(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)April 18, 2011

Rabbi Dr. David Fine

(MAHWAH, NJ) On April 18, David J. Fine, a congregational rabbi who is also an historian, spoke at Ramapo College of New Jersey under the auspices of the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Hillel of Ramapo College.

Entitled “Integration Without Antisemitism: The Experience of Jewish Soldiers in the German Army in World War I,” Fine brought to light new research that casts doubt on the usual narrative of Jewish military service in the Imperial German Army during the First World War. Instead of encountering widespread hostility, evidence from personnel records and letters home indicate an overall situation of acceptance. Jewish soldiers received commissions, and were also promoted and decorated for valor in the field without fuss. In writing home, Jewish servicemen rarely voiced complaints about discrimination. Even the very initiative that prompted the most disquiet among German Jews at the time, the so-called “Jew Census” of 1915, initiated at the insistence of anti-Semites in the Reichstag, painted a picture of widespread service and distinction on the part of Jewish servicemen in the German military.

Fine is rabbi of Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He received his Ph.D. in Modern European history from the City University of New York in 2010. He was ordained as a rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1999 and received his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1994.
 

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