Sitting in a room full of crying girls - blotchy cheeks, runny noses, smeared mascara, the works- may seem like a man's worst nightmare, but it can also be a lone soldier's dream come true.
A few months ago, during my course, my commanders took all 35 girls up north for a trip. During the day, we toured and learned and hiked and laughed, and I watched as girls around me made the kind of friendships people talk about when remembering the army. Whether it was the fact that they thought I didn't understand them or my inability to tell a joke in Hebrew without people thinking that I'm just highly confused, I often found myself outside of the bonding, and I resigned myself to the fact that I probably would never be close to these girls, but so be it.
Then one night, my officer called all the girls down into a large room, set up so that the chairs were facing a screen, and asked us to sit. We obeyed, as good soldiers always do, and as familiar music swelled and familiar pictures filled the screen, I began to cry.
45 minutes later, every single person in the room, be it officer or soldier, had tears streaming down her face. The soldier leading the program wiped her face and laughed nervously, then stood and asked for reactions to the movie. "That was really beautiful," one girl said. "I never thought about how hard it must be to be a lone soldier," said another, flashing me and the two other lone soldiers an empathetic glance. "It makes me proud to serve Israel," said a third. Then my commander looked at me. "He was from Philadelphia, right?" I nodded, somehow pulled myself together, and stood. I spoke about how Michael Levin, the subject of the documentary, came from my city, participated in my region of USY, and attended my summer camp. I spoke about how his death is one of the few things I remember from the summer before 7th grade, about how I watched as it deeply wounded my community. When my voice was breaking and I couldn't speak anymore, I sat down, and as my hands covered my face, I felt a hand rubbing my back.
Everything changed from that moment on. Girls who had been cliquey and exclusive approached me and asked me questions about my Aliyah, they made an effort to ignore my glaring grammatical errors and listen to what I had to say. I suddenly found myself a part of the friendships I had previously envied.
7 years earlier, August 1, 2006, I sat in a forest with my age group at camp, after a long day of kayaking, and listened as the head of the group explained what happened. Michael Levin, a community member and a former Ramah camper, had been killed in Lebanon while fighting as a soldier in the IDF. The rest of the trip was - in our selfish, middle-school minds - tainted by the tragedy that had struck our community.
I had already fallen in love with Israel a little more than a year before, but hearing about Michael and his story brought an entirely new dimension to what had up until then only been a fantasy. I could actually move to Israel. I could even serve Israel. Hearing about his life - after his death - was the first time I realized that this is something I could actually, literally do. Visiting Israel at 10-years-old may have been the first step in the journey I'm on right now, but Michael's story was the second and the biggest.
And 7 years later, as I sat in my olive green uniform and cried with my friends over the death of an inspiringly beautiful person, Michael influenced me again and told my friends what I had been unable to tell them, told them that this is a hard journey, and I'm going to need friends to make it through.
I see the flowers and pictures and Phillies memorabilia that overflow at his grave, I hear the accounts of so many people who were touched by him, I see the metal bracelets with his name that so many of my friends wear, and I see the baseball card with a summarized version of his story that I keep in my wallet, and I can only hope that he knows his legacy. If his dream was to serve Israel, then he did not stop fulfilling it in his death. Whether it's the Michael Levin fund, from which I personally did benefit, or some girl on Birthright crying at his grave with a new found love for Israel, or the pride that the Israeli girls in my course felt after watching the documentary, he is absolutely still defending the State of Israel.
Michael Levin, z"l
August 1, 2006
