From The Baltimore Jewish Times - Karen Buckelew
December 12, 2003
Joseph Kashnow doesn't remember the moment of the explosion that tore through his Humvee and into his leg. He recalls only the second too late, when he realized what had happened.
His memories from that second and those that followed are minutely detailed, as if they took minutes or even hours ? veering off the Iraqi desert road and slowing the truck to a stop after the blast; the blood that covered the top of his boot when he finally glanced down; the words of his fellow American soldiers crowding around him as he lay, bleeding, on the sand.
Though Mr. Kashnow doesn't recall the exact second of the blast that happened too quickly, there is no question, said the 25-year-old Baltimore native, that it changed his life forever.
"This is all being made possible because of my injury," he said last Monday, Dec. 8, from his bed at the Mologne House Hotel on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus in Washington.
It's obvious that the "this" for which he is so grateful is not the hotel room itself, nor the metal device that extends its long poles into his shin to stabilize his damaged leg, nor the major surgery ? just one of many ? scheduled for dawn the next morning.
The Orthodox Jew, a cavalry scout for the U.S. Army, is reflecting on the twists of fortune that have led him to found the Jewish Soldiers Foundation, a non-profit still in its infancy, that will assist soldiers of his faith and their families.
He is grateful, too, he said, for an end to the long five months he spent fighting in Iraq before he was wounded Sept. 17, and for the lessons he learned there about himself, his faith and his place in the world as a frum Jew. And, more simply, as someone who faced death more than once during those months at war, he is grateful for his life.
"For some reason," he said, "it was not my time to die. I think it was direct divine intervention. God flicked the shots away."
Mr. Kashnow and his wife, Sarai, 23, are staying in the hotel at Walter Reed in the room the Army assigned to Mrs. Kashnow for her husband's latest surgery, a bone graft procedure to mend his fractured right tibia.
The couple occupies the time between his many surgeries ? likely to total 10 or so in the end ? setting up the foundation they hope will grow large enough to protect Jewish soldiers from the kinds of problems Mr. Kashnow faced in Iraq: lack of kosher meals, only occasional respect for the traditions of his religion, and sometimes cruel ribbing from his fellow GIs.
His dedication to the foundation and to healing from his wounds is unmistakable, though pain medicine slows his speech every few moments and causes his eyelids to droop. He speaks with a dry, quick wit, and it seems nothing is too sacred for a joke.
When he first reached his wife by phone at their home in Colorado Springs, near his home base at Fort Carson, shortly after the attack, Mr. Kashnow launched into detail about the explosion. He told her only that a nameless member of his company had been hurt, describing the soldier's wounds ? open fractures of his left tibia and fibula, shrapnel wounds in both legs and one arm ? and making it clear the injured man would be fine ? never letting on the soldier was himself.
"'So, how are you,'" she remembers asking, once he had finished his tale. "Then he said, 'Yeah, it was me.' If I had to find out, it was the best way to find out. I couldn't scream about it, because I already knew he was going to be fine."
The couple, married last Jan. 12, had spent just one week as husband and wife before he received orders to ship out. Five weeks later, he was gone. But though they had met a little over a year before at his parents' house in Baltimore, basic training and his Army service had confined their courtship mainly to letters and telephone calls. A long-distance relationship was nothing new to the couple.
It was his gentlemanly manner that truly won her over, she said, and his honesty that sealed the deal. It was that same honesty that soothed her fears as he left for Iraq.
"He promised me he'd come home," Mrs. Kashnow said. "He hasn't broken a promise yet. I had no reason to believe he wouldn't keep this one."
Mr. Kashnow grew up in Baltimore, a member of Congregation Shomrei Emunah, with his older brothers Scott and Michael, father Howard, a kosher food distributor, and stepmother Esther. A graduate of Northwestern High School, Mr. Kashnow said he always wanted to be a soldier.
"It was a dream of mine since I was a little kid with my GI Joes," he said in his hotel room, his wounded leg propped Indian style across his lap. "Part of it is good vs. evil, I think."
Though he married and worked for a Baltimore kosher fish company straight out of high school, he said, he wasn't happy. When Mr. Kashnow's first marriage fell apart, he enlisted with hopes of being a helicopter pilot. When circumstances prevented him from becoming a pilot immediately, he decided to join the cavalry and try for his dream of flying on his second tour of duty.
But thanks to his injury, said Mr. Kashnow, that will be impossible. The Army most likely will grant him a medical discharge, and he hopes to spend the rest of his life running the foundation with his wife.
"This experience has taught me priceless life lessons, to reciprocate the goodness that I have received," Mr. Kashnow said. "I want to protect the religious rights and freedoms of other soldiers like myself."
In Iraq, he said, he once went six weeks without kosher meals after his specially prepared meals ready-to-eat (MREs) disappeared. The good-natured ribbing common in the Army sometimes crossed over into malicious anti-Semitism in his case. And, he added, his superiors often were insensitive and ignorant about his religion and its traditions.
The Jewish Soldiers Foundation is filing for official tax-free status as a non-profit, and is building support across the nation and even in Congress, said Mr. Kashnow.
"This could take off to be, in my opinion, a great powerhouse as far as lobbying for Jewish rights and Jewish concerns and issues," said Mrs. Kashnow, who plans to head up the wife-and-family portion of the foundation.
"We were real proud he was doing something he felt was important, especially from bed," his brother, Michael Kashnow, said of the foundation from his home in Israel. "When he gets involved in something, he goes all the way. I think it could do wonderful things."
In the meantime, Mr. Kashnow expects at least a year of physical therapy to follow last Tuesday's bone graft procedure. Doctors tell him that, one day, he will be able to walk again with, at best, "a small limp," though now he can do nothing but hop on his good leg.
Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, met the Kashnows when he was rabbi at Shomrei Emunah in Baltimore. He has maintained contact with Mr. Kashnow since his injury, and the organization has asked its members to pray for his recovery.
"I hope he knows an awful lot of people are praying for him," the rabbi said. "Our religion is committed to fighting evil in any way possible. Not all of us have the opportunity to fight it directly as Joe did."
But, said Mr. Kashnow, absently stroking the gaping scar on his leg, his mission through his foundation is to make it easier than ever for more Jews to fight as he has done.
"I don't want anyone to go through what I went through, ever again," he said.
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Posted by: SPC KASHNOW on Apr 03, 06 | 3:13 pm
