Translated by Hila Bar
Photo credit: Lior Itzkovitch
Most of the soldiers in my company are not religious. As a commander, I have a squad of soldiers working close to me – a driver, someone in charge of communications, and a navigator. They are not religious, but they know that I’m strict about putting on tefillin every day. Even if I don’t have time to daven, I always put on tefillin – every single day.
Since my bar mitzvah, I think there must be a total of 10 days I haven’t put on tefillin.
In Gaza, I kept my tefillin in my army jeep, and Oran, who is in charge of the communications devices – and a good friend – but not religious at all, would remind me to put them on. One day, the sun was just about to set and because of all the activity that day, I had forgotten to put them on. At the last minute, Oran had everyone stop in the middle of what they were doing and then he approached me and said, “You have to put on tefillin NOW!” And we actually stopped all activity while I put on tefillin. I made it just in time. I didn’t miss out that day.
In Lebanon things were more difficult. The work was non-stop and much more laborious than in Gaza. From sunrise to sunset we didn’t stop. Also, the threat of missiles kept us constantly on the move, running to places where they couldn’t detect us.
Unfortunately, there was a day in Lebanon that I didn’t manage to put on tefillin as I only remembered once it was dark, and I happened to mention it to the soldiers while I was briefing them. So the whole company decided to take it upon themselves to remind me every day to put on tefillin.
The next day, a soldier by the name of Lior took this special photo.
It goes to show that we Jews really all are brothers.
