No matter where a Jew is, Shabbat starts at sundown.
Except when it doesn't, as at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio.
There, due to Air Force orders, services for the Jewish Sabbath start hours before the light begins to fade. The rabbi, Captain Shaul Rappeport, lives placidly with this quirk of custom. It's not the only one.
For example, Rappeport is referred to not as a rabbi, but as a chaplain. He leads Jewish prayer not in a synagogue, but in a church – where there is both a light bulb-powered "eternal flame" and a large crucifix. While standing behind a lectern on a raised platform, he wears a tallit, or prayer shawl, over camouflage fatigues that match his camouflage kippah. One Friday afternoon this past winter, a flock consisting of a visiting journalist, three local civilians and six new recruits, also in fatigues, sat before him in a space big enough for hundreds of faithful. The male recruits were wearing camouflage kippot, as well.
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