Nine years ago during Hanukkah, Arale Wattenstein lay injured on a road in the West Bank city of Nablus. A terrorist had thrown a Molotov cocktail at his car, and the Israeli officer had jumped from the burning vehicle while it was still moving. Wattenstein, a member of the paratrooper brigade, issued a distress call to his unit: “Man down.”
“When we sit here and talk to you, 7,000 miles from Israel, it give us the energy to do what we did,” Wattenstein, 31, told an eighth-grade class at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Rafael last month as he recounted his story.
Wattenstein was visiting the Bay Area with nine other Israeli veterans as part of a delegation from Hope for Heroism, which provides support and peer-to-peer mentoring for Israeli soldiers injured in combat. Soldiers in the program also travel regularly to cities around the world, including London, New York and Johannesburg, to connect with local Jewish communities and create lasting international relationships.
Last month, five Marin County families hosted Hope for Heroism soldiers in their homes while the group toured the Bay Area, spoke to members of the Jewish community, met with injured U.S. soldiers and visited the offices of Pixar, Google and Facebook.
“It’s a chance for diaspora Jewry to say thank you to these soldiers who gave a hell of a sacrifice to defend Israel and the Jewish people,” said Howard Zack, a member of Congregation Kol Shofar in Tiburon, who recruited local host families. “Collectively, the community’s awareness and devotion to Israel is elevated as a consequence of this.”
Zack helped bring Hope for Heroism to the Bay Area after friends in Seattle, where the program has its U.S. headquarters, told him about its impact. Most of the host families have children who attend Brandeis Hillel, where his own children went. Recruiting host families with school-age children is a major component of the program, Zack said.
“I just feel it’s important that these kids learn people really sacrifice for Israel,” said Brandeis Hillel parent Marc Sarosi. He and his wife, Lily Kanter, hosted Wattenstein and fellow IDF veteran Kobi Hazan, 32, in their Mill Valley home during the weeklong visit. Their three sons — Max, 13; Zeke, 11; and Nate, 9 — enjoyed spending time with the Israeli visitors. “Having these guys here really helps,” Sarosi added, “and they’re great with kids.” Wattenstein and Hazan, who both have children of their own at home, hung out with the Sarosi children during moments of down time during the week, and Hazan trounced the kids in a basketball game.
“It’s interesting to get a soldier’s perspective on the whole thing,” said Max, who traveled to Israel two years ago with his family. For his brother Zeke, who has a vivid memory of visiting Caliber 3, an Israeli anti-terrorist training facility, spending time with the visiting soldiers provided new insight into Israeli life. “We went there for history; this is more like the people,” Zeke said.
Hope for Heroism was started by an American rabbi, Chaim Levine, and an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces, Gil Ganonyan, who met when Ganonyan traveled to Seattle in 2006. When the Second Lebanon War broke out later that year, Levine went to Israel with friends from Seattle to try to help Israelis affected by the combat. Ganonyan, who had survived a bullet to his neck shot by a member of Hamas two years earlier, joined them for a visit to a hospital in Haifa where injured soldiers were being treated. Levine noticed that the soldiers responded immediately to Ganonyan when he told them his story.
“There was a completely different connection when Gil told him he had been shot. The guys completely lit up. It was like your older brother saying, ‘I’ve been through what you’re going to go through; I’m going to help you,” Levine said.
Hope for Heroism now serves more than 400 Israeli soldiers through peer-to-peer relationships and an organized support network, staffed entirely by injured soldiers. Participants visit hospitals to connect with newly injured soldiers, setting up each new member with a mentor who was also injured in combat. The group also provides financial, medical and educational aid and offers vocation, sports and arts programs.
Wattenstein, who injured his spine jumping from his burning car and now works for Hope for Heroism as its external relations coordinator, said his wife had to force him to go to his first Hope for Heroism meeting a couple years after his injury.
“I fell in love,” Wattenstein said of his first experience meeting other soldiers in Hope for Heroism. “I felt like they took a mirror and put it in front of my face. … No one [else] can understand you as you need people to understand you.”
“It’s a family with everyone on the same boat,” said Hazan, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. “The same memories, same feelings.”
Speaking to the students at Brandeis Hillel Day School, the soldiers said they believed their sacrifice was to protect not just Israelis, but Jews worldwide.
“If you want to feel safe in this school, we need Israel to be safe,” Wattenstein said. “It’s not just about us. It’s about every Jew that ever was.”