Feeding Israeli Soldiers

One thing you learn very quickly when coming to live in Israel is that Israeli soldiers are our children. Literally. And emotionally.

 

As I get older, the soldiers on the bus, returning to their bases on Sunday mornings after spending Shabbat at home, look younger. I’ve been in Israel long enough so that today’s soldiers are kids whose Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations I attended. There are soldiers who moved here from America who I knew as newborns or as very young children. For born Israelis or immigrants who have been here longer than me, this connection to the childhoods of those in uniform is incredibly common.

 

Today’s soldiers are now younger than my youngest child. Like the rest of the mothers in Israel, I want to help take care of them. And living where I do, there are endless opportunities to do so.

 

My first experience feeding Israeli soldiers was years before we moved here. I, my husband, our children and a family friend who was traveling with us met a representative from Standing Together and we surprised soldiers at an isolated base with a treat of pizza and soda.

 

Tomorrow, my community will, collectively, prepare a Friday night dinner for 60 Lone Soldiers – everything from challah rolls and chicken soup to sunflower seeds. Soup to nuts, literally. Lone Soldiers are young men and women who are not Israeli citizens but who come to Israel to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. By definition, they have no parents in Israel, so the mothers of Israel, women from different communities all over the country, provide them with an occasional home-cooked meal. A few weeks ago, women from communities all over Israel cooperated in feeding a full Thanksgiving dinner to 900 Lone Soldiers at the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Center.

 

About 45 minutes south of where we live, is a rest stop for soldiers called Pina Chama, which literally means a warm corner. In this little building, soldiers can stop for a hot cup of coffee in the winter or a refreshing iced beverage in the summer and snack on some Jewish mother’s homemade cake, cookies or pie. In my time here, I’ve baked hundreds of chocolate chip cookies for soldiers and distributed them all over the country in places like the Pina Chama.

But I don’t do it myself. As long as I’m going, I’ll ask other people in my community to donate some baked goods. And before you know it, the whole back seat of my car is filled with pans and containers of homemade treats for our beloved soldiers.

 

Recently, my friend Yehudis, an amazing one-woman chesed machine, started making big pots of soup and driving to where soldiers are standing guard in the cold. She brings along a few helpers, opens up the trunk of her car and starts dishing out cups of hot soup, as if she was feeding her own children.

 

Which she is.

There are formal organizations, both small and large, such as Standing Together, Yashar l’Chayal and others that help Israeli soldiers in real ways. They raise money for warm winter gear for soldiers standing guard duty in the freezing winter months. They buy soldiers special backpacks for carrying water in the blistering summer months. They send holiday food baskets, provide help to needy or injured soldiers and make barbeques to help celebrate Israel’s Independence Day. They do amazing work.

And in the gaps, the women of Israel bake cookies and make vats of soup and go to where our soldiers are and feed them, right from our own kitchens.