When the U.S. entered World War I, the War Department gave the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)—at the time a distinctly Protestant organization with an evangelizing mission—an official role in coordinating cultural and religious activities for men in uniform. The result, writes Allan Arkush, was that “Protestant Christianity was to be the de-facto religion of the American servicemen.” To counteract this trend, a group of prominent Jewish figures organized the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), whose activities are the subject of a new book titled Making Judaism Safe for America. Arkush writes in his review:
The JWB . . . could provide the kind of activities that the YMCA provided: lectures, movies, and dances (with the right sort of women). And it could reinforce the patriotic message by stressing “that through engaged adherence to the tenets of Judaism, Jews could become better citizens and better Americans.” One of the most important actions it took to foster such adherence was to lobby successfully for the appointment (for the first time since the Civil War) of Jewish military chaplains to serve in the U.S. Army.
Once the necessary legislation had been passed, the JWB assumed responsibility for selecting the men who would fill the limited number of positions that had been created. The board made reasonable efforts to select a denominationally diverse crew of rabbis, but the criteria imposed by the government and endorsed by the board itself effectively ruled out anyone who lacked a good secular education, and thereby excluded practically all of the available Orthodox rabbis. The vast majority of the 25 candidates who were eventually approved were graduates of the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College.
Since a couple of dozen chaplains obviously couldn’t handle the job of providing religious services for tens of thousands of soldiers, the board hired an additional 30 or so “camp rabbis”—usually rabbis from communities near military bases—as well as hundreds of more- or less-qualified field workers, who became known as “Star of David men.”
Read more on Jewish Review of Books: https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/6040/pancho-villa-and-the-star-of-david-men/