As Longtime Deputy Director
Prepares to Leave, JWB Jewish Chaplains Council Seeks Candidate
for New Full-time Post
NEW YORK, NY, January 9, 2007 – As Rabbi Nathan Landman,
who has served for the past 21 years as deputy director of
the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council, makes plans to step down,
JWB’s director, Rabbi Harold Robinson, praised his leadership,
which Robinson said paved the way for the position to be upgraded
to full-time status.
“He has done wonderful things,” said Robinson.
“But we now need somebody who will do all of that on
a full-time basis, along with a whole new level of logistical
support for the troops. We’re really filling a bottomless
pit because [armed services] people are Jewishly alone and
lonely and far from home. We’re the only ones bringing
yiddishkeit and a taste of home to them. Since 9/11, we are
more aware of the Jews who are in the armed forces and less
willing to let them go without service. We’ll be building
on Rabbi Landman’s success.”
Among Landman’s many accomplishments, according to Robinson,
was the introduction of electronic communications. “He
brought e-mail, which was the wave of the future when he started
doing it.” Landman e-mails a weekly “Torah Thoughts”
lesson based on the parsha, and established “Nate’s
Notes” to keep all chaplains and lay leaders connected
and informed of resources and important information emanating
from the JCC Association central office at 520 Eighth Avenue
in New York City. JCC Association is the parent agency of
the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council
Another important advance, noted Robinson, was Landman’s
development of the lay leader program, compensating for the
decreasing number of rabbis going into the chaplaincy. Landman,
said Robinson, “handles recruitment, appointment, supervision,
training, advising, guiding – all the functions required
to completely manage the program.” In addition, Robinson
said that Landman is responsible for a host of other council
initiatives; these include professional correspondence with
military personnel around the world; CHAPLINES, JWB’s
quarterly newsletter; overseeing JCC Association Women’s
Organizations’ worldwide holiday gift distribution;
administration of the Passover Seder kit program; development
of the JWB display at the JCCs of North America Biennial Convention;
creation of pamphlets on Jewish holidays and life-cycle events
for use by military and veterans affairs officials. “He’s
been the reliable glue binding different parts of the program
together,” Robinson concluded.
Landman joined JWB in 1985, following his retirement four
years earlier from the air force. He first entered the chaplaincy
in 1956 and after serving for two years, left to take pulpits
in southern California. Five years later, however, he was
back in the military, where he remained on full-time active
duty until 1981, serving a total of 20 active and 5 reserve
years that included 10 years overseas. During his tenure at
JWB, where he worked two days a week, Landman performed a
variety of other jobs in Jewish communal service, among them
teaching an Introduction to Judaism course in the adult education
program at Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now Union
of Reform Judaism); serving as the chaplain for a network
of 21 nursing homes throughout Westchester County, through
the New York Board of Rabbis; serving as Jewish chaplain at
the Home for the Aged Blind in Yonkers, NY; and serving as
part-time and High Holy
Days rabbi at several congregations in New York, New Jersey
and the Virgin Islands.
Over the years, Landman received a number of prestigious awards,
including: Meritorious Service Award with two Oak Leaf Clusters;
Four Chaplains Award, presented by Chaplain Alexander B. Goode-Ben
Goldman B'nai Brith Lodge, May, 1974; Rabbi J.X. Cohen “Chaplain
of the Year” Award for 1995, presented by the Chaplaincy
Commission, New York Board of Rabbis; and the Zagelbaum Family
“Chaplain of the Year Award” for 2002 from the
New York Board of Rabbis.
His professional affiliations include membership in the Central
Conference of American Rabbis, on whose executive board he
served for two years in the mid-seventies, and on the New
York Board of Rabbis. Landman is the author of Divre Torah
and Words of the Prophets, two volumes of commentaries on
the weekly Torah and Haftarah portions, published in 1972
and 1973 by the National Jewish Welfare Board for distribution
to chaplains and lay leaders in the armed forces. He also
published several articles in The Jewish Spectator, The Reconstructionist
and Humanistic Judaism.
After receiving his bachelor of arts degree in philosophy
from the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1950, Landman
went on to earn a bachelor of Hebrew letters from Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, followed
by a master’s degree and rabbinic ordination there in
1956. Returning to school years later, he earned a master’s
in English literature from Trinity University in San Antonio,
Texas in 1970. He also completed courses in rabbinical bereavement
counseling, sponsored by the New York Board of Rabbis and
the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies Commission on Synagogue
Relations, and in clinical pastoral training at Bellevue Hospital
in New York. HUC-JIR in New York awarded him an honorary doctor
of divinity in 1981.
He’s descended from a family deeply rooted in both Reform
Judaism and the military, something in which he takes great
pride. Writing last winter on the 50th anniversary of his
ordination from HUC-JIR, Landman paid tribute to his legacy:
My grandfather, Dr. Louis Hyamson Landman , a maskil from
the town of Sudilkov, near Kiev, arrived in Cincinnati in
1887, and studied with Dr. Gotthard Deutsch at the College.
Although he was a Zionist, two of his son, became “classic”
Reform rabbis. Rabbi Isaac Landman was one of the Reform Movement’s
distinguished leaders in his generation, and my father, Rabbi
Solomon Landman,, founded the Hillel Foundation at the University
of Wisconsin, and served as rabbi of Temple Isaiah of Kew
Gardens, New York, until his early death in 1951, during my
first year at the seminary.
My uncle, Rabbi Isaac Landman, served as chaplain to General
Pershing’s forces on the Mexican border in 1916, and
later helped organize the National Jewish Welfare Board in
1917 as representative of the CCAR. My aunt, Sara Landman,
was a volunteer worker for JWB in France, and then served
at the center in Koblenz, Germany in 1918. And my father,
while still a rabbinic student at HUC in Cincinnati, was a
volunteer worker at Camp Johnston, FL. in 1917.
Landman and his wife, Libby, residents
of Larchmont, New York, have four children and six grandchildren.
###
JCC Association
is the leadership network of, and central agency for the Jewish
Community Center Movement, which is comprised of 350 JCC,
YM-YWHA and camp sites in the U. S. and Canada. JCC Association
offers a wide range of services and resources to strengthen
the capacity of its affiliates to provide educational, cultural,
social, Jewish identity-building, and recreational programs
to enhance the lives of North American Jews of all ages and
backgrounds. Additionally, the movement fosters and strengthens
connections between North American Jews and Israel as well
as with world Jewry. JCC Association is also the U.S. government
accredited agency for serving the religious and social needs
of Jewish military personnel, their families, and patients
in VA hospitals through JWB Jewish Chaplains Council.
Miriam
Rinn
Communications Manager
JCC Association
15 E. 26 St., NY, NY 10010
212-786-5092
grounds. Additionally, the movement fosters and strengthens
connections between North American Jews and Israel as well
as with world Jewry. JCC Association is also a U.S. government
accredited agency for serving the religious and social needs
of Jewish military personnel, their families, and patients
in VA hospitals through JWB Jewish Chaplains Council.
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founded by the National Football League and NFL Players Association
in 1998 to use football as a catalyst to promote positive
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