Community Magazine August 2019

32 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE FROM LAKEWOOD TO IRAQ AND BACK A Community Rabbi’s Journey As Captain in the U.S. Air Force MACHLA ABRAMOVITZ R abbi Major Raphael Berdugo USAF – slim, outgoing, and personable – arrived at Camp Bucca in Iraq at the start of 2009. He was dispatched there at the urgent request of Jewish reservists and active officers stationed there. When he arrived, he found “twenty-five spiritually starved men clamoring for a rabbi.” A Look at Camp Bucca From your comfortable living room, it may be difficult to picture Camp Bucca, one of the Iraqi War’s most notorious detention centers. It stood in the southern town of Garma, situated on the Iraq-Kuwaiti border. With temperatures hovering around 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, this wind-swept, barren strip of land housed a collection of tents and temporary cinder block dwellings with wooden roofs. They were surrounded by razor-sharp barbed wire. By 2009, the detention center had funneled approximately 100,000 detainees, including nine of the most radical Jihadists on earth. These included some of ISIS’s top commanders such as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who spent five years there, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani, ISIS’s second in command, senior military leader Haji Bakr, and Abu Qasim, leader of the terrorist organization’s foreign fighters. Initially established by British forces at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the U.S. Army’s 800th Military Police Brigade together with 400 U.S. Air Force security troops took charge shortly afterward, renaming the camp after brigade member and fire marshal Ronald Bucca, who perished in the World Trade Center attack. Unlike Abu Ghraib, the infamous prison in western Baghdad that was surrounded by high, thick walls, Camp Bucca was an easy target for Iraqi militants launching lethal Iranian-supplied rockets onto the premises. “Dealingwith thesekindsof prisoners, youhavea rudeawakening about the cruel ways of the world, especially when you are under attack,” Rabbi Berdugo says. “In contrast to this evil surrounding us, we spent a spiritually uplifting Shabbat together. We sang zmirot and prayed – nobody wanted Shabbat to end. The men asked me if I was willing to stay longer, and I said sure.” When it was time for Rabbi Berdugo to leave, these young American soldiers (none of whom were Torah-observant) were so appreciative that they held a farewell lunch in the rabbi’s honor, and presented him with tokens of appreciation and farewell gifts. “The experience was surreal. I couldn’t believe it,” he recalls. A Military Chaplain’s Role It’s been nine years since Rabbi Berdugo, one of six Torah-observant chaplainsworking for theU.S.military,was deployed in the Middle East and encountered these kinds of experiences, which he shared with Community Magazine about six years ago. Today, due to health reasons, he is no longer deployed overseas or elsewhere. However, as a chaplain assigned to JBSA – Lackland in San Antonio, Texas, one of the U.S.’s top military training bases, he has much to tell us about military life, how it has changed over the last decade, and how a Torah-observant Jew meets the challenges of the military, while remaining true to his values and ideals. The first thing to know about being a chaplain in the military is that this profession is not for every yeshiva musmach interested in working as a rabbi. For one, it requires specific personality traits. The candidate must be punctual, and cannot procrastinate. Moreover, loyalty to the institution is highly valued. These qualities made Rabbi Berdugo a good fit for the job. Furthermore, one must be extraordinarily open-minded and accepting of all kinds of people. "Growing up in Sunderland, England and Marseilles, France – my father was a rabbi – we had people from all backgrounds over at our home. I learned from an early age to be tolerant of others and appreciated that not everyone had the opportunities we had growing up frum .” “I learned from an early age to be tolerant of others and appreciated that not everyone had the opportunities we had growing up frum .”