Herbert Tarr (–1993)

I wouldn't call this humorous novel, first published in 1963, a "deep" book, but it is a very thoughtful one. David Cohen is a newly ordained rabbi who is told by the head of his rabbinical seminary that unless he spends two years in the military as a chaplain first, he'll never get a congregation of his own. (Again, this is 1963, during the days of the Cold War. I'm sure such things do not go on today.) Duly coerced, Cohen finally succumbs and tries to enlist as an Army chaplain. But our hero is an early 60s anti-hero, and so a smartass, and manages to irritate someone at his physical exam to the extent that he is blacklisted. Sighing deeply, Cohen's superior pulls strings and gets Cohen into the Air Force. Once he begins his Air Force Chaplaincy training, he is plunged into several strange new worlds at once.

His parents having been killed in a car crash when he was very young, Cohen has been raised by his loving, aunt and uncle, immigrants both, in a very Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Although comfortable in the diverse cultures and classes of New York City, Cohen's sudden status as one of only two Jews in a 50-chaplain training course, though expected, still comes as a shock, especially as many of his classmates have never met a Jew before. His roommate, with whom he becomes good friends, has been under the misconception, for example, that rabbis, like Catholic priests, are celibate.

And so, in many ways, this is a novel about alienation and loneliness, and the ways in which we can make our peace with those conditions, or not. Cohen is a Jew in a Gentile world and very much a civilian dropped suddenly into military life. Soon he is a northern liberal in the segregated south. Also a city dweller dealing with the cultural isolation of life on an Air Force base. And he is an Air Force chaplain with a fear of flying! Tarr handles these themes well. They are implicit rather than explicit; we are not hit over the head with them (except maybe the fear of flying part). Surprisingly effective are Cohen's conversations (not debates, thank goodness) about religion and philosophy with his roommate, a Lutheran minister.

The novel is mostly episodic, as Cohen settles into his two-year chaplain stint and begins to figure out his role, and deal with his own loneliness, his outspokenness occasionally getting him into trouble. Some of these episodes work better than others, but overall I found this novel quietly effective. As a Jew myself, I found the portrayal of Judaism and Jewish philosophy to be well done and rarely heavy handed. The book is a timepiece, certainly, as the patriotic descriptions of the crucial nature of the Strategic Air Command as a temporary bulwark of world peace (until the politicians can get their acts together) make clear. I found that that added to the interest for me. It reflected, for example, the sort of thinking my own father would have been doing.… (mehr)