Last Sunday, Congregation Tiferes B'nai Israel's monthly book club met at its usual spot, Panera Bread on Route 309. On speaker phone, from Al Asad Air Base, was Cutler, discussing the book Endless Light with about 10 members of his synagogue.

"It's a way of keeping him by our side," said Joyce Burstein, a member of the group.

Cutler stays connected to the 110 families he leads through e-mail, phone calls and snail mail. He sustains a Warrington community from thousands of miles away while working to create a similar sense of community among Jews in the military.

It is a duty - and a mission - that Cutler fulfills amid a group whose numbers are relatively few, and who are, consequently, often far away from each other.

"The Jewish personnel do feel isolated," Cutler, 52, said by telephone from Iraq, "so I'm trying to build community - and communities."

Cutler, a reservist who has achieved the rank of commander in the Navy, was called up last fall to serve Marine Air Control Group 38, a unit that controls air space in the Al Anbar province. The Flourtown resident was called specifically to help foster a sense of connection among Jewish troops.

There are about 1,600 Jews in Iraq and Afghanistan, or about 1 percent of the 165,000 serving in both countries, said Rabbi Brad Hoffman, deputy director of the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council, which endorses and recruits chaplains for the military.

Cutler is the first Navy rabbi to be assigned full time to the western region of Iraq, Hoffman said. The area previously had been served only by Navy rabbis who came over for limited periods, such as the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

"The majority [of Jewish troops] are in the process of discovering their spirituality," Cutler said. "They are young, and are in the military to get money for a college education. Many are not from observant homes. They may have a nominal Jewish education, but they are interested and they're trying to discover something."

As a Navy chaplain, Cutler serves troops of all faiths not only in the Navy, but also in the Marines and the Coast Guard. He conducts services, counsels troops, and because of a recent promotion to wing chaplain, supervises 23 chaplains serving throughout Iraq.

He is based in Al Asad, but travels to other bases with a 24-hour bodyguard/assistant. (Chaplains do not carry weapons.) Cutler visits bases in Fallujah, Ramadi, Al Taqaddum and Camp Korean Village. He is building a sense of community with connections that stretch not only from base to base, but also all the way to the United States.

Cutler has inaugurated a weekly Jewish newsletter distributed via e-mail, and started a lay leadership course at Al Asad. But perhaps his most notable achievement is the creation of the first permanent synagogue at Al Asad, with materials donated by U.S. congregations.

"I brought with me a Torah scroll from San Diego," Cutler said. "And, we didn't have an ark and the carpenters here on base built an ark out of plywood."

U.S. congregations, including Cutler's own, sent books, prayer shawls, Shabbat meals, Tastykakes and corkboard so that troops would have somewhere to post their letters from home. Banners to hang in the synagogue came from synagogues including Congregation Brothers of Israel in Newtown.

Cutler's tour is his third. The 23-year veteran joined the Navy after his ordination.

"The reason I chose the Navy over congregational life?" said Cutler, a graduate of Temple University and Springfield High School in Montgomery County. "Because I felt the Jewish population is so underserved in the military."

He was stationed in the Philippines, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, and Okinawa. He served in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War.

Cutler turned to congregational life in the early 1990s when he was appointed to the former Congregation Bet Tikva in Flemington, N.J. He joined Congregation Tiferes B'nai Israel in 1999. Two years later, he was called up to serve as a grief counselor after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"So here he is counseling people affected by the death and destruction at the Pentagon, and running back and forth on the train to us for high holiday services," said synagogue member Barry Kauffmann, a former president of the synagogue.

Cutler and his congregation were surprised when he was called up last year. They had been lulled into a sense of security because the war had been going on since 2003, and he hadn't been called.

His congregants worry about him, and admire his commitment.

"I find it remarkable," Kauffmann said, "because many people try to run from military service. Rabbi Cutler has never run from anything."