Talk about unsinkable. Uriah P. Levy, the first Jewish commodore in the United States Navy, was court-martialed six times ? in anti-Semitic incidents ? in a seafaring career that began at age 14, saw combat and imprisonment in England during the War of 1812, and included the killing of an opponent in a duel.
But he was vindicated after each disciplinary action ? three times through presidential intervention ? and went on to own Thomas Jefferson?s home at Monticello and leave his mark on that most traditional of military branches, helping to abolish flogging as a disciplinary tool.
And since 2005 he has been honored by the service that gave him so much grief with an $8.7 million, 35,000-square foot, multifunctional edifice that for the first time in Naval Academy history offers a dedicated worship area to midshipmen of his faith.
Rabbi Daniella Colodny, the first female rabbi in Naval Academy history, is religious leader to this approximately 100-midshipmen contingent at the 4,200-student academy.
“It was built primarily with private funds to provide a Jewish house of worship on the Naval Academy grounds,” said Rose Cantrell, administrator for the Friends of the Jewish Chapel at the United States Naval Academy, an Annapolis-based nonprofit that helped raise funds for the historic building.
Cantrell said that $1.5 million in seed money was donated in 1995 by class of ?77 Naval Academy graduate Jerrold Miller ? after whom the 410-seat chapel is named ? and that the rest of the private portion came from interfaith sources.
Approximately $1.8 million in military construction funds helped defray the domed building?s expanded use as a home to classrooms, an ethics and leadership center, and the brigade?s honor board, said the fund-raising group?s president, Howard Pinskey.
But the U.S. Military Academy?s privately financed synagogue opened in 1983 and the U.S. Air Force Academy included one in its original construction in 1963. The U.S. Coast Guard Academy, however,still has an all-faith facility like the one used by Jewish midshipmen prior to the chapel?s dedication.
Pinskey, however, disagreed that any post-Levy, lingering anti-Semitism delayed its debut, explaining that a critical mass of private interest normally prompts the appearance of minority faith venues at service academies.
Major Carlos Huerta, Jewish chaplain at the U.S. Military Academy, had an Army take in the matter, however, pointing out that seeming discrimination may only reflect organizational character ? in which the Navy stresses ships and the Air Force its planes.
