The Few, The Proud, The Frum

Chaim Shmuel Stitzer: “The key is to know halachah well enough to know what’s assur… halachah can’t be put aside” (Photos: Personal archives)

U S Air Force Captain Chaim Shmuel Stitzer 28 is stationed at Buckley Air Force Base (AFB) in Colorado. He grew up in Atlanta Georgia and Monsey New York and attended Yeshiva Shaarei Torah (Monsey) Ner Israel (Baltimore) Sh’or Yoshuv (Lawrence New York) and Yeshivas Ohr Reuven (Monsey).

He received his degree in cybersecurity and military studies through the City University of New York while completing Air Force Training through the Reserve Officer Training Corps in Manhattan College. Since being commissioned as a cyberspace operations officer in the Air Force Captain Stitzer has been stationed at Keesler AFB in Mississippi Barksdale AFB in Louisiana and Buckley AFB. He and his wife have three children and today they live in Denver.

I joined the military because

I have hakaras hatov for all the freedoms the US gives us and I wanted to give back and help protect those freedoms. I knew I wanted to work in computers and the Air Force was just starting their dedicated cyberspace command so I went in that direction. I knew I’d travel a lot giving me the opportunity to make a kiddush Hashem around people who haven’t seen many Jews and I could also get involved in kiruv — some of these bases are very far from any Jewish community so I can provide events learning and support to troops who want to connect. I really felt that when I was stationed in Louisiana — we were a few hours from the nearest shul and Chabad listed us as an area contact. We made Shabbos meals for a woman visiting someone in the local hospital and when two students had projects in our area we hosted both of them for Shabbos for a month.