Obituary in Jewish Week

Rabbi Samuel M. Kaufman, an award-winning military chaplain, scholar and educator who served during World War II with the American armed forces in Italy and North Africa, died on Simchat Torah, October 19, 2003, at the age of 93.

A descendant of the noted religious scholar, Noda Beyehuda, Rabbi Kaufman was born on November 14, 1909, on the Lower East Side, the youngest of 5 children. His parents had arrived as immigrants in New York in the 1890s from Dvinsk, Russia. He attended the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva and the Talmudical Academy (TA) then housed on East Broadway. He graduated City College, then known as “ the Harvard of the proletariat,” and received rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the revered leader of Orthodox Judaism.

During the economically challenging 1930s, Rabbi Kaufman taught in the NYC school system. With the outbreak of WWII, he saw service as military chaplain with the American Army in Casablanca in 1942-1943 and in Pisa in 1944-1945. In the newly liberated Italian city, he assumed the role of spiritual leader of a Jewish community freshly traumatized by the brutal execution of its communal leader by the Nazis. In honor of his exemplary humanitarian achievement, he received an honorary plaque from the Pisa Jewish community after the war.

Since 1957, Rabbi Kaufman had served as the Jewish Chaplain at the Manhattan V.A. Medical Center. For his distinguished record of longstanding service, he was selected to receive the venerable Secretary of Veteran Affairs National award for Excellence in Chaplaincy which was conferred posthumously in December 2003 in Washington, DC. Rabbi Kaufman was known in the hospital as the “chaplain of choice” for patients and staff of all faiths.

He is survived by his son, Gary, a New York tax attorney.