Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff never expected to be in Beirut, Lebanon, on Oct. 23, 1983—the day suicide bombers drove trucks packed with explosives into the U.S. Marine barracks, killing 241 American service members. Yet his presence at the scene, and the advocacy that followed, would provide comfort and support to generations of U.S. troops. The experience strengthened his belief that “a coincidence is just God acting anonymously,” Resnicoff told News Media.
Assigned to the U.S. Navy’s 6th Fleet, Resnicoff served on a three-chaplain team responsible for supporting service members aboard 40 ships across the Mediterranean. He reached Beirut on Friday, Oct. 21, to conduct a memorial service for Jewish Marine Staff Sgt. Allen Soifert, who had been killed in the line of duty. Navy leaders planned to send Resnicoff back to his ship the next day, but he declined because, as an observant Jew, he would not travel during the Sabbath.
From left to right, Protestant chaplain Danny Wheeler, Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff and Catholic chaplain George Pucciarelli attend the Oct. 21, 1983, memorial service for Jewish Marine Staff Sgt. Allen Soifert two days prior to the terrorist bombing. (Courtesy of Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff)
Resnicoff was up early on Oct. 23, brushing his teeth at 6:22 a.m., when the building suddenly began shaking. Doors were ripped from their hinges and windows shattered. He and the others dropped to the floor for cover, initially assuming the building had been struck by rockets or mortar fire.
After the noise subsided, the men heard “these terrible, terrible screams” coming from a building about 50 yards away, where Protestant chaplain Danny Wheeler was staying with a large group of Marines.
American Marines search for survivors and bodies in the rubble, all that was left of their barracks headquarters in Beirut, after a terrorist suicide car bomb was driven into the building and detonated, killing 241 U.S. servicemen and wounding over 60. The American military was in Beirut as part of a multinational peacekeeping force. (Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
During his visits to Beirut, Resnicoff usually alternated between staying with the Catholic chaplain, George Pucciarelli, and Wheeler. By that rotation, he should have been at Wheeler’s residence that Friday. Instead, he stayed with Pucciarelli, who wanted to discuss something with him. “Who knows what it was we talked about,” Resnicoff later recalled. “But that probably saved my life.”
As the scale of the disaster became clear, Resnicoff watched Pucciarelli place his purple stole around his neck—“probably because he knew he was going to have to say many last rites.” Pucciarelli then turned to Resnicoff and said, “Follow me.”
Outside, Resnicoff saw that “the big, four-story building was gone with the smoke.” Beneath the wreckage lay 241 American service members: 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three Army soldiers. The Navy casualties included an entire medical detachment, leaving no medically trained personnel available to care for those who had survived.
Resnicoff, Pucciarelli and other first responders picked their way through the rubble, searching for survivors. “He went to one body on the ground, I went to another,” Resnicoff said of Pucciarelli. “We just cradled these wounded men and said, ‘Help is coming.’” They tore pieces from their clothing to clear blood, dirt and dust from the injured men’s faces. After Resnicoff had ripped apart his shirt, he used his Jewish head covering, or kippah, until it became “bloody and dirty and lost.”
Lebanese volunteer rescue workers carry the body of an American Marine from the rubble of the American Marines Barracks that was attacked by a terrorist truck bomb on Oct. 23, 1983. (Peter Charlesworth/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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Ambulances and helicopters eventually reached the scene, giving the chaplains a brief chance to recover. Pucciarelli told Resnicoff that he had never seen him without a head covering. After Resnicoff explained what had happened to his kippah, Pucciarelli tore a piece from his camouflage uniform and placed it on the rabbi’s head.
Pucciarelli later explained why he wanted the makeshift covering to remain visible: “In this country where every religion is killing every other religion, I want everyone here to remember not only that you and I, the chaplains, were helping everyone regardless of whether they had a religion or what religion they had, but that you and I had different religions [and were] standing together.”
Wheeler became the last living service member rescued from the wreckage, pulled out five hours after the explosion. Resnicoff said it took four days to recover the hundreds of bodies buried beneath the rubble. “These tough Marines were crying, helping their fellow military personnel,” he recalled.
As he comforted Marines who were grieving and working through the debris, Resnicoff drew on Jewish mourning traditions. “After the death, we have a week of family gathering around and telling stories about the person who died,” he explained. “The tradition is if you visit the family during that period, you don’t initiate the conversation, just show your concern and love through your presence, and if the mourners talk to you, then you have a conversation. So, when I would go from Marine to Marine, they were digging up the bodies of their comrades, I used that Jewish approach. I didn’t start the conversation, I just stood next to them to show them I was there, and then if they wanted to talk, I talked.”
Resnicoff said the practice also echoed the teaching associated with the Catholic friar St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel everywhere. Use words only if absolutely necessary.”
The Legacy of the Camouflage Kippah
Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, pictured in his camouflage kippah. (Courtesy of Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff)
Before the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist attack in Beirut, Resnicoff said Jewish service members routinely struggled to obtain permission to wear a kippah while serving in uniform.
In the early 1980s, Congress was considering the Religious Apparel Amendment, which would have permitted Jewish troops to cover their heads. “For two years, this amendment had failed. And then, in the Congressional Record, they told the story of this priest making this head covering for me,” Resnicoff said. “The amendment passed. They understood that it was a matter of pride that we could work side by side from different religions.” Then-Vice President George H. W. Bush asked Resnicoff to prepare a report about his experience. Former President Ronald Reagan later shared the report with 20,000 Baptists, an audience Resnicoff recalled “evidently appreciated it.”
In this Oct. 23, 1983 file photo, the aftermath of the bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. (AP)
In chaplain school, Resnicoff said that chaplains were trained to attend to severely wounded personnel from different religious backgrounds than their own. “But it turned out none of the people I comforted in Beirut asked me a religious question. It was just ‘if I die, tell my mother I love her.’ Most of those Marines were too young to have their own children.” He says that “I was reminded that the role of the chaplain is so much broader and bigger than just being a religious representative.”
“I always used to believe that the military was ahead of the civilian world when it came to understanding and working together. And when you’re in a foxhole or a bunker, you don’t really care if the guy next to you is a Democrat or Republican or independent, you don’t really care what their religion is. You just care that they’re going to protect you like you’re going to protect them and we’re all in this together.”
Resnicoff says that the Beirut bombing showed him that “if the world had more interfaith foxholes, we would have less need for foxholes and more room for faith.”