Photo By Mel Slater | Recent Chaplain Basic Officer Leader Course graduate, and Fort Jackson Jewish...... read more read more
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The Army’s Institute for Religious Leadership trains future chaplains and religious affairs specialists to provide religious support for all of America’s Soldiers.
The Institute library is an invaluable resource used to help provide students the most up-to-date information and research to excel in their training.
“We have the potential for Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu students here at USA-IRL to receive training to become Army chaplains and religious affairs specialists,” said Kathy Thomas, the Institute’s librarian. “The texts from the different faith groups allow our students, faculty, and staff to not only have material for academic reference, research and bibliographic services within their own faith groups but also to provide the opportunity to learn about the faith traditions of the Soldiers they are likely to meet across the globe who serve in our Army.”
“During each library orientation that I provide for new incoming classes, I always ask the students, as well as any new staff member who is onboarding, if there are significant books that led to their formation in ministry or professional development,” Thomas said. “If they provide me a list or let me know of those books, particularly if they do not see those titles in our current library catalog, I will try and add those titles to my next purchase order. This is one way that I proceed with the collection development process to help grow our collection so that it better reflects the needs of our personnel.”
Recently, books from the Jewish faith were added to the library collection.
Chaplain (Capt.) Rabbi Dovid Egert, a recent Chaplain Basic Officer Leader Course graduate, and now the Jewish Installation Chaplain here at Fort Jackson attended the CHBOLC Library Orientation.
He provided a list of titles of important Jewish materials that the library collection was missing. The list reflected many titles that Jewish Chaplains cited that would help bring the library collection of Jewish materials up to a higher standard that would better meet the needs of Jewish Chaplains. He also communicated this request to all Jewish Army Chaplains and Jewish Chaplains of all the other military branches.
It is a significant improvement to the Institute’s library collection.
“Jewish Soldiers and Jewish Chaplains actually have a well-stocked resource of Jewish material from the Gemara, or the Talmud, to prayer books, to whatever they need, Jewish wise to have,” said Egert. “If they go into a synagogue, they’ll find similar books to over here. Folks that aren’t Jewish can actually come and use the material as well. They’re all in English and Hebrew so anyone can read it.”
Thomas expressed her gratitude.
“I am so very grateful for Chaplain Egert’s efforts in helping improve the ... library’s Jewish collection. He has contributed so much to this library in giving us a list of books that we never had for the Jewish faith,” Thomas said.
This introduction of text is being done with other faith groups as well. According to Thomas, this has always been the case.
“Since I have been the librarian here at the (the Institute), it has always been my goal, to have the library collection reflect the needs of all faith groups, in an effort to better meet the (the Institute) mission. Chaplain (Col.) Imam Ibraheem Raheem also contributed many titles to help bring our Muslim/Islam collection to a higher standard,” Thomas said.
“Throughout the years that I have been here, the majority of the chaplains were of the Christian faith, and they have significantly contributed to our library collection development process. I have also added titles given to me by Buddhist, Hindu, Mormon, Christian Science, etc.”
As with all the books in the Institute library, they are here for our chaplains and religious affairs specialists as they seek to better accomplish the Chaplain Corps mission to serve the Army personnel and their dependents, whatever their faith group may be.
| Date Taken: | 10.07.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 10.18.2024 14:38 |
| Story ID: | 483450 |
| Location: | FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA, US |
| Web Views: | 8 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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