Item by item, Commander Irving Elson, USN, unpacked the contents of his khaki chaplain’s kit onto the table at the Abrams Hebrew Academy in Yardley, Pa. — a miniature Torah scroll, a metal Kiddush cup, a wooden pointer, a tube to hold a chemical/fluorescent eternal light, waterproof matches, and a camouflaged prayer shawl with detachable fringes.

“First of all, you should know that there are Jewish men and women in the military. About 2 percent of all people in the military are Jewish,” Elson told the more than 100 middle-school students who were assembled in the multipurpose room to hear his presentation.

“Being a rabbi in the military is in some ways like being a rabbi in a synagogue — but my congregation was scattered over 50,000 miles of desert,” he said. “You don’t need a big fancy synagogue to make Shabbat. All you need is people to make Shabbat.”

A Conservative rabbi, Elson served two combat tours as a Navy chaplain with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq — in 2003-2004 during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and in 2005. He has been in the U.S. Navy Chaplain Corps for the past 20 years, and now serves as the Jewish chaplain at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. But before he joined the Navy, Elson served for two years as the first rabbi of the Yardley Synagogue. During that time, he became friendly with Rabbi Ira Budow, head of school at Abrams.

“We brought Rabbi Elson up to talk about his experiences in Iraq because we thought it was important for the kids to hear,” Budow said during an interview before the recent program. “After seeing what Rabbi Elson has done over the past five years, it is very clear to me that he is an American Jewish hero and an important person for our kids to learn from.”

The chaplain said he came to Abrams with three goals. “Number one, I want the kids to know that there are Jewish men and women honorably serving in the United States military — there always have been, and there are now — and that it’s a Jewish thing to do,” he told the New Jersey Jewish News.

“Number two, I want them to know you can have a meaningful Jewish life while serving in the military,” he said. “And, number three, I want them to know that it’s important to know that you can be Jewish anywhere.”

Elson sought to meet those goals with an hour of show-and-tell featuring his chaplain’s kit, his packages of military Ready-to-Eat meals, and his photos of Jewish life in the Iraqi war zone.

“One of my jobs as a chaplain is to take care of Jews in the military,” Elson told the students as his photos flashed on the screen — Elson leading a Shabbat service for a handful of Jewish Marines in the Kuwaiti desert, Elson standing in front of a mural of Saddam Hussein after the fall of Baghdad, Elson unfurling a blue and white flag decorated with tablets of the Ten Commandments and a Jewish star.

“For the first time, I think, in the history of Iraq, we flew a Jewish flag,” he said.

One photo showed Elson leading a seder in the former headquarters of the Iraqi Army. “This is a seder I did with three Marines way out on the outskirts of Baghdad, and literally all I had was matzas, a little bottle of Kedem [grape juice], and a little packet of maror (bitter herbs) — and I did have a shank bone — but we were able to have a seder,” he said.

“This was perhaps one of the most important moments of my life,” Elson added. “I realized: What do you need for Pesach? You need Jews to get together. That’s what’s most important. War is horrible. You’re always tired. You’re always hungry. Yet for these Marines, it was important to travel to do a seder.”

Another photo showed Elson serving up apples and honey to Jewish Marines in Fallujah on the eve of Rosh Hashana, just moments before a mortar slammed into the building.

“There were a lot of bad guys in Fallujah,” he told the students. “There was going to be a really big battle and they needed a rabbi, so I got a chance to go to Fallujah for the High Holidays. It was really important for these Marines to have their apples and honey.

“I was scared,” he added. “I can’t tell you how scared I was. It was a little outpost on the border of Syria. They’re lonely. They’re tired. They’re hungry. So you really provide a kehilla — a community. We didn’t have a long service. What was important was that we were able to get together and celebrate the holiday.”

As the students made their way back to class, Jake Marcus, an eighth-grader from Lower Merion, Pa., remarked about “how amazing it is that he gives the soldiers hope.”

“It’s amazing,” agreed Alex Liberman, an eighth-grader from Southampton, Pa., “how he lived through it and how much he sacrificed, just doing all this prayer with people.”

“I thought it was very interesting to actually listen to a person who experienced the war in Iraq,” said David Meller, an eighth-grader from Lower Merion.

“I think the rabbi has done so much for this country by doing what he did,” added Danielle Bennov, an eighth-grader from Langhorne, Pa. “He put spirit and hope into the soldiers and kept them going, which was a very good thing. He’s definitely a hero.”