Introduction: This four-page letter was written home to family on October 1, 1943 from Sicily. We have selected this letter for its description of an ecumenical religious service for Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year) that brought people of different faiths together by the hundreds, when a normal service usually drew about fifty men.  Warren Schwartz was Jewish, but, as he describes, prior to the war he was not very religious. One humanities question of interest is what is it about war that might increase a person’s enthusiasm for religious services?

Schwartz describe two sets of services for the observation of Rosh Hashana. One wonders how often services were observed for soldiers of non-Christian faiths, and whether those who were not Jewish were voluntarily drawn to such services or expected to attend. The first service he describes was at night, attended by 300 soldiers and intended to be in a lighted tent, but the huge turnout left the Chaplain no option but to take everyone outside, where they formed a large circle in the dark (with the joke that these were “Blackout Services”) (RS2). The setting must have been dramatic with “a large blaze” visible on a nearby mountain (RS2)–was this a reminder of the war going on around them, or was the fire’s origin of another sort? Schwartz discusses the “Jewish Welfare Board,” which failed to provide the necessary prayer books, despite the Chaplain’s pleading (RS3).

The second service was held twenty miles away in a town, attended this time by 800 soldiers, and it was inside a “temple” with ceiling murals of “luscious nudes rampaging across pink clouds”–surely a Christian church (RS3). Schwartz notes that the services were “reform” rather than “orthodox,” given the presence of a female nurse in the first row (RS4). Interestingly, the responsive reading and singing by the men was “a good part” in English, perhaps to be more inclusive of the non-Jewish members of the congregation (RS2)

Instructions: To read from the digital facsimiles, click on an image below.  For an enlargement, click again on the image when you reach the next page. You also have an option to view a digital transcription of each page or a full transcript, with a compilation of all four pages. The transcriptions are diplomatic (i.e. literal) and as faithful to the original letter as possible, but a few words have been difficult to decipher.

page 1 (transcription)

page 2 (transcription)

page 3 (transcription)

page 4 (transcription)