This is the cover story of this week's Baltimore Jewish Times:
U.S. Army Reservist, he is brigade chaplain for the Gaithersburg-based 220th Military Police Brigade, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. During the first Gulf War, Rabbi Ackerson, who lives in Pikesville and attends Congregation Shomrei Emunah, served as an Army battalion chaplain for the 2nd Battalion, 52nd Air Defense Artillery (Hawk) of the 18th Airborne Corps in Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq."I have a healthy fear of going to war, which is good," Rabbi Ackerson, who grew up in Woodmere, N.Y., told the Baltimore Jewish Times in March 2003, shortly before his deployment to Kuwait. "War is a crazy thing. I come this time with more maturity and experience. I know what war entails.
"The average American doesn't understand war, especially the younger generation," he said. "They see all the high-tech stuff. You forget there are real live people shooting and being shot and dying. I tell the younger soldiers, 'It's not an adventure.'"
But even the characteristically modest and easygoing Rabbi Ackerson might employ the term adventure in describing his past year of service in the war zone, which included visits to such trouble spots as Tikrit and Fallujah.
Rabbi Ackerson and his family live around the block from us and attends our synagogue. I want to welcome him back to the neighborhood and thank him for all he has done and continues to do for our country and our community.