Source: The Baltimore Sun
On February 10, 2002, The Baltimore Sun featured an article on Judaism at the Naval Academy. The history began to change when "a Supreme Court ruling in 1972 ended mandatory Sunday prayer. An All Faiths Chapel was built on campus nearly a decade after that. And before long, the academy hired a full-time Jewish chaplain... But the quest for Jewish belonging at the officer-training school will reach its largest milestone next year, when workers are to break ground for the first Jewish chapel in the academy's 157-year history... The Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel will be a three-story gray granite building with a 350-seat sanctuary and a library, a kitchen, and a dozen offices and meeting rooms... It will be the first U.S. military building bearing the Star of David on its exterior, and its boosters describe its construction as a breakthrough for Jewish midshipmen and the Navy... Backers contend that the chapel will be more than a place of worship. It will be, they say, a memorial to Jewish naval heroes, an emblem of religious diversity, and an antidote to many midshipmen's unfamiliarity with Judaism."