<p>What are anyones’ thoughts on USNA taking the initiative and opening up the Uriah P. Levy Chapel/Center? Personally I think its a great move.</p>
<p>From Baltimore Sun…</p>
<p>Jewish chapel will open tomorrow at the Naval Academy
Levy Center aims to mark diversity in the service
By Bradley Olson
Sun Staff
Originally published September 15, 2005
When Howard Pinskey attended the U.S. Naval Academy more than 40 years ago, he and 41 other Jewish midshipmen had to leave the yard to attend services at an Orthodox synagogue two blocks away.
But tomorrow evening, Pinskey and about 120 current Jewish midshipmen, among many others, will have a chance to attend Shabbat services in their own chapel in the middle of the academy grounds. </p>
<p>The Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel, the first U.S. military building bearing the Star of David on its exterior, will have its formal dedication Sunday. The $8 million facility was paid for with $1.8 million in federal funds and money raised by the U.S. Naval Academy Foundation and the Friends of the Jewish Chapel, a nonprofit group dedicated to supporting and sponsoring Jewish midshipmen. </p>
<p>Pinskey, president of Friends of the Jewish Chapel, said Sunday’s dedication will be the culmination of eight years of planning, fundraising and coordination. </p>
<p>“I’m glad the building is finally built,” Pinskey said. “I really look at this as the end of the beginning. We had to get the walls up and get the ship built, but the best part of this is that we’re going to be able to use it.” </p>
<p>Unlike the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., the Naval Academy has never had a Jewish center of worship. Shabbat services had generally been held in the All Faiths Chapel, where services for several other faiths are also held. </p>
<p>The Levy Center includes the 410-seat chapel, a kosher kitchen and a Judeo-Christian learning center. Flanked by wings of Bancroft Hall, the sprawling dormitory that houses all 4,200 midshipmen, and across from King Hall, where they eat, the three-story, 26,000-square-foot facility also houses the academy’s Honor Center, classrooms, offices and a cafe. </p>
<p>Capt. John Pasko, director of the academy’s officer development division, said the new building will become a center of excellence for the moral growth of midshipmen of all faiths. As a home to the Brigade Honor Committee, an oversight body of midshipmen that enforces the school’s honor code, as well as the Jewish chapel, the Levy Center will become an important place where midshipmen can become leaders, he said. </p>
<p>“This will be a place they can come to after meals and have time to sit down and … think about what’s happening to them,” Pasko said. </p>
<p>Multiple services
So many people are planning to attend Shabbat services this weekend that two services are planned for both tomorrow and Saturday, said Marshall Hoffman, a senior midshipman and president of the Jewish Midshipmen’s Club. Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, is expected to attend.
Designed by Boggs & Partners Architects of Annapolis, the building’s exterior has a Beaux Arts design that will blend in with architectural styles at the academy and in Annapolis. The chapel’s walls and floor are covered with rocks, smoothed and rough, cut from a quarry in Jerusalem. </p>
<p>‘Homeland around you’
Joseph Boggs, who designed the center, said he hoped that would help Jewish midshipmen feel that the “homeland is all around you.”
Cmdr. Irving Elson, a rabbi at the academy, said the center was made with seven entrances, the same number that are said to have existed for Abraham’s tent. </p>
<p>Uriah P. Levy was the first Jew to become a commodore, the Navy’s highest rank during the time he served, from the War of 1812 to his death in 1862. Levy was court-martialed and found guilty six times during his career, although each case was eventually overturned. By many accounts, Levy was a proud man who insisted on observing the Jewish Sabbath while at sea. </p>
<p>The first Jewish chapel built for the U.S. armed forces – at Norfolk, Va. – also was named after Levy. </p>
<p>Dan Mariaschin, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith International, a Jewish charity and advocacy organization, said the Levy Center will make an important contribution not only to the academy and the Baltimore-Annapolis Jewish community, but to the American Jewish community. </p>
<p>“With diversity issues and inclusiveness, our country is a mosaic, and the service academy is a mosaic,” he said. “The establishment of this center within the Naval Academy underscores that, and I think that for the midshipmen, Jewish and non-Jewish, this will foster a greater understanding of the social fabric that makes up America.” </p>
<p>Hoffman, the president of the Jewish Midshipmen’s Club, said he was amazed to see the Levy Center this week as the finishing touches were being made. </p>
<p>“We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time,” he said. “It’s great that we have such a beautiful, amazing building to call our home.” </p>
<p>While he said he has never felt alienated from other midshipmen or from the academy because of his faith, he believes the center and its central location will change Jewish life at the 160-year-old institution. </p>
<p>“This is definitely a recognition of Judaism at the Naval Academy,” he said. “A lot of my friends that are very curious about other religions will be able to come here and see this place. It will just make things a little easier.”</p>
<p>From Washington Jewish Week</p>
<p>Their own ship
Naval Academy dedicating its first Jewish chapel
by Ira Rifkin
JTA News and Features </p>
<p>Harvey Stein had a dream: Provide Jews at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis with their own worship space. </p>
<p>Nine years and almost $9 million later, his dream will become a reality with the opening of the Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel. </p>
<p>During its first year, the academy estimates that some 1.5 million visitors will tour the facility, which is scheduled to open this weekend. This high visibility is a prospect that pleases Stein no end. </p>
<p>“This will become one of the most important Jewish buildings in the country,” said Stein, 69, the owner of a successful home-decor and personal accessories business in Annapolis. “Lives will be touched in ways that we will probably never fully know.” </p>
<p>Said Rabbi Irving Elson, the academy’s Jewish chaplain: “This is not just a building for Jews. It’s the next step for the academy in demonstrating how important faith is, any faith,” adding, “It’s a symbol of tolerance and inclusion and for understanding how important faith is in the toolbox of our future Navy and Marines officers. I want our officers to recognize that even if they don’t have a faith themselves, that faith is important to the men and women they command.” </p>
<p>A full weekend of events is planned for the building’s opening, beginning with the affixing of mezuzot and the dedication of a Torah scroll donated by the Israeli navy, and ending with a formal dedication attended by at least 2,500 guests. </p>
<p>Asked what comments he’s hearing from the midshipmen and women, Elson told WJW, “I think they’re excited about having a place to call their own.” </p>
<p>The rabbi also said he hoped that non-Jewish students would feel comfortable in the chapel as well. “The synagogue is neutral enough that midshipmen of all faiths can go in the evening and have a quiet place.” </p>
<p>The Naval Academy’s press office did not make any students available for WJW interview by press time on Tuesday. </p>
<p>Franklin Wolf, whose daughter, Rebecca, attends the academy, raved about the new chapel. </p>
<p>“In a word, it is breathtaking. The architects did an outstanding job in combining the spirit of Judaism with the spirit of the Navy,” he said in an e-mail to WJW. “The beauty of the chapel and its accompanying rooms will add much to both the character and Judaic development of our young midshipmen.” </p>
<p>The academy, which educates officers for the Marine Corps as well as the Navy, is the last of America’s three main military academies to construct a worship space designed specifically for Jews. </p>
<p>Until now, Jewish midshipmen shared a chapel with other minority religious groups. The academy has a separate chapel for Christians. All U.S. military worship facilities are called chapels, regardless of faith. </p>
<p>The lack of a Jewish facility bothered Stein, one of a number of Annapolis Jews with no Navy or academy ties who come to the academy to attend regular Friday night services run by Jewish chaplains; Saturday services are only held on holidays and special occasions. </p>
<p>Stein has been reaching out to Jewish and non-Jewish midshipmen and women for a quarter-century. “Before you know it, they come back with their kids, and you feel like a grandparent,” he told WJW five years ago. </p>
<p>One morning in 1996, while speaking in his kitchen with Rabbi Jonathan Panitz, then the academy’s Jewish chaplain, Stein announced that he wanted to help underwrite a Jewish chapel. Stein said the sound of the words popping out of his mouth took even him by surprise. </p>
<p>"When I said that to Jonathan, I thought: ‘Whatever possessed me to say such a thing?’ " Stein recalled. </p>
<p>Panitz seized upon the idea immediately. </p>
<p>“I said, ‘OK, Harvey, when do you want to start?’ And Harvey says, ‘Right away.’ And that was how it began,” said Panitz, now retired from the Navy and leading Congregation Beth Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Lebanon, Pa. </p>
<p>The pair turned to Friends of the Jewish Chapel, a group that helped fund activities for Jewish midshipmen, including trips to Israel. But with fewer than 150 self-identified Jewish midshipmen in any given year, out of a student body of more than 4,000, getting permission proved tricky, despite lobbying that extended to the highest reaches of the Pentagon. </p>
<p>The key to jump-starting the project was a pledge by the group to expand Stein’s idea to include raising additional funds to meet other unfulfilled academy construction needs. </p>
<p>That led to creation of the Uriah P. Levy Center, which occupies the 35,000-square-foot structure’s south wing. It’s named after the first Jew to be elevated, in 1858, to the rank of commodore, then the Navy’s highest rank. </p>
<p>Levy, who restored Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home, Monticello, after it fell into disrepair following the third president’s death, was descended from some of the first Sephardic Jews to settle in the American colonies. </p>
<p>Howard Pinsky, a 1962 academy graduate and the president of the Jewish chapel group, said about $8.75 million has been raised for construction. Another $3 million was raised for maintenance and program endowment funds. Most of the money has come from private Jewish sources. </p>
<p>The center will house the academy’s expanding courses in ethics and leadership and its Honor Court, where midshipmen charged with violating the academy’s strict honor code are judged by peers. It will also contain a library dedicated to religious and ethical themes; study, lounge and canteen areas; and displays relating to Jews in the American military and other subjects. </p>
<p>The chapel takes up the three-story facility’s entire north wing. The interior of the 410-seat sanctuary is extensively faced with Jerusalem stone. The floor-to-ceiling section behind a free-standing Sephardic-style ark has been hand-crafted to evoke the Western Wall’s jumble of stones. </p>
<p>Within the stone wall and on the bima, there is a mosaic-arched wall that continues the design in the pavilion interior, representing the heavens, and the atrium floor, representing the earth, according to the architect. </p>
<p>Both the center and chapel have Stars of David incorporated into their exterior design. Architect Joseph Boggs said he believes this is the first instance of the Jewish symbol being a permanent part of a U.S. Navy building. (An academy spokesperson could not confirm the claim because of the sheer number of Navy buildings worldwide.) </p>
<p>The complex occupies a prominent spot on the 330-acre academy. Enclosed passages link the building to Bancroft Hall, the massive dormitory housing all midshipmen and women, and to Mitscher Hall, the academy’s primary building for social and cultural activities. </p>
<p>Boggs said he sought to design the structure so as not to overwhelm non-Jews. “How do you incorporate inclusion without any negative implications? I want any midshipman of any denomination to be able to walk through this place and not just be comfortable, but get a chill down their spine,” said Boggs, who is not Jewish.</p>
<p>Awesome! </p>
<p>West Point also has a Jewish Chapel that was built through fundraising efforts of Jewish veterans groups. It is a beautiful building and provides a marvelous opportunity for Jewish cadets to celebrate the Sabbath together. I hear that a number of non-Jewish cadets also attend as they appreciate the beautiful service, the solace - and the food. It’s great that the mids now have this kind of opportunity. Mazel tov! </p>
<p>This will be the first time I say, “Go Navy!” ;)</p>
<p>And here’s some more info with pictures. It’s a beautiful building.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.usna.edu/PAO/Levy%20Center/Levy%20Dedication%20program.pdf[/url]”>http://www.usna.edu/PAO/Levy%20Center/Levy%20Dedication%20program.pdf</a></p>
<p>What a beautiful facility. Maybe they’ll let “the Cat” be an honorary Jew when she gets to Annapolis in a couple of years.</p>
<p>We haven’t gotten a chance to visit Annapolis yet but have been to the Air Force Academy several times (it’s closer and the Cat is in Civil Air Patrol) and the chapel there is stunning. They have the large chapel upstairs for Protestants and separate rooms below for Catholics and Jews. </p>
<p>I’m glad to see that the misconceptions some people have about the separation of church and state haven’t kept the military academies from providing for the spiritual welfare of our next generation. (not trying to open a can of worms, though.)</p>
<p>Beautiful Chapel. I’m certain Admiral Rickover, the father of the modern Navy, is resting well tonight.</p>