By the Honorable Dr. Dov S. Zakheim
Jewish servicemen and women who are stationed in the Capital Area Region should find time to make their way up Route 50 to the US Naval Academy. One need not be a sailor. The Academy’s Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel is a source of pride for any Jewish citizen who wears the uniform. The center and chapel are named after Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, a traditional Jew from a prominent Philadelphia family. His maternal grandfather had fought in the American revolution; his nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy served in the House of Representatives.
Levy, a veteran of the War of 1812, withstood several court martials prompted by anti-Semitic antagonists to rise to the rank of Commodore, the Navy’s highest rank at that time. Levy’s most famous contribution to the Navy was his abolition of flogging, until then a common practice inherited from Britain’s Royal Navy. After his retirement, Levy, a great admirer of Thomas Jefferson, purchased Monticello, Jefferson’s home, in 1834 and restored it after it had fallen into disuse. He also commissioned and donated a statue of Jefferson that now stands in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol.
The Levy Center is adjacent to, and really an outgrowth of, the Naval Academy’s Mitscher Hall. The Center’s entranceway is noteworthy for the twelve foot high Star of David etched in glass in its atrium. The Center includes a 410 person synagogue, as well as a fellowship hall, classrooms and various offices. It also incorporates a small museum that chronicles the Jewish role in the Navy’s development and provides an introduction to Judaism for non-Jewish midshipmen while reinforcing identity and pride of the Academy’s Jewish midshipmen.
The synagogue is designed as an Ark, recalling the Biblical story of Noah. The 450 foot high Mizrach, or eastern wall where the Aron Kodesh (Holy Ark) is to be found, is constructed from Jerusalem stone. The chapel’s non-Jewish architect, Joseph Boggs, was exceedingly sensitive to Jewish needs. In that regard, he wanted the synagogue to accommodate all branches of Judaism. Accordingly, the chapel has a balcony, which satisfies the Orthodox requirement for men and women to pray separately.
Until the Center’s construction, Jewish midshipmen had prayed in an all-faith chapel located in Mitscher Hall. During the mid 1990s, I approached retired Chief of Operations Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt, whose office was a few doors from mine in an office tower in Rosslyn, Virginia, and pointed out that the Navy was the only one of the three service departments whose academy lacked a Jewish chapel. I suggested that it was high time the Navy provided one for its Jewish midshipmen as well.
Zumwalt, a long time friend of Israel and the Jewish community, was totally supportive. He phoned then-Chief of Naval Operations Jeremy “Mike” Boorda and pressed him to back the idea. Zumwalt was pushing against an open door; Boorda favored the project as well. Armed with the knowledge that the leader of the Navy was a supporter, I traveled to Annapolis to meet with the four-star Superintendent of the Academy, Admiral Charles “Chuck” Larson. Larson was on his second tour as the Academy’s “supe” having previously done so as a two-star Rear Admiral. Larson was also an old friend whom I had met when he was a Captain serving in the Pentagon. He immediately voiced his support for the construction of the chapel. Having obtained support from the Navy’s highest echelons, I was uncertain as to how to raise the money for a project that undoubtedly would cost millions.
One day a man named Harvey Stein visited my Rosslyn office. Stein told me that he had long financed the Navy’s Jewish midshipmen’s club and had learned that the Navy now would approve construction of a new chapel for the Jewish mids. “I can raise the money,” he told me. And he did. He organized and chaired a management committee, called Friends of the Jewish Chapel, to which I belonged, that oversaw fundraising, the choice of an architect, the center’s construction, and relations with the United States Navy leadership and the Academy’s personnel.
Working tirelessly with Howard Pinskey a former Navy Captain and, like Stein, an Annapolis resident and supporter of the midshipmen’s club, Stein managed to raise nearly $7 million in large and small donations from more than 4000 people including both retired sailors and Marines and civilians with nom military backgrounds located in 37 states. The Navy Department contributed $1.8 million as well from its military construction funds.
The Chapel was dedicated on September 18, 2005, roughly a decade after my initial conversation with Zumwalt. In attendance were Senator John Warner, a former Secretary of the Navy and at the time Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Admiral MIke Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations who later became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The ceremony was noteworthy for the performance of the Naval Academy’s choir which offered a beautiful rendition of Adon Olam, a staple of Jewish services, which reduced me to tears of joy. In an indication of the fellowship that should mark all who wear the uniform in service to the Nation, not one member of that choir was Jewish.
The idea for the creation of the chapel, which continues to function and has hosted countless Jewish and non-Jewish midshipmen, is one of my proudest achievements. I reiterate what I wrote at the outset of this brief essay: every Jewish servicemember stationed in the Capitol region, indeed, all visitors to the Washington metropolitan area, should not pass up the opportunity to visit the Levy Center. It is one of the most beautiful and enduring symbols of both pride in our Jewish heritage and service to our great Nation.
The Honorable Dr. Dov S. Zakheim is a former Under Secretary of Defense and Deputy Under Secretary of Defense. He is a member of the board of directors of the Friends of the Jewish Chapel at the United States Naval Academy.
Originally published in the Pesach 5784 issue of The Jewish American Warrior.
