Lubavitcher Captain Stays True

by Aharon Granevich-Granot for Mishpacha Magazine

Camp Casey, the US base closest to North Korean soil and home of the only American combat brigade in Korea, where Captain Ben (Binyamin) Diamond serves as the Garrison Headquarters commander. Inside the base, young soldiers snap to attention before Captain Diamond, who releases them from that position with a nod of his head.

Tanks and armored personnel carriers are lined up alongside special reinforced vehicles that have already seen action on the battlefields of Iraq. Captain Diamond himself was stationed there once, but then he was still a young, ambitious soldier who had not yet learned what it meant to be Jewish. In Iraq he was in an infantry brigade and worked as the security platoon leader for the bomb squad.

We watch in fascination as he inspects one vehicle after another, agile as a monkey as he climbs onto each one and then off again, testing the tanks’ readiness for battle and inspecting the APCs. The other soldiers at the garrison stay prepared for wartime by conducting military training exercises every week, including training in first aid, weapons familiarization, and communications procedures.

Captain Diamond’s office is easily identified by the large mezuzah hanging on the doorpost. Entering his office, Binyamin Diamond removes his military cap and reveales a big black yarmulke. Come Shabbos, the company commander doffs his uniform and dons chassidic garb. And Captain Diamond isn’t
alone.

One of his soldiers, Nosson Kerendian, is also a yarmulke-clad baal teshuvah, setting a surrealistic scene: Nosson, Captain Diamond, photographer Eli Cobin, and I — four frum Yidden sitting in together in an East Asian military base as if we were in a beis medrash.

Visitors to the Chabad house in Seoul might have difficulty picturing the man dressed in the chassidic hat and frock as a captain in the US Army. For most Shabbosim, Ben is able to leave his residence near Camp Casey and drive to Seoul with his wife and son, Aryeh Leib, to be guests of Seoul’s Chabad Shliach Rabbi Osher Litzman.

The rabbi and the captain sing stirring Chabad niggunim together until late at night, and then Binyamin takes his leave to study the sedrah of the week until the wee hours in the morning.

A few hours later, Binyanim rises early on Shabbos morning to learn Maseches Sotah before davening. In fact, some members of the American Jewish community in Seoul view Reb Binyamin as their mashpia.

Sunday is for giving Torah classes in Seoul, and on Sunday evening Captain Binyamin swaps his black-and-white for army greens once again.

“I’m always in uniform,” he remarks. “Sometimes it is the uniform of Hashem’s army, and sometimes the uniform of the American army, but I’m always serving the flag.”

No Beards Allowed

Binyamin Diamond was born and raised in Houston to a family affiliated with the Conservative movement. As a teenager he attended a public high school and after graduation he attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he majored in civil engineering and worked on exchange programs with military men from France and Senegal.

When he graduated from West Point with the rank of second lieutenant, Binyamin was thrilled to be able to serve America. “At that time, I didn’t leave much room for Hashem in my decisions,” he relates.

After completing his training as a military officer and engineer, he was assigned to the US Army Corps of Engineers. He served as a platoon leader, a general’s military aide, company executive officer, task force engineer and company commander, positions that took him to Germany, Kuwait, and then Iraq, where he was scheduled to serve for a year.

But the army returned Binyamin to Germany, primarily to replace the rear-detachment executive officer for six months. “It was min haShamayim,” he says.

“I was stationed in Schweinfurt, in Bavaria, and there was an infantry soldier, Boaz Vituk, who was in the process of transitioning to be a Jewish chaplain in the US Army. He learned Tanya with me over our lunch break, and we would go to the Chabad shliach in Nuremberg, Rabbi Eliezer Chitrik, over Shabbos.”

One day, he decided to daven in the Frankfurt Yeshivah, Tomchei Temimim. One of the Chabad emissaries there watched the American officer withdraw a yarmulke from his pocket and place it on his head, and immediately offered to help him put on tefillin and invited him to a Torah class.

“I said to myself, Why not? I just felt as if these are the things a Jew has to do, then I need to do my duty as a Jew.” At the time, Binyamin had no idea that that his new “duties” were about to change his life.

“I began taking on more and more mitzvos. I became more careful about kashrus, which I had been rudimentally keeping anyway. I began putting on tefillin regularly, and I committed myself to keep Shabbos.”

He resolved that when he concluded his service, tentatively scheduled for 2015, he would leave the army and become a yeshivah student. But Hashem had other plans for him. In the meantime, Binyamin was introduced to the young lady with whom he would build his home.

Before the wedding, he came to New York, to the Lubavitcher Rebbe‘s headquarters in Crown Heights, where he studied in preparation for his chasunah.

After the sheva brachos, Binyamin Diamond returned to his base as an Orthodox Jew, and to a military promotion — but he knew that army regulations prohibit him from growing a beard.

“I will tell you something very bizarre, something that is truly a miracle. I davened to Hashem for a solution to the problem of my beard. In Chabad, shaving a beard is a very sensitive subject, and I had to make a choice. So I prayed and waited for a miracle.

“Over the course of six months, all of my hair fell out. No one who saw me could believe it,” Reb Binyamin recalls.

“I went to many doctors and underwent extensive testing. The doctors were baffled. All the tests came out normal, and to this very day, not one of the doctors can explain what happened. From my perspective, it was a true miracle. I had naively thought that somehow I would be allowed to grow a beard, but Hashem has His own solutions.…”

In another year and a half, Captain Diamond plans to hang up his uniform and move with his family to Eretz Yisrael. “The fact that I’ve been privileged to be an officer in the US Army is certainly Hashgachah pratis and has taught me about Kiddush Hashem and about inspiring other Jews that they should never feel limitations when it comes to their religious observance.”

“And the beard?” Reb Binyamin smiles, his voice filled with hope. “The beard will grow back. By then I will have finished my army service.”