December 13: Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn

Roland Gittelsohn, a Reform rabbi who was the first Jewish chaplain ever appointed by the U.S Marine Corps and served the invading forces at Iwo Jima, died at 85 on this date in 1995. Gittelsohn was a critic of McCarthyism in the 1950s and an early, outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He also served on President Harry Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights in 1947, on the Massachusetts Commission on Abolition of the Death Penalty in 1957, and as a prison reformer and an advocate of migrant workers’ rights. His books included Consecrated Unto Me: A Jewish View of Love and Marriage (1965), Man’s Best Hope (1966), an effort to synthesize science and Judaism, and How Do I Decide? A Contemporary Jewish Approach to What’s Right and Wrong (1989), among others.
“This war has been fought by the common man; its fruits of peace must be enjoyed by the common man! We promise, by all that is sacred and holy, that your sons, the sons of miners and millers, the sons of farmers and workers, the right to a living that is decent and secure.” —Roland Gittelsohn, Iwo Jima eulogy