feature story
SERVING THE
U.S. NAVAL ACADEMY
Carin M. Smilk |
Baltimore Jewish Times Editor
RABBI YONINA CREDITOR STARTS CHAPLAINCY POSITION, STRESSING FOUR TENETS:
TO PROVIDE, FACILITATE, CARE AND ADVISE
everyone has the ability to practice religion authentically.”
And while she makes it a point to say that “my job encompasses every-
thing” — that it has a wide umbrella — she does specify four tenets of
service: to provide, facilitate, care and advise.

Working in the Miller Chapel housed in the Commodore Uriah P. Levy
Center, she provides religious services for her own faith group, Judaism,
even though she is there to assist and advocate for other faith communi-
ties at the Academy. And she does so in ways big and small.

For example, she advises like any rabbi would. Th at entails assistance in
matters of family, fi nances, mental health, physical health and, for Jewish
personnel, access to services, classes and lectures, religious items like
kippahs and prayer books, and access to kosher food, or ordering MREs,
or Meals-Ready-to-Eat, which can be obtained for regular consumption
and/or for holidays with special eating restrictions, like Passover. She
notes that she does work with both the Jewish Welfare Board-Jewish
Chaplain’s Council, her endorser, as well as the Aleph Institute in
MikeBagley64 /E+v
TALKING TO RABBI YONINA CREDITOR is an exercise in effi ciency.

She tells it like it is in a way that’s both straightforward and positive,
speaking with such candor, wisdom and joy of duty that she almost seems
as if she’s the one interviewing you.

Creditor is the new rabbi assigned to the U.S. Naval Academy in
Annapolis, Maryland — she is a rabbi assigned to the Naval Academy
itself and a battalion chaplain — a position she started on Sept. 21 and
will hold for the next three years. A lieutenant commander, she is one of
nine chaplains assigned to the Naval Academy and one of eight rabbis on
active duty in the Navy.

As for the new job … so far, so good. “It’s going OK,” she says
congenially. Th at, of course, seems an understatement. Creditor is charged with a
signifi cant portfolio as a main communication link for everything Jewish
among midshipmen and service members assigned to the academy. She’s
not just a Jewish leader but a leader, period, noting that “I advocate so that
26 NOVEMBER 24, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM