By Britten Schear, JTNews Correspondent
Imagine that Seattleites lived like Israelis: teenagers now entering their senior year of high school would be preparing for three years of mandatory military service come graduation day. Whether they were graduates of Garfield High School or Lakeside School, Rainier Beach or Bellevue High, citizens would see these 18-year-olds patrolling the streets of downtown Seattle, monitoring checkpoints in and out of the city, and warily guarding the port with automatic weapons slung over their shoulders. These young draftees would be protecting the city from an enemy not 6,000 miles away, but possibly just outside the city limits, minutes from homes, jobs, and schools.
This scene is reality for most young Israelis, and a small group of Seattle residents is reaching out to Israeli soldiers as if they were their own Seattle high school graduates, protecting their homeland.
Two months ago, Boaz Pnini, a cantor at Emanuel Congregation in Seattle, a Hebrew teacher, and an Israel native – and former soldier – came up with the idea of linking local Jews with Israeli soldiers.
Pnini serves as a director and tour leader for Bridges 2 Israel, guiding two trips a year to Israel. Through Bridges, Pnini has the outlet for not only bringing Seattleites to Israel, but also for bringing an element of Israel closer to Seattle.
“We need something to connect Jewish people around the world with Israel,” says Pnini. “I had a lot of fancy ideas for what we could do…then decided to just make it simple.”
Pnini’s idea was indeed simple and practical: it began with wool hats. Enlisting the help of Sue Bream, whose son Pnini tutored for his Bar Mitzvah, a knitting group was formed to make hats for Israeli soldiers, and a fund was created for the cost of the postage.
Then the idea grew. The volunteers of the group, now calling itself “Hats for Israel,” gathered in a room at Seattle’s Temple Beth Am to on August 30 pack the boxes, but they are sending more than sturdy wool hats. As close to 20 volunteers staggered in with containers filled with sweaters, cookies, crackers, M&Ms, cards, a plastic basketball hoop, digital poker games, boxing gloves, and board games. Pnini circled the room with a video camera to record personal messages to the soldiers.
Each knit hat is sent with a note from one of the volunteers, thanking them for service to Israel.
Deborah Barratt, a volunteer who has visited Israel several times, stuffed wool hats into Ziploc baggies and said, “I’m writing ‘With love and appreciation for all that you do for us.’”
Doug Sigel packed several wool sweaters into a box while talking about reasons for sending cold-weather hats over to what many people consider to be an unbearably hot climate. “When they’re stationed in the desert, it gets very cold at night,” he said.
“Their needs are provided for [by the army],” said Sigel, “so this is just to bless them. It’s my homeland and they’re defending it. I am not.”
The volunteers are happy to have found a way to give back to the soldiers.
“It’s not important that we ever hear back from these soldiers,” said Barratt, noting that this group feels that the act of sending the care packages is gratifying enough.
Pnini, however, uses his contacts in Israel to arrange a special thank-you for the “Hats for Israel” volunteers.
At 8 o’clock, when the boxes were packed up, Pnini beckoned the group into the board room for a “surprise.” The telephone on the table rang and a sleepy Israeli voice gave a “Shalom” to the group over the speaker phone (it was 6 in the morning in Israel).
The voice belonged to Gafnit Shalvi, an Israeli woman who is coordinating efforts with Pnini to build connections between the soldiers and American Jews. She thanked the volunteers for their efforts, and noted that the Israeli soldiers she spoke with the day before hope to come to Seattle to meet them personally, and to speak about life in the Israeli military.
The phone call was more thanks than the “Hats” group was looking for, but one volunteer smiled and said to the phone, “What you are saying warms our hearts.”
The boxes are destined for the army unit called Orev Nachal. On Pnini’s next trip to Israel, which leaves in December, he hopes to bring more hats and goodies with him.
“When I was a soldier, the only thing we got was a delivery of cookies from our families once a week. What the soldiers need is warm hats. I can imagine,” Pnini says with a grin, “being a soldier and getting gifts. I picture them opening these boxes together and reading the notes.”
To help with knitting, donations, and to volunteer, or to donate to the fund to bring the Israeli soldiers to Seattle, go to www.bridges2israel.com.