http://redseaped.blogspot.com/Airman 1st Class ELIZABETH JACOBSON, 21, was killed providing convoy security Sept. 28 near Camp Bucca, Iraq, when the humvee she was riding in was hit by an improvised explosive device.
Jacobson was born in Florida, and raised near Fresno, California. She was assigned to the 17th Security Forces Squadron at Goodfellow Air Force Base, Texas. Jacobson had been in the Air Force for two years and had been deployed to Iraq for more than three months. She was initially assigned to a detention camp in Iraq, but volunteered for more dangerous duty.
She is the first female Airman killed in the line of duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
“She was an outstanding Airman who embraced life and took on all the challenges and responsibilities with extraordinary commitment to her country, her comrades and her family,” said Col. Scott Bethel, 17th Training Wing commander at Goodfellow.
As reported by the New York Jewish Week, "The terrorist attacks of 9-11 had motivated Elizabeth Nicole Jacobson, an 11th-grader when the terror attacks occurred, to join the military. 'I told her over two years ago that enlisting after 9-11 meant she would definitely see combat,”'her father, David, recalls. “She said she was prepared for that. She believed that being there [in Iraq] meant not fighting them here.'''
Jacobson had a complicated religious background, like many children of inter-faith families. Her father, David Jacobson, is Jewish, while Elizabeth's mother, Marianne, is not Jewish. Her parents divorced when she was a young child and Elizabeth was baptized and mostly raised Christian. However, her father began a journey to become a much more religious Jew about five years ago and is Orthodox, today.
Her father's Orthodox Judaism greatly interested Elizabeth and, on her own volition, she requested that the word "Jewish" be put on her dog tags before being sent to Iraq.
David Jacobson was touched by this gesture, even though as an Orthodox Jew, he realized his daughter was not Jewish as Jewishness is defined by traditional Jewish law (under traditional Jewish law--one's mother must be Jewish or one must convert to Judaism via an Orthodox recognized conversion. The Reform wing of American Judaism, by contrast, recognizes the children of Jewish fathers as "Jewish," even without a formal conversion, if the child of a Jewish father demonstrates his or her affiliation to the Jewish religion through certain life-cycle events like bar or bat mitzvah.)
One Jewish newspaper quotes David Jacobson and Elizabeth's paternal grandfather as saying that Airman Jacobson had expressed a desire to convert to Orthodox Judaism upon her return to the States. Another Jewish newspaper piece leaves this a bit less clear. It is clear that her father's transformation from a secular Jew to a religious one had impressed and affected Airman Jacobson.
Elizabeth Jacobson was buried in a non-denominational ceremony that incorporated some Jewish traditions--including a plain shroud and plain coffin. Touchingly, David Jacobson added that he said the Jewish prayer for the dead for his daughter---the Talmud, he said, allows a Jewish parent to mourn a non-Jewish child in this way.
At the funeral, Air Force officers presented her father and mother with American flags. Her family also received Elizabeth Jacobson's Bronze Star and Purple Heart.
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