Rabbi's Beard Doesn't Make Cut

Rabbi Menachem Stern's stringy brown beard is hardly an unusual sight in his Brooklyn neighborhood. But in trying to become a chaplain in the U.S. Army, Mr. Stern has gotten tangled in a military bureaucracy that has made exceptions for other beards, but not his.

Rabbi's Beard Doesn't Make Cut
By DEVLIN BARRETT • Wall Street Journal

Rabbi Menachem Stern's stringy brown beard is hardly an unusual sight in his Brooklyn neighborhood. But in trying to become a chaplain in the U.S. Army, Mr. Stern has gotten tangled in a military bureaucracy that has made exceptions for other beards, but not his.

The 28-year-old rabbi was notified last year that he had been accepted as a chaplain in the Army Reserve.

Almost immediately, Army officials contacted him to say the acceptance was a clerical mistake, and that unless he was willing to shave his beard, he couldn't join.

As a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi, Mr. Stern refused, saying the beard is a tenet of his faith.

For nearly a year now, the Crown Heights resident has been trying to get a waiver to the regulation barring beards.

"It's very frustrating," he said. "I'm not asking them to bend any rules, but, rather, do what's been done before and issue a waiver. What's taking them so long?"

The Army, whose grooming rules allow only trim, tidy moustaches, has granted exemptions in the past, as recently as this year, when it allowed a Sikh dentist to serve with a beard and turban.

Mr. Stern is getting political support from New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat who has urged Army Secretary John McHugh to let him serve, arguing that "no American should have to choose between his religion and service to our country."

Army spokesman George Wright said for those entering the service, "current policy on beards precludes his commissioning as an officer and becoming a member of the Chaplain's Corps."

Mr. Wright wouldn't address the case of the Sikh dentist, but some of Mr. Stern's supporters say the Army has told them the exception was made for him because he had already been training at government expense.

Army regulation 670-1 states that "males will keep their face clean-shaven when in uniform or in civilian clothes on duty," and that "handlebar mustaches, goatees, and beards are not authorized."

Mr. Wright said the regulation is currently under review. Another section of Army policy allows those granted exceptions to the beard rule before 1986 to keep them.

That's how Col. Jacob Goldstein, a long-serving chaplain, sports a bushy white beard. He was granted a waiver when he joined the Army National Guard in the late 1970s. He has served around the world, including at Ground Zero and Guantanamo Bay.

He expects the Army will eventually relent and resolve its facial-hair phobia.

"The military is a huge bureaucracy, and it takes time to move a bureaucracy, especially when you want to change the regulations and the culture," he said.

"Look at some of our past generals' beards, like Ulysses Grant. In the Civil War, a lot of those guys in the military leadership looked like Hasidic individuals."

One of them, Ambrose Burnside, even gave rise to the term sideburns because of his elaborate whiskers.

Today, there is still one section of the U.S. military that's frequently bearded: Special Forces.

Working in hot spots such as Afghanistan, many members of those elite units grow beards to make themselves less conspicuous to locals.

Rabbi Sanford L. Dresin, a retired chaplain who works with a Jewish group that endorses rabbis for chaplain positions, called the Army's refusal of Mr. Stern an injustice.

"Here's a man who really wants to serve his country, and there is a very great need for rabbis in the military right now," said Mr. Dresin, who sports a Vandyke.

Comments

[effie]

Anthony Weiner Is Not Ashamed That He Used to Look Like Jennifer Grey

[David]

I think their are exceptions for religious beards in most armies of Western nations. Even in the US Army I believe there is another Chabad Rabbi (Chaplain Colonel Yakov Goldstein?) who is allowed to have a beard (although I believe he is the only US Army Rabbi who has ever had or allowed to have a beard). I have no problem with the beard for bona fide religious purposes or for special forces that need to blend in with the local savages in Afghanistan (or coming soon - Mea Sharim....).

What I do have a problem with is that a lot of Chabadniks and Charedim in general, don't maintain their beards very well - they are not combed properly (or at all) and most of them look very unkept. I do know there are some that comb but they are taking a big risk - G-d forbid combing causes a holy beard hair to accidentally be pulled out (even if it was about to fall out anyway).

[Abracadabra]

The army is better off not having a tefillin-and-tanya-thumping chabad rabbi trying to get unaffiliated Jews to start worshipping the Rebbe and teaching Noahide laws to the non-Jews.

Either this guy thinks he's going to do "kiruv" in the army, or he's desperate for a meal ticket and there are no good shlichus jobs left.

What else is an uneducated yeshiva boy to do? Not G-d forbid learn a trade. No! Not without a high school English education or a GED he can't...

[harold]

Funny, in America a Rabbi wants to serve but is not allowed. In Israel, they want Rabbis to serve but they don't want to.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Apologies to the musical "Hair"

They ask me why
I'm such a bearded guy
I'm frummie noon and night
Beard that's a fright
I'm bearded to my waist
Don't ask me why
"gei viess"
It's not for lack of lechem
Like the late Menachem
Bubbeleh-

Gimme a face with hair
Long stringy hair
scraggly, dandruffy,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there beard
Payos length or longer
Here bubbeleh, there mamaleh
Everywhere tatty, tatty

Beard... (7x)
Flow it, show it
Long as G-d can grow it
My beard

Let it fly in the shul
And get caught in a spool
Give a home to the gruel in my hair
A home for food
A hiding place for moods
A nest for chickens
There's no description
For the horror, the squalor, the blunder
Of my...

Beard... (7x)
Flow it, show it
Long as G-d can grow it
My hair

I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy
Snaggy, shaggy, ratty, matty
Oily, greasy, fleecy
Shining, gleaming, streaming,
Dread-locked

Knotted, polka-dotted
Twisted, beaded, braided
Powdered, flowered, noodled
Bangled, tangled, spangled, like lukshen kugel!

Oh say can you see
My pipik if you can
Then my beard's too short

Down to here
Down to there
Down to where
It stops by itself

They'll be oy vey at the chasuneh
When they see me in my kapoteh
My kapoteh made of black
Brilliantined
Biblical beard

My hair like Schneersohn wore it
Hallelu-kah I adore it
Hallelu-kah Mary loved her son
Why don't the Satmar love me?

Beard... (7x)
Flow it, show it
Long as God can grow it
Beard... (7x)
Flow it, show it
Long as G-d can grow it
My beard

[Dr. Dave]

YL -

Awesome. The only criticism is that you made the kinim (lice) inhabiting the beard feel left out of your song!!!

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

YL -
Absolutely magnificent. A Crowning [Heights] achievement.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Thanks, DD, OCR

[Pierre]

There were two 'baptised' sikhs who reached legal agreements with the Army around this, but their case was settled based on it not becoming precedent (they also roll and pin their beards up). There are chaplains serving by other means (via state defence forces, which are another route for people who want to do their part; Maryland has one such reserve chabad chaplain), but if it's Chaplain Corps he's after, strictures on accomodations are something he knew about before applying.

[Pierre]

I should say that Army/Sikh legal case was a recent one. there are several earlier sikhs in the military, mostly army. Many other nations in the West as well as the developing world have accomodated beards (mostly sikhs) for a time now. Much like orthodoxy though, there's an attitude of the 'unchanging' fixity of military culture and the pretention that it's always been "this" way and doesn't change...which is undermined by showing the very process of such change, as documented by the military legal divisions themselves...

[Barry]

Could it be that his beard is stragily, and not a clean shaven look, like most Rabbis have.
I have sen many Lub w/beards that are a mess, simply put. Add that to the way they dress in wrinkled suits, Tsitsi hanging out, a gartel etc.
Clean yourself up, and maybe thingss will be different.

[harold]

Tsitsi hanging out, a gartel

Yech!

[itchiemayer]

The 7th grand Rabbi in his pre-rebbe days had a neatly trimmed beard, no matter what the official Lubavitch line will tell you.

[Gladys]

I stopped believing a lot of that "have-to-do-it" hocus-pocus when some beardless, knifeless, turbanless Sikhs started working in my office and when I discovered Muslims doing their washing ("Wudu") with dirt ("Tayammum"). Water is completely unnecessary.

[anuran]

Gladys, the two cases aren't exactly the same. Muslims are explicitly permitted to use clean dirt if water isn't available and bang on a wall if clean dirt isn't available. If the Sikhs were religious they were making a serious concession in order to fit in. Not all Sikhs are all that religious or all that wiling to bend.

[David]

The 7th grand Rabbi in his pre-rebbe days had a neatly trimmed beard, no matter what the official Lubavitch line will tell you.

Posted by: itchiemayer | August 20, 2010 at 11:54 AM

I have always wondered about this. I have seen pictures in Lubo homes of him in his younger days and I am thinking "What's wrong with this picture?". The beard must have been trimmed and combed... At some point the fashion changed to untrimmed and uncombed - "100% shlock".

[Yosef ben Matitya]

Rabbi's Beard Doesn't Make Cut

neither does he make the cut as a rabbi or even a jew for that matter.
in addition, their kind are jumping all over to become chaplains of the police, hospitals, jails & the military promising the unsuspecting gentile authorities to serve all faiths equally.
can they really serve the needs of catholics while behind them they call them avi avot hatumo?
what a disgusting and dishonest lot!

[Yosef ben Matitya]

The 7th grand Rabbi in his pre-rebbe days had a neatly trimmed beard,

ah the mistery of the trimmed moschino beard.
to my understanding according to qabbole, holy neshomos like those, do not trim their beards ever, (maybe except if it disturbs them to eat.).
in fact i was told that if some hair fall from their beards inadvertantly, they collect it and save it in their siddur, chita's or tanye. that until doomsday.

[Yosef ben Matitya]

more on the mamesh's now trimmed beard, now untrimmed.
my only conclusion, is that the mamesh in his youth, couldn't care less about this nonsense until he was hypnotised by the rebbe rayatz under whose influence he fell, or when he was promised the position of capo tutti capi.
brings to mind thomas becket. in his youth, the favorite drinking and wenching companion of henry II. then when appointed by the king to the position of Archbishop of Canterbury, Becket takes the job very seriously and provides abler opposition to Henry than his predecessors were able to do. This leads to the famous "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?"
a case of an exceptinal "the cloth makes the man."

[Yochanan Lavie]

When Sir Thomas More was executed (and martyred as a saint in Catholicism), he asked the executioner not to chop off his beard when he was beheaded. The beard did no offense, he explained.

[A E ANDERSON]

The Army should take a long and hard look at how many Lubavitch Hasidic Jews are presently serving or projected to enlist. If there are no Hasidic Jews serving (a probability given the absence of beards, generally), one must ask to whom will this rabbi minister in the first place. I cannot fathom why the Army needs a Lubavitch chaplain if it has no Lubavitch soldiers!

Moreover, as a security clearance is a general requirement for all officer candidates, I question whether a clearance could be issued to any devotee of Menachem Schneerson without a careful, thoughtful inquiry into the candidate's possible connection with extremist or potentially extremist individuals and teachings. While we can comfortably disregard the old canard of "Where would your allegiance be it the United States went to war with Israel?" we cannot so quickly dismiss possible connections or sympathies with West Bank settler groups. "Integrity of Erez Israel" was one of Schneerson's significant teachings. Ergo, it would be very difficult for a hasid of this Rebbe to be neutral on an issue so central to the Rebbe's teachings.

A candidate with significant secular educational background might be equipped to handle the inherent contradiction of being a minister of a particular religion having to minister to adherents of other religions that he regards as erring, if not downright evil. But the typical Lubavitcher yeshiva graduate lacks even a first year undergraduate exposure to Western philosophy and its ethical literature. I am not convinced that such a person, without significant training in ministry practice as well as general theology and philosophy (to a Bachelor of Divinity standard) is competent to exercise the pastoral functions of a chaplain in the armed forces of the United States.

[Mike Berman]

How about maybe he wasn't accepted because he is unqualaified for the position. He has no interest in serving the US military and is a crook in business. He is part of the Scam Chanin business payment systems cartel.

[Yosef ben Matitya]

thanks, A E ANDERSON.
very well put. from your pen, to the decision takers of the Pentagon. Amen!

[Yosef ben Matitya]

Sir Thomas More
tks YL. it seems that Thomas More had a later life metamorphosis akin to that of the rebbe mame"sh.
his earlier adult life portrait shows him "sans barbe". i wonder if if the beard has any significance for catholics since all popes are depicted clean shaven. nevertheless, Sir TM is recorded as u pointed out to have requested the sparing of his beard by the executioner. could it be to lessen the physical pain of beheading?

[Yosef ben Matitya]

How about maybe he wasn't accepted because he is unqualaified for the position. He has no interest in serving the US military and is a crook in business.

Mike B.
what u pointed out is possibly correct, but is not all. this has political aspects and overtones too.
they want at the highest levels of the post dead -safeq moschiach- rebbe, to position themselves as 'judaism' pure and simple.
they will tell you that the litvish are bad and heartless, from the other side of their mouth they will claim themselves as heirs to the kesser theuyre of the lithuanian by posturing as scholars everywhere on tv in conventions etc... they are there along with a silly bottle of holy vodka on the table.
they also coined the word conservodox to disparage their mortal enemies @ y.u. telling everybody that will listen that MO's are not frum and are in fact frauds, (oy oy oy, their rabbis even shave, go figure) while they themselves will host some of the most outrageous audiences telling people how open minded they are, and how they will bend backwards to achieve successful qeruv.
to the conservatives, reform & reconstructionists, they will say that they reject nobody, as a jew is a jew. just come & feel at home. we impose nothing on you, come by car, by train, helicopter any which way you like.
we need the numbers.
hey, we are not god's policemen, we are his salesmen. just when you smoke a cigar on shabbes, please don't do it on our terrace, with our kids around. step out for a minute will you?
of course built in from the other side of the mouth, are the secrt codes. a jew is a jew, that is according to halokhe, we don't buy conservatives, reform & reconstructionists made jews. (hey, but we take their money though).
it helps that the presence of these fraudulent trolls is ubiquitous and that they produce tons of jewish illiterate boors -whom they call rabbis- with a phoney smile on their face and a plate of chulent in hand!
at the end of the day -they hope that- from president obama (also called behind his back: tfoo tfoo son of cham) all the way down to the chief of the fire station in spanish fork utah will eventually iy'h -und der toytere moschiah- will know no jews apart from them.
as they will be themselves erroneously considered jews by everybody else!
what a nightmare to wake up to!

[Jeff]

But the typical Lubavitcher yeshiva graduate lacks even a first year undergraduate exposure to Western philosophy and its ethical literature. I am not convinced that such a person, without significant training in ministry practice as well as general theology and philosophy (to a Bachelor of Divinity standard) is competent to exercise the pastoral functions of a chaplain in the armed forces of the United States.

Absolutely, A. E. - not to mention the fact that he thinks the gentile soldiers to whom he will have to minister have the souls of animals.

[al Farabi]

This beard business makes me sikh!

[Zalman Alpert]

As you well know there are very very few Jews in the US Army. In the US these chaplains serve civilians retired from the military , some officers like surgeons etc and a small # of enlisted men. Of course they are entitled to chaplaincy services. rather than allow hundreds of Lubavitchers in the US Armed forces (who never attended college)our seminaries and there are now about 7 of them should each place 1-2 graduates annually , that would more than take care of the jewish chaplain corps.
Its amazing how each seminary talks about community responsibility , like YU has a Center for The Jewish future that assists Jewish communities , but the Jewish soldier or prisioner is off the radar for them. MO has its particular interest in highly educated professinals with lots of fancy degrees and money.Certainly placing 1 YU rabbi every year would be the responsible thing to do, and that goes for YCT which also talks about Klal israel and whose leader goes on the limb in support of Gay jews and women but not Jewish soldiers !etc but again the Jewish soldier seems to be excluded.Of course there are a # of orthodox J ewish chaplains serving, mostly men whose credentials in many instances would not stand up in the civilian Orthodox community.
Lubavitch should be commeneded for wishing to serve as chaplains, but in my opinion the US Army would be better served by college trained men. Lubavitch should concentrate on whats its doing now , but its a free country and they can do whatever is legal.
Finally Goldstein was grandfathered in the chaplaincy via the Natioanl Guard, hence he has managed to get away with a full beard. The issue of a beard is not worth making an issue of. there are plenty of newly minted rabbis every year from mianstream seminaries and just "drafting" 1 from each school would more than sufice.

[True Religion Jeans Outlet]

The way I'd do it would be to peel and quarter three apples (1 granny Smith to hold its shape and two others) and place in a saucepan over medium heat. Add a little apple juice concentrate (or brown sugar if you want), 1 tsp. cinnamon, a dash of mace and nutmeg, a pinch of salt, and about 2 tsp. lemon juice. Cook over medium-low heat unasdftil the apples are cooked through but retain some of the shape. Remove half the apples and puree and return to the chunky ones. Yummy!

[MOSES]

we need a role reversal the attitude of the army. the army acts like a cop when he approaches your car the messiah is ready to give you a ticket. The army benefits
a CEO position, paid vacations, first class travel parachute jumping, extreme exercise training in a spa. work in a executive office in a tent. meeting high society in disaster areas, eating fine food prepared by a culinary soldier bon appetite. your boss the commanders trained by satan. when listing in the service please be prepared to die in a battle.
all this people are commmited to join the service and a beard is a inconvenience to have in the army. The army its time to change with the time, you are not all that
and people are ready to give up their lives to serve their country not the abuse from the commanders.