By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Not every soldier in the Israel Defense Forces is an Israeli. In fact, IDF volunteers come from more than 70 countries, pulled by a sense of obligation to help defend the Jewish State.
These men and women are often referred to as “lone soldiers” because they don’t have families living in Israel to support them during their army service. Lone soldiers — a term also applied to Israeli soldiers who are either orphaned or estranged from their families — currently comprise about 6,000 of the IDF’s troops.
Many who come without financial backing from their families and no place to call home end up spending their monthly stipend and more to rent apartments and pay for food and basic supplies not provided by the army, resulting in debt. And when they have a problem, those who don’t know Hebrew often have trouble sorting things out, with no one to translate for them or guide them through Israel’s infamous bureaucratic structures.
That’s why Shifra Shahar founded A Warm Home for Every Soldier, an Israeli organization dedicated to providing much-needed support to the IDF’s lone soldiers.
“I’ve met soldiers from places I couldn’t find on a map,” Shahar said. “Not all of them come with their father’s credit card. Many come without any help at all from family and don’t have anybody in Israel that they know. Someone should be there for them.”
Shahar visited Seattle on March 26 to give a talk at Congregation Beth Shalom about the challenges lone soldiers face and the services her organization provides. The visit was not intended to be a fundraising mission, but rather as a way for people considering volunteering for the IDF, or friends and family of current IDF soldiers, to learn about the help A Warm Home can offer.
According to Shahar, her organization, which began about a year ago as a partnership between a handful of women with children serving in the IDF, is primarily focused on pairing lone soldiers with adoptive Israeli families.
“The main thing is that any soldier who likes to can get a family with us,” she said. “That saves them all the costs. A soldier who is getting an adopting family doesn’t have to go through all this bother, beside all the help they get and the instruction and the good words. It’s like not being a lone soldier at all. It’s like having a family there with you.”
In an ideal world, Shahar said, the IDF would do more to provide weekend housing and meals for lone soldiers. But as it is, lone soldiers have the options of staying in army-provided dorms that Shahar described as “slums,” or on a kibbutz, often far away from where they are stationed. Or they pay for their own housing.
“I don’t know how it got to this point,” Shahar said. “The people in charge of lone soldiers got a lot of money, but didn’t do their jobs.”
A Warm Home also helps out with smaller, date-to-date issues lone soldiers encounter, such as providing necessary items not paid for by the army such as watches and backpacks, translation for soldiers with limited Hebrew knowledge, or even just a place to go for Shabbat dinner.
“There are a lot of soldiers who have a hard time,” Shahar said. “They don’t know where to go for help. Sometimes they call us even for minor problems, especially those who come from other countries and don’t have the language.”
Shahar said the motivation to start A Warm Home for Every Soldier came after her oldest son, an officer in the IDF, expressed concern to her that many of the soldiers in his command had no permanent residence in Israel. He took it upon himself to match some of these young men and women up with the families of other soldiers so they would have a place to go and someone to look out for them. The matches worked so well that Shahar and several other IDF moms were encouraged to try to find adoptive homes for as many lone soldiers as possible.
Since A Warm Home began in the winter of 2009, most soldiers who have come looking for help have found the organization simply through word-of-mouth. A news report about the IDF’s neglect of lone soldiers that recently aired on Israeli television made mention of the organization. After that, Shahar said, she started to get several calls each day from lone soldiers seeking some form of assistance.
But most of the calls Shahar gets come from Israelis who want to open their homes to soldiers.
“When it comes to soldiers, people open their hearts and their wallets,” she said. “IDF is something that really unites all Israelis. I think everybody knows that our existence as a nation depends on the IDF.”
So far more than 100 lone soldiers have been placed with adoptive families. An additional 300 have been aided by A Warm Home in other ways.
Shahar said she is pleased with what the organization has done so far, but in the coming years hopes to step up outreach efforts so every lone soldier will know where to turn when he or she needs help. Ideally, prospective lone soldiers will be aware of A Warm Home well before they enlist so that by the time they get to Israel, an adoptive family will be waiting for them.
“In March, a lot of new combat soldiers were going into the IDF. Many of them knew about us, contacted us in advance and got families before they went into the army,” she said. “We got to do everything slowly and not in a rush to find the right families for them. They don’t’ even know how much sweat and tears we saved them. I want it to be that easy for everyone.”