Aryeh Lev

Rabbi Aryeh Lev (1912-1975), served as director of the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy of the National Jewish Welfare Board. Rabbi Lev received the Legion of Merit in 1972 for his service with the 314th Infantry the Office of the Chief of Chaplains, the Office of the First Army Chaplain and the Army Chaplains School, on various overseas assignments and as “the key military religious con sultant to the Chiefs of Chaplains on all Jewish denominational matters.” Rabbi Lev came to the Jewish Welfare Board immediately after World War II, in which he was an Army chaplain serving as assistant to the Chief of Chaplains in the War Department. He continued in the Army Reserves in the rank of colonel until his retirement from the Army in 1972. Born in Jerusalem on June 6, 1912, he came here in 1917, graduated from Columbia University and was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1937. After serving as a rabbi in Lebanon. Pa., he became national director of Young Judea in 1940. From that post he entered the chaplaincy. Rabbi Lev was a former national chaplain of the Jewish War Veterans and a past president of the New York Chapter of the Military Chaplains Association. He was a member of the National Advisory Commission of the United Service Organizations. President Eisenhower appointed him to the President's Council on Youth Fitness in 1957. Rabbi Lev was active in the Boy Scouts of America and the Jewish Committee on Scouting. He served on the advisory board of the Chief of Chaplains of the Air Force and of the Veterans Administration. He was chairman of the Rabbinical Pension Board, a board member of the Jewish Family Service and a member of the National Jewish Relations Advisory Council and of the United States Committee for the United Nations Children's Fund.