By: Aiden Pink | Deputy News Editor | The Forward
Date: May 19, 2018
The Jews on the country's second-largest military base haven't had a rabbi for years. Until very recently, though, they had Jeanette Mize.
She and her family led services and cooked holiday meals there. Because of her, the Jews of Fort Campbell, the Army base that straddles the Kentucky-Tennessee border, didn't have to drive 60 miles to the nearest synagogues in Nashville. Instead, they were able to celebrate the Sabbath and holidays at home on the base, together.
Mize, 69, had been serving as the community's lay leader for almost two decades when chaplains new to Fort Campbell fired her in late February. The chapel has been empty on Friday nights since then.
"These fundamentalist Christian chaplains have shut down Shabbat services," Mize told the Forward. "They just snapped their fingers."
Now a watchdog group is calling for the chaplains to be tried in a court-martial, the military's judicial process.
[...]
"They're persecuted for not being Christian enough," said Mikey Weinstein, the founder and leader of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a not-for-profit watchdog group that fights against religious discrimination and coercion in the military. Weinstein is a lawyer and veteran.
Two Jewish congressmen from the New York area, Democrat Eliot Engel (D-Bronx) and Republican Lee Zeldin (R-Long Island), have joined the push to get to bottom of what they called "discrimination" against Jewish service members at Ft. Campbell.
Zeldin, who is also an Army reserve officer, called for Mize to be reinstated and Shabbat services continued until a probe is complete - and any wrongdoing is punished appropriately.
"It is critical our military upholds the highest standards and holds accountable any individual who discriminates against Jewish servicemembers," Zeldin said in a letter to Major General Andrew P. Poppas, the commander of Ft. Campbell.
[...]
