to continue to live in a democratic republic. And I am sure that there are Jews who will say that Omar deserves to lose her citizenship because she has said things about Israel they do not like.
But the Jewish lens through which I see this is that it is right to challenge power when it is abused, and it is wrong for the powerful to make a show of trying to cast their opponents out of the country.
The point is not whether Trump can make good on the threat to strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her, but that it is obscene to use denaturalization as punishment for being a high-profile political opponent in the first place. If he is trying to make it more dangerous to speak out while being from the “wrong” country, then the rest of us need to say that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be an American citizen.
We should do this because we are Americans and we should do this because we are Jews. We should do this because of the ways in which our American and Jewish identities bleed into one another. And, we should do this because we may not know exactly whether it is as Americans or as Jews that we know we have to protect the right to speak truth to power, but we know we need to do it all the same.
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Germany couldn’t stop Hitler’s election tactics; can America stop Trump’s?
Herding political opponents into prisons and concentration camps, suspending civil liberties, and sending SA thugs to destroy newsrooms and beat up journalists were among the means used by Adolf Hitler to game Germany’s parliamentary election of March 5, 1933, won by the Nazis.
As much as Donald Trump might fantasize about deploying such brutal tactics to subvert our midterm elections, he hasn’t done so — yet. But his objective is the same: Detonate constitutional barriers standing in the way of his lust for power. “Cheat like hell,” Trump told the GOP’s midterm convention last month.
Historian Timothy Ryback has just published a book about the last gasps of the Weimar Republic, titled 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled A Democracy. The 53 days begin when Hitler becomes chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933, and end with the Reichstag’s March 23 passage of the Enabling Act, which gave him absolute power.
For our own perilous time, there is another number to take note of: 652 — the number of days between Trump’s second inauguration and our Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Hitler’s long march to despotic power occurred over 3,422 days — from his failed Beer Hall Putsch on Nov. 8-9, 1923, up until passage of the Enabling Act.
After spending less than a year of a five-year sentence for the failed 1923 coup, Hitler returned to a Nazi party that was in utter disarray. But the Great Depression turned the Nazis’ fortunes around, as jobless and disaffected Germans flocked to Hitler with his promises to make Germany great again. In parliamentary elections in 1930, the number of Reichstag seats held by the Nazis rose dramatically from 12 to 107, and more than doubled that in elections in 1932, making them the largest party. After some backroom political wheeling and dealing, President Paul von Hindenburg offered the chancellorship to Hitler, which he accepted on Jan. 30, 1933.
Even though Hitler was chancellor, his coalition wasn’t dominated by Nazis. When the Reichstag went up in flames on Feb. 27, 1933, der Führer had the pretext he needed to begin dismantling the last remnants of democracy. The Nazis’ first targets were Communists. More than 4,000 were arrested in the initial hours after the fire. It didn’t take long for Social Democrats, trade unionists and Jews to also face raids, arrests, beatings and terror, as Hindenburg — at Hitler’s urging — issued a decree that suspended Germans’ civil liberties.
There was still a barrier standing in Hitler’s way: the Reichstag. But Hitler had a scheme for getting rid of it: calling for a new election and ultimately engineering a vote by the Reichstag to abolish itself.
In the days and nights before the national election, set for March 5, Nazis carried out a campaign of repression and menace across the country. Brandishing firearms, storm troopers ruled the streets. Homes of Hitler critics were raided. His campaign speeches were blasted from loudspeakers. Voters were offered rides to the polls in transports organized by the Nazis, an unsubtle hint at which party they should vote for.
In the election, the Nazis and their Nationalist allies won a majority of seats in the Reichstag but fell short of the two-thirds needed to amend the constitution. But Hitler had a workaround: Convene the Reichstag to vote on a measure that would allow him to declare laws without the approval of the federal legislative body. With Communist delegates of the Reichstag either in hiding or in custody, Hitler already had a structural advantage; they wouldn’t be there to vote. With the Reichstag building destroyed, the delegates convened on March 23 inside the Kroll Opera House, which swarmed with armed storm troopers and members of the SS who harassed and threatened delegates who were either on the fence about giving Hitler absolute power or were known to oppose it.
In the end, weeks and months of trying to tilt elections through terror and intimidation gave Hitler his ultimate prize: of 538 delegates in the Kroll Opera House, only 94 — all Social Democrats — voted against the Enabling Act. In effect, German democracy was steered by Hitler into committing suicide.
In an essay for Literary Hub, Timothy Ryback noted parallels between Hitler’s election victory on March 5, 1933 and our midterm elections and cataloged them.
They include Trump’s “brazen attempt to quash negative press coverage” and Hitler’s and Trump’s virtually identical pre-election low approval ratings. Both the Nazi leader and the American president had gone to court to try to have earlier election results overturned, and the German election, like our fast-approaching midterms, was seen as a referendum on the nation’s leader.
“Amidst all the turmoil, everyone understood that the March 5 election was a make-or-break moment not only for the Hitler chancellorship but for democracy itself,” Ryback wrote.
With the midterms just around the corner, this can be said about America as well.
Since Trump’s second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, he has thrown more effort into trying to rig the midterms for the Republicans than into virtually any other endeavor — other than perhaps misusing his powers to enrich himself and his family, and dreaming up monuments to himself.
Trump’s pardon of 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the capitol on Jan. 6 was an early signal that the defeated president had no intention of playing fair during the 2026 midterms. What followed was a barrage of assaults on the election system. Here’s just a partial list: lawsuits demanding sensitive voter data, the gutting of oversight bodies, intimidation of election officials and orders for key GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts — all designed to both undermine Americans’ trust in the election system and manufacture pretexts for contesting any midterm outcomes that displease him.
Amid these relentless attempts to subvert the midterms, the Democrats have had success at blocking some of Trump’s poisoned salvos, such as holding the line against the so-called SAVE America Act and fending off Trump’s attempts to seize voter information. But none of this deters Trump, who just comes back with more schemes. The latest revelations come from documents obtained by Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy organization.
Those documents show that “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) collected tens of millions of voter records, explored undercover investigations against voter registration groups and considered feeding state election data into a system used to locate people for deportation as part of a sweeping federal effort to find alleged voter fraud ahead of the 2026 midterms,” according to Democracy Docket, which reviewed the documents.
“This is an absolute smoking gun,” said Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias.
Trump has openly suggested a federal takeover of election administration, and during the past several months it seems like he’s been laying the groundwork for that to happen if he doesn’t get the results he wants on Nov. 3. It’s all too easy to imagine horror scenarios: Trump claims massive voter fraud, his supporters storm county election offices in protest, the FBI seizes ballots and voting machines, unrest erupts across the country, Trump declares martial law.
If Trump’s schemes trigger the kind of disorder he appears to be preparing for, the question will be whether our courts, our press, our civil servants and our voters stand firm. Germany’s institutions bent until they broke. Ours have bent, but they have not yet snapped. What happens next will reveal whether they still possess the steel that Germany’s lacked.
The post Germany couldn’t stop Hitler’s election tactics; can America stop Trump’s? appeared first on The Forward.
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Sally Rooney’s publisher stops selling her books in Britain, citing ban on pro-Palestinian group she backs
(JTA) — Sally Rooney’s publisher says it will stop supplying her books in the United Kingdom because current legislation prevents it from passing her earnings on to her.
The best-selling Irish writer, whose work includes the novel “Normal People,” which was adapted into a hit BBC drama, has long been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause.
Faber said it would no longer supply her books in the United Kingdom because of her backing for Palestine Action, a group that the British government last year proscribed as a terrorist organization, saying it had “orchestrated a nationwide campaign of direct criminal action against businesses and institutions.”
“Current legislation in the UK has led to circumstances where Faber cannot pass on UK earnings to Sally Rooney for her work,” the publisher said.
“To sell a writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher,” it said. “As such, and in full agreement with Sally, we have taken the decision that we can no longer supply her works in the UK in any format. We remain the proud publisher of her remarkable body of work, which we will continue to sell in other territories.”
Faber had no further comment, the statement said.
Yvette Cooper, then the Home Secretary, banned Palestine Action last year following an attack by the group on the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton which caused millions of pounds of damage. It had previously targeted businesses and premises which it said were linked to Israeli defence companies.
Soon after the announcement, Rooney wrote an opinion piece in the Irish Times in which she doubled down on her support for Palestine Action, adding that she would give the proceeds of her books to back the group. “If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under British law, so be it,” she wrote.
In a statement following the action announced by Faber, Rooney cited her Irish Times opinion piece as she explained that the publication of her books “could now constitute a serious criminal offence.”
The ban of Palestine Action has proven to be highly contentious in Britain. Back in February, the group’s co-founder Huda Ammori challenged the move in the High Court, with Rooney providing a supportive witness statement. She said at the time that she was “almost certain” her work would be dropped in Britain if the ban persisted.
The court ruled in Ammori’s favor, but that decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal in June. The Supreme Court is due to hear an appeal next month.
Rooney said on Wednesday: “After a process of consultation and deliberation, and with my full agreement, my publisher Faber has therefore determined that it can no longer supply my work within the UK.
“I have made every effort to be honest with the public about my beliefs and intentions, and I am wholly prepared to accept the consequences.”
Rooney’s support for the Palestinian cause predates the attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza. In 2021 she declined to sell Hebrew translation rights for her novel “Beautiful World, Where Are You?” to the Israeli publisher that had previously released her books in Hebrew.
At the time, she said she supported the BDS movement and would not work with an Israeli publisher unless it is willing to “publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the U.N.-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.”
That move prompted backlash in Israel and beyond, including calls to boycott Rooney’s work. Israeli bookstore chains reportedly removed some of her books from shelves.
However, earlier this year she agreed to have her latest novel, “Intermezzo,” published by an Israeli publisher approved by boycott activists.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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