Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism by Jessica Cooperman (review)

In February 1943, the SS Dorchester, a US military vessel, was sunk by a German submarine. As the vessel went down, four military chaplains gave up their lifeboats, sacrificing themselves to save their comrades. They led the crew in prayers as the ship sank, representing America's three major religions: two Protestants, one Catholic, and one Jew.

It's a great story, but it was not the first time the military served as a laboratory for religious pluralism in the United States. Jessica Cooperman's excellent book convincingly demonstrates that the framework for "Tri-Faith America," a phrase generally applied to the post-World War II era, in fact began with American involvement in the First World War. Government policies and institutions begun in 1917 "unintentionally" challenged Protestant domination and "created space for Judaism and Catholicism to enter the pantheon of American religions" (8). Cooperman helps elucidate American religious pluralism, an ideal that championed shared values and loyalties while allowing distinctions in beliefs to be maintained. She demonstrates the importance of a narrow time frame—the bulk of the action occurs in 1917–1918—in the Americanization of Jews and Judaism. American Jewish military service in World War I strengthened the major Jewish denominations and flattened the differences between Jews of German and Eastern European origin.

Cooperman's story is mostly about the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB), an organization created in 1917 by the War Department whose function was to care for the social, cultural, and religious needs of the soldiers. The JWB operated as the equivalent to the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA), which catered to Protestants, and the Knights of Columbus, which served Catholics. The JWB crowded out other organizations to become the official group in charge of the welfare of Jewish servicemen on bases at home and overseas. The JWB had a direct influence on nearly 250,000 American Jewish soldiers in a way that the Young Men's Hebrew Assocation, B'nai Brith, and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) did not.

The JWB founders were "elite New Yorkers" often affiliated with the AJC (41). These included some well-known figures, including lawyer Louis Marshall, financiers Jacob Schiff and Felix Warburg, and, most importantly, Cyrus Adler, the president of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the flagship institution of Conservative Judaism. Jacob Rader Marcus, future rabbi and American Jewish historian, served as an army clerk and unofficial JWB representative during World War I and was another important actor in this drama. These lay leaders sought to create a recognized space for Judaism in America, but also to create a new kind of Jew. Most American Jews serving in the military during World War I were of eastern European origin. A third were born outside the US; many spoke mostly Yiddish. Some were Orthodox, while others were Zionists or radical socialists. The JWB helped these soldiers Americanize through classes in English language and American history and civics, as well as more modernized prayer services.

Their efforts led to a few hiccups. When some Jewish soldiers and civilians requested kosher food, their request was ultimately denied, as offering different food was seen as too divisive. The JWB put more energy into directing forms of worship. Unlike dietary laws, religious services had a direct Protestant and Catholic equivalent. It was more important that the troops ate together than that they prayed together. Unsurprisingly, the JWB's attempt to standardize prayer services for Jewish soldiers met with complaints. Orthodox Jews felt they were being coerced into adopting Reform Judaism, while Reform Jews disliked the JWB's prayer book, thinking it too traditional. These divides emerged again in the selection of military chaplains. Orthodox rabbis often lacked the qualifications required by the War Department, like a secular college degree, while, in Adler's words, "Reform Rabbis 'do not touch the spot,' but that is not the fault of the...