The Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK- At a police prayer breakfast in a synagogue, Rabbi Martin Applebaum joked with some of the officers about the lack of bacon and ham in the meal before leading a prayer.
“God will give you strength to do what you do,” he said.
Police Chief Stuart Thomas and about a dozen officers gathered last week at the 100-year-old Synagogue Agudath Achim to meet Applebaum, the newest addition to the Little Rock Police Department’s growing chaplain program and the department’s first Jewish spiritual counsel.
Fewer than 1,000 Jews live in the state capital, and Applebaum knows of only one Jewish police officer in the city. But the police chaplain program is nondenominational.
Applebaum, who traveled around the world during his 13 years as a chaplain in the U.S. Army, moved to Little Rock in September to lead Agudath Achim.
Applebaum said his decades of work as a police and Army chaplain gave him the experience he needs to work in a city with a small Jewish presence. In the Army, he said, he spent most of his time counseling non-Jews.