Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

First Jewish Woman Chaplain Serves in Air Force

Capt. Sarah Schechter, the Jewish chaplain of the 11th Wing at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, is the first ever female U.S. Air Force rabbi in 40 years of women serving as military chaplains, according to a recent feature on U.S. military website, military.com.

Image by military.com

A native of New York’s Greenwich Village, Schechter, whose father was a rabbi, told military.com that she decided to enlist because of September 11, when she was in her fourth year of rabbinical school.

Schechter’s father was an Air Force chaplain in 1960, something that also influenced her decision to join up, according to military.com

As a chaplain, the rabbi’s mission includes representing Judaism and serving as a link between other faiths. Despite being the first and only female rabbi to undertake the task in the Air Force, Schechter wouldn’t necessarily call herself a “trailblazer.”

“I’m an officer, I’m a rabbi, and I want to do my best to represent the military and Judaism in the best light possible. I’m grateful to the women in the chaplaincy who preceded me because I truly stand on the shoulder of giants,” she said.

For more, go to Haaretz

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.