Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

U.S. Air Force Swears In First Bearded Chaplain — A Rabbi

The U.S. Air Force is swearing in its first bearded chaplain, a rabbi.

Rabbi Elie Estrin, the director of a Chabad House on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, will be sworn in Wednesday at McCord Air Force Base in the state, Chabad.org, a news website of the movement, reported.

The military only this year relaxed its guidelines and recommended leeway for chaplains with beards, although in 2011, the U.S. Army swore in Rabbi Menachem Stern, also a Chabad rabbi, as a chaplain in South Carolina.

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.