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A rabbi went down with his torpedoed warship in 1943. Today, his cousin ensures his story is not forgotten.
(JTA) — Mark Auerbach was not yet 5 years old when he noticed an unusual stamp in his father’s dresser. The well-worn three-cent stamp featured a drawing of a small group of men and a sinking ship, with the words “The Immortal Chaplains… Interfaith in action.” It piqued his interest, so he asked his father about it.
“Our cousin is on that,” Auerbach, who grew up in Brooklyn, recalls him saying, searching for an age-appropriate explanation. “He said he was a rabbi who died during World War II when his boat was torpedoed by the Germans. He made me promise to make sure that the story is never forgotten.”
It’s a promise that Auerbach, 75, who now lives in Passaic, New Jersey, has taken to heart. He’s made it his life’s mission to keep alive the story of the “Four Chaplains” — who included Auerbach’s third cousin, Rabbi Alexander D. Goode, along with Rev. George Fox, Rev. Clark Poling and Father John Washington. Eighty years ago today, they made the ultimate sacrifice when their ship, U.S.A.T. Dorchester, was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in the North Atlantic in the pre-dawn hours.
Over the decades, Auerbach has amassed a trove of photos, clippings and memorabilia dedicated to the bravery and faith of these four clergymen — including preserving countless copies of that three-cent stamp, which was issued in May 1948. “It’s an amazing story,” said Auerbach of the chaplains’ heroism. “It just happens to be my family.”
The sinking of the Dorchester is considered one of the country’s worst World War II-era sea disasters: Of the 902 men on board, only 203 survived. As survivors and historians attest, the four clergy — all relatively new soldiers who had befriended one another at the Army Chaplains School at Harvard University — stood out for their calming presence throughout the pandemonium that occurred during the 18 minutes it took for the ship to go under. As the tragedy rapidly unfolded, survivors reported that the chaplains offered prayers, helped distribute lifejackets and, once those ran out, they selflessly gave up their own.
The three-cent stamp dedicated to the Four Chaplains was issued in 1948 and sparked Auerbach’s interest in the story. (Courtesy Mark Auerbach)
“The altruistic action of the four chaplains constitutes one of the purest spiritual and ethical acts a person can make,” reads materials from Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation, whose mission is “to promote Interfaith Cooperation and Selfless Service,” according to their web site. “When giving their life jackets, Rabbi Goode did not call out for a Jew; Father Washington did not call out for a Catholic; nor did the Reverends Fox and Poling call out for a Protestant. They simply gave their life jackets to the next man in line.”
But that’s not all they did. As the ship went down, survivors have said that they saw the four chaplains on deck, linked arm in arm together in prayer. “I could hear men crying, pleading, praying,” Private William B. Bednar, who was floating among the bodies of his shipmates in the freezing water, is quoted as saying in foundation reports. “I could also hear the chaplains preaching courage. Their voices were the only thing that kept me going.”
The four men became friends at chaplains school at Harvard. (Courtesy Mark Auerbach)
According to Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, the author of “Rabbi Alexander Goode: The Story of the Rabbi and His Three Fellow Chaplains Who Went Down with the USAT Dorchester” in November 2022, the clergy were heard saying their respective prayers as the ship sank: Goode said the Shema; the Catholic priest the Ave Maria, while the two ministers said the Lord’s Prayer. (Exactly how survivors might have heard this is unclear, though Elkins confirmed that the Shema is the last thing a Jew is supposed to say before death.)
Goode was born in Brooklyn in 1911; his father, Hyman Goodekowitz, was also a rabbi. When his parents divorced, he moved to Washington, D.C. with his mother and siblings. Goode was a good student and excellent athlete, and “believed that it was God’s plan for him to pursue a religious calling,” Elkins said.
Goode graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1934 and Hebrew Union College in 1937; in 1940, he got a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. “Education was very important to him,” said Auerbach. In 1935, he married Teresa Flax, who happened to be a niece of Al Jolson; the couple had a daughter, Rosalie, in 1939.
As a rabbi, his first assignment was at a synagogue in Marion, Indiana in 1936; in 1937, he transferred to Beth Israel in York, Pennsylvania, where he remained until he enlisted in July 1942. “He excelled in ecumenicalism — his congregation really praised him and loved him specifically for that,” Elkins said. “He had a wonderful reputation as a scholar, a beloved rabbi and ecumenical person.”
As Elkins writes in his book: “In his new community, Alex made great efforts to spread interfaith understanding. He presented a regular radio program on religious matters. When one of the local churches burned down, he offered to host the congregation’s religious services.”
“He was an extraordinary person, [in addition to] what he did on the Dorchester,” Elkins added.
According to an account from a Dorchester survivor, Petty Officer John J. Mahoney, courtesy the Four Chaplains Foundation, Goode acted selflessly at least one more time that awful morning: He thwarted Mahoney from a foolhardy attempt to return to his cabin for his gloves. Instead, Goode gave Mahoney his gloves, assuring him he had two pairs.
In retrospect, “Mahoney realized that Rabbi Goode was not conveniently carrying two pairs of gloves, and that the rabbi had decided not to leave the Dorchester.”
For a time in the postwar era, the story of the chaplains’ bravery was a popular one, including among children. (Courtesy Mark Auerbach)
During the postwar era, for a while, at least, the story of the Four Chaplains was a popular one. In addition to laudatory articles and the commemorative stamp — plus assorted memorabilia designed to draw the attention of children — memorials were constructed “in nearly every state,” according to Elkins; stained-glass tributes can be found at the Pentagon, the National Cathedral and elsewhere. In Philadelphia, President Harry Truman dedicated a memorial chapel to the Four Chaplains on Feb. 4, 1951. According to a JTA report at the time, some 10,000 “Americans of all faiths” raised $300,000 for the chapel’s construction and furnishings; at the ceremony, Goode’s father read Psalm 96 in Hebrew.
On Dec. 19, 1944, each of the chaplains was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross. In 1998, the 55th anniversary of the Dorchester disaster, Feb. 3 was deemed Four Chaplains Day by Congress. And yet, as World War II fades into distant memory, few people today seem to be familiar with the heroism of these men.
“It’s such an important story, such an inspiring story, it needs to be better known,” said Elkins on the impetus for his book.
“This guy certainly was a great role model,” Elkins said of Goode in particular. “We need more Alexander Goode type of people for our youth to look up to, to say, ‘I can be honest, intellectual, committed to my faith and my people, the heritage of Judaism, and I can do honorable things.’”
On Sunday, as he does every year on the Sunday closest to Feb. 3, Auerbach and other chaplains’ family members will attend a memorial mass at St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in Kearny, New Jersey, where he’ll also display his collection of photographs and memorabilia. “The story is so ecumenical that it crosses all kinds of barriers,” he said. “It’s the ‘Golden Rule’ in reality. Every clergy person worth their salt — whatever day their religious observance is, whether its Saturday or Sunday — every one of them is preaching be kind to your brother, your sister. Everyone talks about it, few know about it. This is something for people to grab onto.”
Elkins concurs. “These guys are role models for all of us,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you have to give up your life. There are all kinds of ways people can do great things.”
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How Dealing with Difficult Challenges Leads to Spiritual Growth and Leadership
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
They say that “the devil is in the details,” and nowhere has that been more evident than in the corruption scandal currently shaking Ukraine — even as the deadly war with Russia continues to rage.
Over the past couple of weeks, Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators have been drip-feeding the world with information: wiretaps, redacted court testimony, and sordid specifics of a large bribery saga. The cast of villains includes prominent businessmen and contractors pressured for hefty “commissions,” high-ranking ministers abruptly resigning, and one of President Zelensky’s former business partners fleeing the country just hours before the police raided his home.
The entire scheme exploited a wartime loophole — a rule under martial law preventing contractors from collecting debts in court from companies providing essential services. Energoatom fits that definition perfectly, as it supplies more than half of Ukraine’s electricity.
But more fascinating than the scandal itself is the sheer level of detail — the way this scheme evolved from small to big to overwhelming, unfolding slowly, piece by piece, person by person, until you finally step back and see the broad contours of the entire sprawling disaster.
And oddly enough, all of this brings me straight into the heart of Parshat Vayeitzei, which was my late father’s bar mitzvah parsha. He would always say — with an unmistakable twinkle in his eye — that Vayeitzei was “the most important parsha in the Torah.” We’d nod and smile, convinced he was just having a laugh.
I mean, yes — Vayeitzei certainly has its blockbuster moments: Jacob’s ladder stretching toward heaven, the extraordinary promises God makes to him, his first encounter with Rachel at the well — one of the great love stories in Jewish history — followed by his marriages and the birth of 11 children who would become the founders of the tribes that became the Jewish people. All of these events are unquestionably consequential, to say the least.
But then you hit the middle of the parsha — the part everyone secretly hopes the baal koreh will speed through. It’s long, it’s intricate, and it’s bewilderingly detailed: the astonishing saga of Jacob’s business dealings with Lavan.
Wage agreements — and disagreements. Livestock negotiations. Contract revisions. Endless sheep rearing. Sheep with spots, sheep without spots, sheep with speckles, stripes, dark patches — every possible permutation of sheep coloration you can imagine. It’s the Torah’s version of a regulatory audit: too many technical notes, too many procedural details, and far too much information.
Most of us, understandably, wonder what all this sheep drama is doing in a sacred text. Why did the Torah — normally so concise — zoom in on this business relationship from hell? Why give us this level of detail? And whatever the answer might be, surely this story doesn’t belong in “the most important parsha in the Torah.”
But my father always insisted that Vayeitzei’s business section wasn’t a pointless, transitional interruption in the narrative — it was the narrative. And perhaps, as the revelations from Kyiv remind us, the line between spiritual greatness and moral disaster is drawn not in grand theological enterprises like ladders reaching heavenward or celestial dream sequences, but in the slow, grinding, unglamorous world of day-to-day commerce: negotiations, promises, deals, and the quiet ethical temptations that shadow every decision we make.
If you think about it, this strange middle section of Vayeitzei is the Torah’s earliest and most elaborate case study in business ethics — or, more accurately, business un-ethics. Lavan is the Biblical version of a man who smiles broadly to your face while his hand is quietly stealing your wallet.
He is charming, generous-sounding, and utterly unscrupulous. He cheats at negotiations. He alters contracts retroactively. He weaponizes hospitality. He manipulates family loyalty. If there were a Biblical Consumer Protection Bureau, Lavan would be its full-time subject of interest.
And Jacob — the bookish, scholarly son of Isaac — finds himself thrown into a years-long masterclass with one of the greatest Machiavellian businessmen of the ancient Near East. The holy patriarch of the Jewish nation, the spiritual heir to Abraham and Isaac, sits across the table from a crook arguing over sheep markings.
But that’s precisely the point. Spirituality is easy when you live a monastic life of solitude and separation. Show me how spiritual you are when you need to negotiate with a scoundrel — that’s when your character is truly revealed.
Judaism doesn’t believe in the mystique of the cloister. Our greatest spiritual heroes aren’t monks; they’re shepherds, merchants, craftsmen, farmers — even warriors and kings. Jacob’s true greatness emerges in the trenches of real life, in the dense and morally dangerous world where money, power, opportunity, resentment, and desperation mingle with our aspirations to become the people God wants us to be.
What Vayeitzei shows, in deliberately excruciating detail, is that Jacob absolutely refuses to become Lavan. Yes, he negotiates, he strategizes, he outsmarts. But he does not become Lavan. He maintains his integrity.
And here’s the deeper insight — the one my father, with his mischievous grin, seemed instinctively to understand: the Jewish mission from the very outset was never to escape the world; it was to elevate it — from the inside out.
If Jacob had spent 20 years in a desert cave meditating on the divine, he might have produced beautiful insights — but there would have been no tribes, no family, no nation, and no legacy. Instead, Jacob becomes the spiritual father of Israel the nation even as he ran a household, raised children, and navigated a business partnership with a morally bankrupt relative.
And that is precisely why the Torah dwells on the sheep. Because the sheep are not a distraction — they are the arena. They are the battlefield where Jacob’s greatness is forged. They are the proof that holiness is not found in what we avoid, but in how we behave when we can’t avoid what we would much prefer to have nothing to do with.
And as it turns out, in the final analysis Jacob was not transformed by his dream of angels — he was transformed by his years in business with Lavan. What we learn from Jacob and the sheep is that building a family, maintaining integrity in business, and dealing with difficult people are not obstacles to spiritual growth; they are spiritual growth.
Which only goes to prove that my father’s twinkling assertion wasn’t a joke at all. He understood something the rest of us tend to overlook. Maybe Vayeitzei really is the most important parsha in the Torah — not despite the details, but because of them.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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The Dangerous Legacy of the 1840 ‘Damascus Affair’ Blood Libel (PART TWO)
Smoke rises from a building after strikes at Syria’s defense ministry in Damascus, Syria, July 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Part One of this article appeared here.
Worldwide Reaction and Coordinated Jewish Response
Western Jews in Europe and America were incensed at what was happening in Damascus. Europeans and American Jews lobbied their governments to intercede on behalf of the Jews in Damascus. In what was then an entirely novel approach, 15,000 Jews in six American cities gathered and protested on behalf of their fellow Jews in Syria.
In response to the advocacy, government leaders condemned the libel and attempted to intervene on behalf of the accused Jews. Among them were Queen Victoria, Lord Henry Palmerston, US Secretary of State John Forsyth, and, as previously mentioned, Klemens von Metternich of Austria.
Among the Jews who were advocating on behalf of the Damascus Jews, Sir Moses Montefiore stood out.
He, along with French lawyer and future French Justice Minister Adolphe Cremieux, Louis Loewe, and Solomon Munk, traveled as a delegation to Egypt to appeal to Muhammad Ali. They requested that the investigation be transferred to Egyptian or European judges to consider the case. Their request was denied, but as a result, Muhammad Ali decided instead to have the Jews released without acquitting them. The liberation order was issued on August 28, 1840. The prisoners who had survived the investigation were freed.
Seeing that the charges would not be dropped and the libel would continue, Montefiore and Cremieux chose to turn to Sultan Abdul Mejid of the Ottoman Empire, since he was the actual leader over the region, albeit largely powerless. They asked the Sultan to issue a decree proclaiming blood libels as false and prohibiting prosecuting Jews based on such accusations.
The Sultan acquiesced and issued his ruling on November 6, 1840. In a noteworthy act, he condemned the blood libel, stating clearly that it was utterly false and that “Muslim theologians had examined Jewish religious books and found that the Jews are strongly prohibited not only from using human blood but even from consuming that of animals. It therefore follows that the charges made against them, and their religion, are nothing but pure calumny.”
Nevertheless, for years to come, and on antisemitic websites until today, the Catholics of Damascus would continue to tell the story of the friar murdered by Jews for his blood, and that the Jews had only been let free due to the influence of powerful Jews from other countries.
What was France Thinking?
In the aftermath of the Damascus Affair, numerous questions arose. How could France, a country that gave civil equality to the Jews in 1791 and gave its Jewish population the most legal rights, openly support the patently false blood libel accusation and even allow torture to be used to extort confessions?
Most historians conclude that the answer was national self-interest. France’s leaders saw it as beneficial to maintain their foothold in Syria, and felt that supporting the accusers against the Jews would work for them. By the same token, countries hostile to France seized the opportunity to denounce France for its actions, as they sought to increase their control in the Middle East and diminish French influence there. So, Metternich, not known to be a friend of the Jews, denounced the blood libel charges, as did the leaders of Great Britain.
The Damascus Blood Libel, which might otherwise have passed unnoticed in Europe, garnered international attention because of the rivalry of Europe’s great powers in the Middle East.
The Jewish Reaction
The Damascus Affair has been described as a turning point in modern Jewish history, particularly for French Jews, who were among the most vocal supporters that traditional Jewish nationalism was a thing of the past. They were patriotic citizens for whom religion was a private matter, if it was relevant at all.
Yet, when they were exposed to the antisemitism that France displayed in the Damascus Affair, French Jews were completely shaken up. In fact, all of world Jewry was shocked that the blood libel accusation — a throwback to the antisemitism of the Dark Ages — was initially accepted as fact by almost the entire press in Europe. How could it be that educated citizens and modern leaders could believe and support this baseless and ridiculous accusation? No reassuring answer was forthcoming.
In an act that would reverberate for the next two centuries, in 1846, a two-volume book was published in Paris, written by Achille Laurent (a pseudonym), Relation historique des affaires de Syrie depuis 1840 jusqu’en 1842. It claimed to document the complete protocols of the investigation in Damascus, yet completely omitted any mention of the extensive use of torture and only focused on the Jews as murderers, and that the blood libel was a proven fact.
These protocols were published in German, Italian, Arabic, and Russian in the years and decades to come. This book allowed antisemites to “prove” that the murder accusation had been proven and documented, but that the Jews were released despite their guilt.
In fact, Russian coverage of the Damascus Affair in the media is seen as one of the causes that led to the pogroms of the 1890s. Unfortunately, these protocols continue to be published and publicized, particularly in the Arab-language media.
One of the end results of the Damascus Affair was its awakening of Jewish awareness for the need to cooperate to address Jewish needs and respond to charges and attacks towards Jews around the world. In the following decades, for the first time in modern history, multiple such organizations would form to address these concerns.
One Nation
The subsequent blood libel that made international news was that of Menachem Mendel Beilis in Russia in 1911. The lawyer who headed the defense team, the legendary Oscar Gruzenberg, was sure that the prosecution’s attack would take quotes out of context from the Talmud and use them to accuse the Jews. He had Rabbi Mazeh, Chief Rabbi of Moscow, head a rabbinic advisory team for the defense and prepare answers to the inevitable questions. As Gruzenberg had predicted, at the trial the prosecution quoted the Talmudic statement in Tractate Yevamos 61a, “You (the Jewish people) are called “Adam” (Man), and the other nations are not called “Adam” (Man).”
The prosecutors demanded, “How could the Jews claim only they are called man, and the other nations are not called man?! It must mean that they view non-Jews as subhuman!”
The defense had an answer prepared, provided by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, who was already renowned as a brilliant and eloquent leader of Polish Jewry. He explained that the quote reflects an essential characteristic of the Jews and was not intended an insult to the other nations.
Rabbi Shapiro explained that the Talmud (Shavous 39) teaches that “Kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh,” meaning all Jews are responsible for one another. He elaborated that in the court, the fate of a single Jew — Mendel Beilis — was being decided, yet the judgment touched Jewish people all over the world.
Rabbi Shapiro directed the defense team to ask the judge, “If an Italian citizen was arrested in Poland or a Frenchman in Germany, would all of Italy or all of France be praying on his behalf and advocating for his acquittal? Would Italians or Frenchmen all over the world be constantly worried about him and awaiting news of his release? Of course not. Yet, when one Jew in Russia is falsely accused of murder, the entire Jewish nation stands with him, because we are truly one. The Talmud says Jews are called “Adam,” because “Adam” shows the unity of the Jewish nation. We are one, a single unit, just as Adam was one man. The word “Adam” in Hebrew has no plural, and that is why it represents the Jewish people, who are one, and this pronoun is not used to identify other nations, as the Talmud stated.”
This answer was understood, even by the accusers. This message continues to serve as a beacon of light for the connection Jews share with one another. In good times and bad, the Jewish People are one.
Rabbi Menachem Levine is the CEO of JDBY-YTT, the largest Jewish school in the Midwest. He served as Rabbi of Congregation Am Echad in San Jose, CA from 2007 – 2020. He is a popular speaker and has written for numerous publications. Rabbi Levine’s personal website is https://thinktorah.org. A version of this article was first published at: https://aish.com/the-damascus-affair/
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Seven IDF Soldiers Wounded in Counterterrorism Operation in Syria
A damaged site, following an Israeli raid on Friday, according to Syrian state media, in Beit Jinn, Syria, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ali Ahmed al-Najjar
i24 News — Seven Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were wounded during exchange of fire with Syrian jihadists as arrests were conducted of wanted suspects; two Syrian terrorists were killed.
The incident took place in the village of Beit Jinn in Southern Syria — 8 km from the Israeli border and Mount Hermon, an area where the IDF operates frequently (north of the Druze village of Hader).
The event began around 2 am during an operation to apprehend two wanted members of the terrorist organization Jamaa al-Islamiya at their home. A reserve paratrooper force from the 55th Brigade entered the structure, apprehended the terrorists, and began exiting the building in order to bring them in for questioning.
As the force left the building, it came under short-range fire, wounding seven soldiers — three seriously and four moderately to lightly. The soldiers returned fire and eliminated two additional fighters in the area. The Air Force was also dispatched, but could not engage due to the close proximity between the force and the militants.
Despite the exchange of fire, the operation was successful. The two wanted suspects from Jamaa al-Islamiya (whom intelligence had been monitoring for a long time prior to the operation) were transferred to security interrogation in Israel.
This is not the first time the IDF has carried out an arrest operation in the village: on June 12, soldiers from the Alexandroni Brigade captured a Hamas terrorist cell of six operatives who had planned to attack IDF forces in Syria and had based themselves in Beit Jinn. Numerous weapons were found with them.