Military history of Jewish Americans

During the American Revolutionary War, the Polish-born Haym Solomon (1740–1785), who immigrated to New York and was a friend of George Washington, was a key financier who helped fund the Continental Army.

[8] Salomon negotiated the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and the Dutch Republic, selling bills of exchange to American merchants.

[13] Following protests by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites and introductions by others, a meeting was held in December 1861 with President Lincoln, which led to the rescinding of the order and the appointment of the first Jewish chaplain.

President Jefferson Davis called Benjamin "the most capable statesman I have ever known,"[24] but he was subject to "vicious anti-Jewish attacks" as the object of popular discontent after becoming acting Secretary of War in 1861, a position he resigned.

In 1864, as the South's military position became increasingly desperate, Benjamin publicly advocated a plan whereby any slave willing to bear arms for the Confederacy would be emancipated and inducted, but his proposal faced stiff opposition from traditionalists.

Sergeant Benjamin Kaufman won the Medal of Honor in the fighting to relieve the Lost Battalion, which had been surrounded by German forces after achieving a breakthrough at Charlevaux Mill.

[29] Another prominent story involves William Shemin, who sprinted across a battlefield to pull wounded comrades to safety no fewer than three times.

It provides for a Pentagon review of the military records of Jewish soldiers and sailors who may have been overlooked for the Medal of Honor simply due to their faith.

The Third Armored Division official history of World War II, published after Rose had been killed in action states "He was over six feet tall, erect, dark haired, and had finely chiseled features.

The project's roots began in 1939 when, at the urging of Leó Szilárd, Albert Einstein signed the Einstein–Szilárd letter to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt expressing his concerns that Nazi Germany may be trying to develop nuclear weapons.

There, along with Fermi, he helped to construct the first "neutronic reactor", a uranium and graphite "atomic pile" in which the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved, during 1942.

[38] With so many Jewish scientists forced to live in the United States, where they often worked together, Einstein wrote to a friend, "For me the most beautiful thing is to be in contact with a few fine Jews—a few millennia of a civilized past do mean something after all."

In the summer of 1939, a few months before the beginning of World War II, Einstein was persuaded to write a letter to president Franklin D. Roosevelt and warn him that Nazi Germany might be developing an atomic bomb.

According to F.G. Gosling of the U.S. Department of Energy, Einstein, Szilard, and other refugees including Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, "regarded it as their responsibility to alert Americans to the possibility that German scientists might win the race to build an atomic bomb, and to warn that Hitler would be more than willing to resort to such a weapon.

"[44] Gosling adds that "the President was a man of considerable action once he had chosen a direction," and believed that the U.S. "could not take the risk of allowing Hitler" to possess nuclear bombs.

As a result of Einstein's letter, and his meetings with Roosevelt, the U.S. entered the "race" to develop the bomb first, drawing on its "immense material, financial, and scientific resources".

After his controversial testimony in the security clearance hearing of his former Los Alamos colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer, Teller was ostracized by much of the scientific community.

In the 1980s, Teller began a strong campaign for what was later called the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derided by critics as "Star Wars," the concept of using ground and satellite-based lasers, particle beams and missiles to destroy incoming Soviet ICBMs.

Supporters of SDI claimed it helped contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union by the so-called strategy of technology, which was a prevalent doctrine at the time.

Ulam was born in Lwów Galicia to a wealthy Polish-Jewish banking and timber-processing family[52] who were part of the large Jewish minority population of the city.

Some notable examples have been the following: Henry Alfred Kissinger (1923-2023) was a German-born Jewish American political scientist, diplomat, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

He served as the eighth US National Security Advisor (1969–1975) and later concurrently as the fifty sixth US Secretary of State (1973–1977) in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War.

[11][74] On July 22, 1861, the North's Congress passed legislature requiring all chaplains to be ordained Christian ministers, making rabbis ineligible to serve.

[80] He refused to accept transportation back to Sixth Fleet Headquarters in Gaeta, Italy the next day because it was Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, and so ended up being on the scene the morning of October 23, when the attack occurred.

[81] Secondly, one story from the aftermath of the attack was instrumental in terms of changing military policies regarding the wearing of kippot, head-coverings, for Jews in uniform.

"[86] During the group's visit to the White House, Reagan recounted the Beirut story, and then asked the rabbis to explain to him the religious meaning of the kippah.

Rabbi Feller, another member of the group, continued, "We place the kippah on the very highest point of our being—on our head, the vessel of our intellect—to tell ourselves and the world that there is something which is above man's intellect: the infinite Wisdom of God.

[92][93] In the preamble to its National Constitution the purpose of the JWV is stated: To maintain true allegiance to the United States of America; to foster and perpetuate true Americanism; to combat whatever tends to impair the efficiency and permanency of our free institutions; to uphold the fair name of the Jew and fight his or her battles wherever unjustly assailed; to encourage the doctrine of universal liberty, equal rights, and full justice to all men and women; to combat the powers of bigotry and darkness wherever originating and whatever their target; to preserve the spirit of comradeship by mutual helpfulness to comrades and their families; to cooperate with and support existing educational institutions and establish educational institutions, and to foster the education of ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen, and our members in the ideals and principles of Americanism; to instill love of country and flag, and to promote sound minds and bodies in our members and our youth; to preserve the memories and records of patriotic service performed by the men and women of our faith; to honor their memory and shield from neglect the graves of our heroic dead.

"[95] The museum operates under the auspices of the Jewish War Veterans (JWV), USA, National Memorial, Inc. (NMI), located at 1811 R St., NW, Washington, DC, in the Dupont Circle area.