“Sending Our Son Off to War”

This week we accompanied our first born son, Noam, to the IDF army recruitment center in Jerusalem, where he was inducted into an IDF combat unit, with three months of basic training lying ahead of him.

On the evenings before a young man goes in the IDF, neither he nor his parents get much sleep.

The soon-to-be IDF inductee parties with his friends. The parents also do not sleep – out of worry, fear and apprehension.

Our Noam, 19, was named after a soldier, Noam Yehuda, who was born in Philadelphia and who grew up in Safed, and killed by a PLO missile at the age of nineteen, on the fourth day of the Lebanon War in 1982.

The enemy was the same: Arafat and his terrorists who had set up a world-wide terrorist organization from his base in Lebanon and was held responsible for the murders and massacres of hundreds of Jews and Israelis throughout the world. The irony is that our own Noam, nineteen years later, is going to be forced to fight the same enemy – this time on our own land.

An enemy who had duped the world to such an extent that he received the Nobel Peace Prize! An enemy who was invited by the Israeli government to return from Tunis, given arms by the IDF and who turned the tables to set up cities of refuge for his “troops” to again launch attacks against Israelis.

Unlike many other Israelis, Noam holds a US passport. He could easily skip the country without too much difficulty and attend university in the US. However, he chooses to stay and serve.

When you take your son on that proverbial ride to the draft induction point, your son’s entire life flashes in front of you. All those special moments are quashed into those twenty five minutes of negotiating Jerusalem rush hour traffic. His moment of birth. His Brit. His first step. His first day in nursery school. His first day in first grade. His performance in the local singing group and how he “cut” his first cassette. His bar mitzvah. His going off to yeshiva. His summer of work with down syndrome youngsters. And his resounding Shabbat meal send-off with his friends, when they sang sweet Shabbat melodies along with varying sounds, varying from Psalms to Punk Rock.

A few nights ago, we watched the evening news with Noam. Thousands of Arab rioters shooting guns wildly in the air, as they ran through the streets precariously toting the teetering body of yet another “shahid” – “holy martyr” (a title given to terrorists who blow themselves up with innocent Israeli civilians for the “Glory of Palestine”) – Noam’s comment: “Well, Wish me luck! I’m going to be in a war”.

Noam’s mood on the day of his induction was enthusiastic and adventurous, joined by two friends from his yeshiva who were being recruited together with him as well as three other friends who had come to part with him and wish him luck.

Watching our son joke with his friends while waiting to be called to get on the bus, our heart swelled with pride at this wholesome, fine son of ours who was eager to serve his country despite the gruesome predicament the country is in right now

This past year has been a year of reflection for Noam. He was glad to have made the decision not to go straight into the army following graduation from high school. Instead he chose a Yeshiva preparation program with a curriculum readies the yeshiva students for the army service through deep philosophical discussions and basic physical education to prepare him for rigorous army training.

It has also been a year of funerals. Too many funerals. Noam told us after returning from the funeral of our daughter’s 20 year old youth counselor who had been shot dead in a drive by shooting, that “Now I know what I am going into the army for. Going to all these funerals has made me aware of what I must do: to protect the people of Israel”.

At the induction center, only about twenty after we got there, Noam’s name was called out. The time had come to part. We hand over to the IDF a wholesome, happy, wonderful son. Noam stretched out his arms and held each of us in a tight embrace. The lump in each of our throats choked back the words we had each planned to say. All we manage to say is: “Good luck. Stay safe, May God be with you”.

Please God, we pray, return him to us unharmed, safe and sound – in body and mind.