Rabbi To Speak On Religion And Peace

By Jennifer Grogan

Published on 10/22/2007

'...if the world had more interfaith foxholes, there might be less of a need for foxholes altogether.' Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff,

New London — Too many people think that religion is part of the problem, and not part of the solution to today's military conflicts, said Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff.

Resnicoff believes religion can be, and must be, the way to work for peace.

“Without religion, there would still be many, many reasons to fight,” said Resnicoff, a retired Navy chaplain who was assigned to the Naval Submarine Base in Groton. “Religion can help us believe in better times, which is the first step to moving toward them.”

He added, “If there is nothing else we believe in together, it should be that faith can make this a better world.”

This is one of the topics Resnicoff will address during lectures at Congregation Beth El, 660 Ocean Ave., this weekend. He will talk about religion and the military at 8:15 p.m. Friday, Jewish views of war and peace at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, and interfaith relations at 2 p.m. Sunday. All are open to the public, but the Sunday afternoon talk is geared for the general community.

“There has been a lot of tension between interfaith communities, some of it is around the subject of Israel, social issues like abortion, or prayer in the public schools,” said Rabbi Carl N. Astor, of Congregation Beth El. “Rabbi Resnicoff helps organize interfaith programs so the idea is for him to share his experiences and advice to help us work together better as an interfaith community.”

Resnicoff, who now lives in Washington, D.C., served as a chaplain at the Submarine Base from 1994 to 1997. He also attended the Naval Submarine School in Groton when he enlisted in the Reserve and later took a course in submarine intelligence as a lieutenant j.g.

He has also served as a national director of inter-religious affairs for the American Jewish Committee and as a special assistant to the U.S. Air Force secretary and chief of staff.

He was part of a group of Vietnam veterans who worked to create the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and he delivered the closing prayer at the dedication.

His visit to New London coincides with the anniversary of the 1983 suicide truck bombing of Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, where 241 American service members were killed. Resnicoff was in Beirut at the time.

“That began my struggle with how do you have an ethical response to evil,” he said. “How do you deal with people who don't respect the rules you have?”

Resnicoff wrote a report about the attack and the rescue effort for the White House, where he described his first time in a foxhole in Beirut.

“Looking around at the others in there with me, I made the remark that we probably had set up the only 'interfaith foxholes' in Beirut! The Druze, Muslims, Christians, all had theirs. The Jewish forces in the Israeli Army had theirs. But we were together,” he wrote in the report. “I made the comment then that perhaps if the world had more interfaith foxholes, there might be less of a need for foxholes altogether.”

President Ronald Reagan read the report as his keynote address to the Baptist Fundamentalism annual convention in 1984.

Resnicoff said recently that, “America either will be the epitome of an interfaith foxhole, where we stand shoulder to shoulder and face the real dangers or evils of the world, or we'll collapse into a Bosnia or Iraq or so many other places that divide people into their own foxholes, facing each other and fighting each other.”