Long-time MRFF supporter Rabbi Joel Schwartzman reacts to MRFF’s federal lawsuit against Air Force Academy over FOIA request regarding the Academy’s scheduling important training on Yom Kippur

From: Rabbi Joel Schwartzman
Subject: The Commandant’s Repeated Screw Up–Training Schedule on a Jewish High Holiday
Date: July 15, 2025 at 6:44:46 AM MDT
To: “[email protected]” <[email protected]>
Cc: Michael L Weinstein <[email protected]>

Of all the institutions that ought to be in the forefront of defending the freedom of religion and of the rights of its members to observe their holy days, one would think that our service academies would be first among equals.  Not so the Air Force Academy!

Once again, the Commandant’s office has scheduled cadet training for Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, thereby compromising its Jewish cadets’ religious obligations.  Yom Kippur, a fast day lasting twenty-six hours, isn’t a day which can be divided up into segments, a morning for worship services, the afternoon for having to return to training.

Traditionally, since my own days as a Jewish chaplain stationed at the United States Air Force Academy from 1983 to 1986, this is the compromise that the Commandant’s office offered, take it or leave it.  By regulation, Jewish cadets also were forbidden to fast.  This was absolutely outrageous!

Think of Yom Kippur as being as important a holy day as Christmas or Easter.  Would the Commandant’s office dare to lay on a day of training on these or any Christian holidays?   Think, then, of the strain that having to sacrifice one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar, singularly the most important of the High Holidays, places on a Jewish cadet.  Clearly the Academy is telling Jewish cadets that their religious rites and rituals simply must take a backseat to the Commandant’s program and that they must bend their religious obligations to this terrible compromise.

When queried about this religious screw-up, the Commandant’s office replied that it was, indeed, “an oversight.”  Frankly, this answer is pure crap!  It is the very same excuse I received when I objected to the use of this date and when I was at the Academy.  Clearly, either no one in the Commandant’s shack cares to cite a religious calendar, or they simply don’t care about anyone else’s holidays except the Christian ones.  That is blatant discrimination bordering on religious bigotry.  If there is anything like a continuity file in the offices of the Commandant (and if there isn’t, there darned well should be!), the officer in charge of scheduling ought to have known not to put training on the date of Yom Kippur, and if it could not be avoided altogether, they ought not to have, once again, been twisting  the arms of Jewish cadets to fulfill something that ought never to have been levied in the first place.

Once again, it is maddening to hear from the office of the Commandant the very same lame excuse it has used now for decades.  This business wreaks, at least, of incompetence, but more so of a “we don’t give a damn” attitude which seeks to hide behind an obfuscation that claims having once again failed to correct an “oversight,” because it knows that it can get away with it, and will run rough shod over the cadets to whom it is supposed to be teaching military ethics, one of which is to honor the religions of all military members.

The Superintendent of the Air Force Academy could resolve this conflict in a flash.  Whether she corrects the Commandant’s blatant and callous act or not will say a great deal more about the institution.  But the buck need not stop at the level of the Academy’s leadership.  Continuing to offer up the same excuse cannot be allowed to stand. It may well be time for the Air Force’s Inspector General to step in, and if that office, too, is unresponsive, then this may be an issue for Congress.  Thereafter, the remedy may lie with the court system. 

Ultimately this sort of discriminatory act must be met head on and be resolved in favor of the individual cadet who truly does have rights in the system of a service academy even if that organization attempts to exercise an unconstitutional power over him or her over which the cadet has limited facilities with which to deal.

Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman
Ch, Col, (Ret), USAF