In the military, uniformity is key. If you go to Fort Lejeune in North Carolina, you’ll see men and women dressed exactly the same, walking the same way and speaking in the same military jargon.
Uniformity is also taken seriously by many Orthodox Jews. Go to a Hasidic community, and you’ll see men with payot and black frock coats, as well as a mix of black kippot and big dark-colored fur hats called shtreimels. Women wear wigs or other hair coverings and dress modestly.
You might think that these two communities could agree on the need for a dress code. However, there is one part of the Orthodox uniform that now conflicts directly with U.S. military standards, thanks to recent directives from U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: beards.
New grooming regulations put in place by Hegseth in early October call for the elimination of long beards. He said candidly at a meeting with top officers that “if you want a beard, you can join Special Forces. If not, then shave.”
While there are not huge numbers of Orthodox Jews in the U.S. military, they do exist, as do attentive Sikhs, Muslims and others whose religious rules require that they not shave.
Hegseth — who is also known as head of the Department of War, depending on which moniker you choose for the U.S. government’s largest agency — has shaken up a lot since being appointed by President Donald Trump at the beginning of the latter’s second term, but no change has affected religious Jewish servicemen and women as much as this one.
A Jewish military chaplain who has a long history of service but asked to speak anonymously said that, if anyone is prepared to roll with the punches, it’s soldiers.
“Every few years we get a new administration, and things can change. They can shift things up and down, but never forget that God’s in charge. As a Jewish people, we’ve lived through all kinds of different regimes. The people who have concerns about wearing a beard or not are obviously people wearing beards for religious reasons,” he said. “That’s part of why the chaplaincy exists — to help support resiliency. We see that those people who have a faith group are more resilient because they lean on [faith] for support in the most challenging times.”
Dan Berkovitz was deployed to Iraq while in the Marines, and while he dons a large beard now, he didn’t then. Berkovitz, who lives in Greenspring in northwest Baltimore and works with Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., said that the new direcive could affect the futures of religious and bearded chaplains.
“If the directive is that the only way that you can get a waiver for shaving is that you’re not deployed, what ends up happening is that those rabbis, those chaplains, are not able to be deployed now, and that essentially affects their career,” Berkovitz said. “They’re not able to promote, they’re not able to get any accommodations or anything else because their career is stifled, because they’re not allowed to deploy.”
The chaplain said that some soldiers joined the military with the understanding that they’d be able to have a beard, while others joined when that wasn’t allowed. The military has gone back and forth on this over the years.
Ultimately, that’s not a determining factor for most soldiers, said the chaplain.
“Every person who joined the military, every service member, we took an oath of office, whether that’s actual duty or reserve duty or auxiliary duty,” he said. “We all take an oath, and the oath is to serve the Constitution of this country.”
For Berkovitz, the simple fact is that it’s not realistic for every soldier to be exactly the same. He pointed out there are age waivers and other exceptions made for soliders to do certain jobs, and that there is no reason religious facial hair can’t be one, too.
Uniformity is, of course, a large part of the reason that beards were banned in the past and are now now banned again, although some say that there are functional reasons, too. The Department of Defense maintains that a beard can prevent a gas mask from sealing properly. The Jewish chaplain doesn’t agree.
“The idea of the beard and gas masks has been proven time and time and time again to not be accurate,” he said. “Every year, we have to take these tests, and I know a plethora of guys [with beards] who take the test, and they pass time and time again.”
Berkovitz said that he heard the gas mask rationale many times while serving, and while he said he is unsure how true it is, there are masks made nowadays that cover the entirety of a solider’s face.
Advocating for the acceptance of religious beards is nothing to Jewish millitary chaplains and other advisors. The Jewish chaplain said that he has spent a career doing things like this.
“We are constantly advocating for, not just beards, but for the right to religious dietary needs, for example,” he said. “It can be done, it just takes additional effort.”
He said that those who argue against the acceptance of beards, kosher meals and more just don’t understand the dynamics of being a religious soldier.
“There’s always going to be anti-religious people. It’s not just antisemites — it’s anti-religious. A person of faith already understands commitment, they already understand that you don’t get to do what you want to do. They understand the chain of command,” he said.
Berkovitz said that every soldier should be accommodated to the extent that they need to be. Religious soldiers are just as important to the operations of the military as any other.
“The rank-and-file [soldiers] — unless there’s a deeply held belief — should be the same. But for those who have a deeply held religious belief, they should be allowed to have beards if they so choose, without it affecting deployments,” he said.
In the opinion of the Jewish chaplain, the effect of a rule that alienates religious soldiers could have a profoundly negative impact on the U.S. military.
“I believe that a religious warrior is a more resilient warrior,” he said.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of those wanting beards while serving want them for purely self expression reasons, not religious ones. The simple fact of life when I joined the Army is that if I wanted a beard I had to grow one on leave or after I left the service like 90% of the other Officers I served with and under. Somehow my fellow Jewish, Sikh and Muslim soldiers served with distinction while being clean shaven before the rules were loosened. I 100% agree with Sec. Hegseth on this. Beards should pretty much be limited to servicemembers that have verified shaving waivers due to medical reasons. No ifs, ands or buts.