The Four Children of Miluim
The ones who never got a vote After 153 days of reserve duty, I’ve written about coming home and about the miluim wife who lives in two worlds. This post is about the people in our homes who never got a vote: the kids. Every Pesach we read about four children, each hearing the same […]
What a Miluim Wife Needs on a Tuesday Night
Two worlds at once After 153 days of reserve duty, I turned in my gun and came home. Everyone asks how I’m readjusting. The person in my house who had the harder job is my wife. For five months she lived in two worlds. In the first, life ran as usual: work, errands, dinner, the […]
The Ones Who Stay Behind
I was sitting at the Yom Hazikaron ceremony in Modiin when my phone buzzed. The names were still flashing across the screen. Sons. Fathers. Brothers. Eighteen-year-olds who will never turn nineteen. Reservists who kissed their kids goodbye on a Tuesday morning and never came home for Shabbat. I was watching the faces of men who […]
Our Eliyahu Hanavi
The soldiers who gave up their seders so the rest of us could have ours. You stand. The kids watch the wine to see if the level drops. It’s a tradition built on hope, on the idea that redemption is close enough to knock. This year, Eliyahu didn’t come to the door. He was already […]
Two Minutes to Say Chag Sameach
My Seder was peaceful. Hers was a phone call from the border. Our Seder the other night was beautiful. The table was set. The kids were dressed up. The matzah was covered, the wine was poured, the Haggadot were stacked in a pile by the salt water. My youngest stood on her chair and sang […]
Flour, Water, Fire, Eighteen Minutes
IDF soldiers in Syria made matzah by hand on base. The same way Jews have done it for 3,000 years. You can move Pesach off the calendar. You can reschedule meetings, delay shipments, push back a deployment timeline by 48 hours if the logistics allow it. But you cannot move Pesach out of the bones […]
Two Weeks Before Passover, the Phone Rang
The call-up came for thousands of reservists heading North. I sat in Modiin and felt it pull at me from both directions. I started a new job last week. Monday morning. New desk, new team, new ID badge that still smells like plastic. The kind of fresh start you plan for and look forward to […]
My Kids Were in Costume. I Was Checking Ceramic Plates.
This was shared with us by someone we have supported who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. He serves in an elite IDF unit and is currently on his seventh round of reserve duty. He wanted his story told. Purim morning, my wife sent me a photo. My son was a pirate. My daughter […]
Abba, Is That You?
When a father goes to war, his whole family goes with him. They just don’t get the uniform. We knocked on the door of a random apartment in Modiin. My son Elliot was with me. He was ten. We were holding a candy platter with a note from people in Boca Raton who wanted to […]
Preparing for the Unknown
The job of a Rasap is half logistics, half fortune-telling. You plan for the event tonight and the war that might start tomorrow. I got promoted recently. Rasap of my unit. Logistics Officer. The title sounds administrative until you realize what the job actually involves. My phone hasn’t stopped buzzing since the appointment went through. […]