Judah Nadich, American colonel and rabbi (d. 2007)
Rabbi Judah Nadich (May 13, 1912 – August 26, 2007), was a Conservative rabbi, who served congregations in Buffalo, New York and Chicago, Illinois, and later was the U.S. Army's senior Jewish chaplain in Europe while Allied forces were liberating Nazi concentration camps, and later was the President of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis.
He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the eldest child of Isaac and Lena Nathanson Nadich, who had emigrated from Russia in the early 1900s. His father owned a grocery store. Rabbi Nadich's mother died when he was 7, and he and his two sisters were raised by their stepmother, Nettie Gifter Nadich, an immigrant from Lithuania. Isaac and Nettie also had a daughter together.
In 1936, four years after graduating from City College of New York, Rabbi Nadich earned a master's degree in history from Columbia University and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He led Conservative congregations in Buffalo and in Chicago before enlisting in the Army as a chaplain in 1942.
"In 1945, when he was a lieutenant colonel in the Army and its senior Jewish chaplain in Europe, and when the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps were being fully revealed, Rabbi Nadich was named to the new post of Jewish adviser to [General] Dwight Eisenhower "to offer advice on how to cope with hundreds of thousands of displaced persons being kept in military custody in squalid conditions little better than the camps they had survived. In a 1953 book, Eisenhower and the Jews, Rabbi Nadich wrote that he and others persuaded the Allied command to abandon a policy requiring the displaced to be returned to their home countries."In 1947, Rabbi Nadich married Martha Hadassah Ribalow, the daughter of Menachem Ribalow, founder and editor of the first Hebrew weekly in America, Hadoar, and Rose Ribalow. He served at Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline, Massachusetts, for 10 years, and then, from 1957 until his retirement in 1987, he served as rabbi of New York's Park Avenue Synagogue. There, Nadich "helped develop a strong educational after-school program, which is now called the Rabbi Judah Nadich Hebrew High School."As President of the Rabbinical Assembly, in 1974, he called on the movement's Law Committee to "give careful consideration" to his proposal to admit ordained women, which eventually occurred in 1985. He died in New York City on August 26, 2007 at the age of 95.
1912May, 13
Judah Nadich
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Events on 1912
- 6Mar
Airship
Italo-Turkish War: Italian forces become the first to use airships in war, as two dirigibles drop bombs on Turkish troops encamped at Janzur, from an altitude of 6,000 feet. - 15Apr
Sinking of the RMS Titanic
The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,227 passengers and crew on board survive. - 14Oct
Theodore Roosevelt
While campaigning in Milwaukee, the former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, is shot and mildly wounded by John Schrank, a mentally-disturbed saloon keeper. With the fresh wound in his chest, and the bullet still within it, Mr. Roosevelt still carries out his scheduled public speech. - 17Oct
First Balkan War
Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia declare war on the Ottoman Empire, joining Montenegro in the First Balkan War. - 26Oct
Thessaloniki
First Balkan War: The Ottoman occupied city of Thessaloniki, is liberated and unified with Greece on the feast day of its patron saint Demetrius. On the same day, Serbian troops captured Skopje.