By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Israel, even more than the United States, is a nation of immigrants. Fewer than half the world’s Jewish population makes its home there. But that does not stop millions more from identifying with the nation and, in the case of an uncounted number of young people, to sign up to defend the Jewish homeland.
Whether they are Russian immigrants fulfilling their duty as Israeli citizens or American kids wanting to more concretely show their devotion, the Israeli Defense Forces are filled with soldiers for whom Hebrew is not their first language. Nancy Cohen-Vardy came face-to-face with that reality after her oldest son, Micha Vardy, volunteered for the IDF.
After graduating from Sammamish High School two years ago, she says, he went to Israel to participate in the Young Judea Year course and, following that, made his decision to stay on and join the army. Micha Vardy’s connection to Israel goes way back, though he can be forgiven for not remembering it all. He was born there but moved to the U.S. with his parents when he was 17 months old. Because he grew up in the U.S. and holds dual citizenship, army service for Micha is not compulsory.
“We planned to go back sometime but we never did, so Micha grew up most of his life in the United States,” Cohen-Vardy explains. “But Micha always felt really connected to Israel. He really believes in the strength of Israel and that Israel should be a country for all Jews to live in and to feel safe.
“When I asked him why he wanted to join,” says his mother, “he said he really felt Zionistic reasons and he really likes being in a place where he can be with other people his own age and work toward a common goal. He likes that kind of structure.”
In addition, she says it serves his athletic tendencies because “he loves physical challenges.” Having spent one year in the army as an infantryman and been trained to use a couple of types of shoulder-fired anti-missile systems, she says he has a number of options for how he will serve out the remainder of his term of enlistment. She says he is considering applying either to become a medic or to apply for the officer corps.
“He’s really interested in leadership roles and in roles where he can help other people,” Cohen-Vardy says.
Like most IDF soldiers without families of their own in Israel, Micha Vardy receives support from an organization called Tzofim Garin Tzabar, which sees to his basic needs, and then some. According to Nancy Cohen-Vardy, they provide these soldiers with housing on one of four kibbutzim around the country, as well as meals, entertainment, and even swimming pools. Soldiers may also pair with an Israeli family to get the taste of home.
“They’re really well taken care of,” says Cohen-Vardy. But one thing these soldiers lack is books to relax with in their native language.
“The kibbutzim do have libraries but most of the books are in Hebrew. These kids probably can read in Hebrew, but to relax, they probably want to read in their own language,” she says. “So I took it upon myself to collect books for the kids.”
Cohen-Vardy has a contact in Tzofim Garin Tzabar who has agreed to receive the books she collects and donates to create a traveling library for the foreign soldiers.
So far, she says the project is still in a nascent stage — she has been in touch with two local synagogues and the Jewish Day School, where she teaches Fourth Grade Judaic Studies, who have agreed to host donation boxes and to publicize the book drive through their own newsletters.
She says she hopes to make contact with other sites, including Temple B’nai Torah and Temple Beth Am and possibly the Stroum Jewish Community Center to widen the reach of the effort. She also says she has spoken to the local Friends of the IDF chapter and hopes to be able to coordinate her project with them, but to date she has been busy running a summer science camp and getting ready for the new school year, so those plans are still for the future.
Nancy Cohen-Vardy says she started her project without a set goal for how big it might become. Her initial idea was to try to collect about 100 books, though she now says she anticipates sending up to three times that many.
“I would like to be able to send to my contact in Israel several big boxes full,” she says. “If I had 300 books, I think that would be a great little library that they could take around.”
Cohen-Vardy says she has thought mainly in terms of gathering English-language books “because the kids are mainly from English-speaking countries. However,” she adds, “in my son’s kibbutz house, one of his roommates is from Ireland and there is a kid from Scotland. But there is a French girl and some from Spanish-speaking countries and Russians. I’m sure if there were Spanish books and some in French and Russian, they would be well-used.”
Once she finishes with the book drive, she will retire from the effort but it will go on from there. She has sent the flyer she had created to her contact in Tzofim Garin Tzabar, who is adapting it to send off to families of kids from around the country. She says he has committed to taking it on as his own project moving forward.
“I hope the community will come together and support this,” she says, “because those kids are out there for us as a community working to make it possible for us to have this Jewish state.”