A Timeout for Rosh Hashanah on the European Battlefield during World War I

After much delay, the next article to be presented to you as part of the Museum's Newspaper Archive is now ready for your perusal.

Nearly half a million Jewish soldiers, the "largest number under arms since the children of Israel ceased to be a nation," laid aside their weapons of war in 1914 to observe Rosh Hashanah. The picture displayed here shows Day of Atonement services held by the Jewish soldiers in the German army during the Franco-Prussian War (which took place between 1870 and 1871). It presents a scene that was enacted by the rival armies of Europe more than forty years later.

You can read this September 21, 1914 article that appeared within Philadelphia's Evening Ledger. The article is entitled "Jews Worshipping Amid Din of Battle in War-Torn Europe" and can be found here.

The Museum's entire Newspaper Archive list with links to more than one hundred articles (most of them published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) can be found here.