Charting a Course

Ari was born in 1989 to parents who became frum through Hineni, the kiruv organization started by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis a”h. An only son sandwiched between four sisters, Ari was raised in Monsey, where he attended a local Chabad high school, did a stint in a Chabad beis medrash in London, then went on to a Chabad yeshivah in Holon, Israel.

“I was a good boy, but I struggled a lot with learning, especially Gemara —understanding didn’t come easily,” he says. “I learned best through exploring nature and creating things with my hands.” In high school, he made 55 electric menorahs from scratch for a menorah parade, and for many years he built a succah mobile by hand.

“The expected path in Chabad is to go on shlichus, which usually involves learning and teaching,” Ari says. “These early experiences helped me realize that even if I wasn’t cut out for typical shlichus, there are other ways to make an impact. This understanding paved the way for what would come later.”

Multiple anti-Semitic incidents he experienced while in London implanted within him the drive to stand up proudly as a Jew, another trait that would feature largely in his future.

“I was once on a run with a friend when suddenly a car pulled up alongside us and we were pelted with eggs. We tried to run away, but they followed us and continued throwing eggs. We ran until we hit a dead end, with only the highway ahead of us.,” Ari relates. “The hooligans realized we were trapped, and they got out of their car and started coming toward us. Our choices were to run onto the highway and get killed, to allow ourselves to get beaten up, or to charge. We let them get close, then suddenly turned and ran toward them with our arms outstretched. They beat a hasty retreat.”

But it was two events during his year in Israel in 2008 that most directly influenced the trajectory of his life.

Wanting to experience what life was like for Jews living under the constant threat of rockets, Ari went to Sderot for a Shabbos.

“At candlelighting time, I heard a siren and assumed it was signaling the start of Shabbos — I didn’t know what a tzeva adom was. I saw people running in the street holding siddurim, and I thought they were late for shul,” Ari recalls. “Fifteen seconds later there was a massive explosion — a rocket hit a block away from me, followed by three more. It was terrifying — people were running out of cars, one man was hugging a tree. I was more prepared for the second salvo of rockets on Motzaei Shabbos, and I ran to a bus shelter for protection.”

Then came the murderous attack on Yeshivat Mercaz Harav in Jerusalem.

“These boys were my age, learning in beis medrash just like I was — it hit me hard that this could have easily been me,” Ari says.

These back-to-back experiences set his brain on fire: We’re all part of the same Am Yisrael; they want to get all of us. What can I do to help? The answer soon became clear to him: He would join the IDF. He’d use his arms, his legs, his entire body (his favorite way to perform mitzvos) to defend Jews in Eretz Yisrael.

Not so fast. When he returned home that summer and shared his plans, the pushback was strong; his parents, family, and friends were all concerned for his Yiddishkeit and his safety. “Become a paramedic,” or “Go to college instead,” they advised. “Anything but the army.”

Ari was undeterred. “I knew I didn’t fit down the regular path — I love doing unique things, and this was a unique opportunity for me to grow as a person while helping Am Yisrael,” he says. “I’d show them that their concern was misplaced.”

His rebbeim gave their blessing, and his rosh yeshivah said something that would later help keep his compass pointed north: Who is a true chayal? Someone who is a chassid, yerei Shamayim, and lamdan.

In a moment he’ll never forget, Ari’s father called him into his room one day, looked him in the eye and said, “Ari, there are decisions in life that only you can make. Just know I’m always at your side. Go and come safely. Go do your thing.”

Having the validation and support of his parents fortified him like nothing else. He decided to join Netzach Yehuda, a battalion of men from chareidi backgrounds. “It’s like a yeshivah with all types of guys — Bobov, Litvish, Sephardi, Chabad, Satmar,” he says. On the plane, he committed to learning Chitas — Chumash, Tehillim, and Tanya — every day, as well as a daily seder in Rambam.

Biting the Bullet

Before his head hit the pillow that first night in Israel, Ari already had second thoughts.

Several Jewish families had moved into a building bought by Jews in the Arab sector of Chevron, and after a Supreme Court ruling that the purchase was illegal, the army was on its way to evict them. Straight off the plane, Ari joined hundreds of others in Chevron to take a stand against the eviction. “I was scared I’d be arrested and banned from the army, so I hid my passport in my shoe,” he recalls.

The police moved in to break up the protest, and it quickly turned violent. Suddenly Ari was grabbed by two police officers and was led away from the crowd. One of them pointed vaguely and said, “Go that way, to Kiryat Arba.”

“I joined a group of about twenty people, all trying to escape with our lives. Clusters of Arabs were on the rooftops throwing massive boulders at us. We ran from alley to alley, and at one point we found shelter under an overhang. We were temporarily safe, but we were stuck — the minute we moved, we’d be easy targets. After a while one brave person ran out to distract the Arabs, and the rest of us made a dash to a nearby field, and from there to Kiryat Arba.”

The incident was reminiscent of the painful scenes from the evacuation of Gush Katif just four years prior. Ari felt torn. Did he really want to join an army that fought its own people? Worse, would he be ordered to engage in such violence? He grappled with the conflict, but after being reassured that Netzach Yehuda would never be called upon in this capacity, he proceeded with his plans.

A technical glitch delayed Ari’s service by several months, and not wanting to burden his parents with expenses, he stayed in a dorm for struggling teens and supported himself by staying up all night telemarketing. Then he’d daven Shacharis, sleep a bit, learn, and spend the afternoon wrapping tefillin on men at the Kosel. It was a quiet, meaningful time during which he strengthened himself for impending action.

In March 2009, at age 19, this soft-spoken, refined, ever-smiling young man was inducted into the IDF — it was time to toughen up. Ari trained as a sharpshooter in counterterrorism, and then served in the Jenin area, raiding terrorist hives.

“An informer tips off the Shin Bet that a terrorist operation is being planned at a certain location,” Ari says. “We’d come into town on foot or by vehicle, and groups of soldiers would surround the house — or more often, multiple houses. The villages are filled with hate — signs lit up at night celebrate the ‘martyrs,’ and people on the street take every opportunity to harm soldiers. For our safety, we’d need to be in at out as quickly as possible — surprise and speed are key.”

Naturally, the execution of a raid requires extremely tight coordination. Each member of the team has a specific job. At the exact same second on the clock, soldiers burst into each house, and each one carries out his designated duty — Dovid searches for weapons, Shai and Yossi make an arrest, Tzvi stands guard in the back right corner, and so on. As soon as it’s over, preparations begin for the next night’s raid.

On leave in Jerusalem over Shavuos, Ari ran into one of his rebbeim and mentioned that he was learning Chitas and Rambam daily. “How about Gemara?” his rebbi asked. When he responded in the negative, his rebbi told him to start learning Daf Yomi.

“ ‘Rebbi, you know how hard that is for me,’ I said. He suggested I just read the daf without trying to understand it. Each day I’d say, ‘Hashem, I’m doing this for You,’ and then I’d read the daf line by line. As a kid, my mother would tell me that even if my mind doesn’t understand what I’m learning, my neshamah does. I think of this until today.”

While training once in the Jordan Valley, a downpour resulted in massive mudslides; Ari knew they’d be stuck in the desert for days. His Gemara was back on base, and he was devastated. There was an evacuated army base nearby, and his group crawled under the barbed wire and into a building to warm up. They found themselves in a shul, and while everyone else stretched out on the floor to get some rest, Ari approached the bookshelves, hoping… and there it was, the Gemara he needed. He took pictures of the entire week’s dapim, and for the rest of the week he read the daily daf on his phone’s tiny screen.

When his service was over and he returned home, Ari tackled a challenge that was, for him, even greater than 115°F desert runs and facing off terrorists: He got semichah.

“I spent hours and hours on it every day, for two years. I never could have done it without the discipline I learned in the army,” he says.

Mission Incomplete

Ari may have been out of the army, but the army wasn’t out of him. “Being out there saving lives — knowing Hashem put you there as a guardian so Am Yisrael can sleep at night — gives you an indescribable sense of meaning and purpose,” he says. “My tank had more to give; I wanted to become an officer to help others have that same experience.”

A mentor recommended a shidduch around that time, but when the young woman heard Ari wanted to make aliyah and become an officer in the IDF, the idea was DOA. A few months later the shidduch came up again, and — Ari is at a loss for how to explain this — he and Rochel Shira Horowitz from Crown Heights started dating, his plans for aliyah never entering the discussion. They married in 2012 and spent a year working as program directors at a Chabad house in Woodcliff Lake, NJ; the following year they made aliyah with their baby son.

As a newly minted family man, officer training was no longer in the cards, but Ari found another way to actualize his goal of guiding and nurturing young soldiers. A Canadian couple in Israel had recently founded Chayal el Chayal, a first-of-its-kind organization devoted to supporting lone soldiers currently serving in the IDF, whose language, culture, and experiences in the army set them apart from those around them.

“My wife and I joined the organization, and we became a home away from home for these brave soldiers — they joined us for Shabbos, for programs, and to just chill with others like themselves.”

But support from the sidelines didn’t satisfy his itch for action, and in 2015, Ari was back in the army as a reservist, joining a Carmeli brigade combat unit. The couple moved back to Monsey the next year, but in a move unusual for lone soldiers at the time (this has changed dramatically since October 7), Ari returned to Israel each year for reserve duty.

His annual service is always high stakes. In 2017, he engaged in counterterror in the Qalqilya area of the Shomron.

“On one occasion, we were going after a really big fish. He knew he was being hunted, so he slept in his courtyard, ready to run,” he says. “We came in really quietly one night — he was relaxing in his courtyard watching a video on his phone, and didn’t know what hit him. The entire raid took thirty seconds.”

In 2021, with a wife and three kids back home, he was stationed at the Lebanese border staring down Hezbollah operatives for a month.

“They’d illegally come into no-man’s-land, popping in and out of underground tunnels and bunkers hidden by trees. They’d be just a few feet away from us on the other side of a single fence,” he recalls. “We could hear them talking, and they’d take pictures and videos of us. We lived with the awareness that we were in their crosshairs and could be killed at any time — it was surreal.”

The following year his unit followed the action to the border fence separating off the Oslo-generated Area A. At the time, 65,000 Arabs broke through the fence each week — some to work, some to drink, some to commit terror.

“Acts of terrorism were increasing, and we were stationed along the fence to stop the infiltration,” he says. “It was a never-ending game of cat and mouse: Arab scouts would scan along the fence for IDF soldiers, and steer those trying to cross over to unpatrolled areas. We’d hide in avocado groves and arrest them as they came through the fence. There was no way to know if we were going after a terrorist or wasting time and resources on someone coming in for more innocent reasons. If they passed a background check, they’d be sent home… until the next time around.”

As Ari completed each year’s reserve duty, he gained a deeper understanding of the difficulties faced by the lone soldier. With time he noticed that the challenges of soldiers he knew often persisted for years; sometimes they got worse.

The Lonely Warrior

The problems typically start before one even enlists, he explains. When someone — and this is primarily the case with boys coming from a more chareidi environment — veers from the predictable track to join the army, something about their life probably wasn’t working; family problems, failure in the school system, and a history of being bullied are common themes. Very often they’re in emotional pain.

“Every lone soldier has a story,” he says, and is seeking purpose in a completely new way.

They’re likely to find it in the army, but the aftermath tells a different story.

The stress and intensity of a combat zone (even when there’s no war, many missions are life-threatening) can have a damaging impact on even the hardiest soldier.

“It’s not a normal thing for a nineteen-year-old to see someone try to kill him, to be the first on the scene at a terror attack, to hunt terrorists or lose a buddy,” Ari says. But the trauma also tends to magnify underlying problems a soldier might have — and lone soldiers typically have them. If they were suffering from, say, low self-esteem before, they will suffer from it even more now.

It gets worse. The most impactful way to minimize the effects of trauma, Ari says, is through parental support. Whereas for Israeli chayalim that’s usually a given — parents have been soldiers themselves — for many lone soldiers, their parents were never in favor of the idea and have no understanding of their needs.

“My biggest concern is when a soldier’s relationship with his parents is strained,” Ari says. “If they return with trauma and don’t have their parents’ support, there’s no question it won’t go well. Having close family relationships, I believe, is the top factor in healing.”

The outer layers of support — friends, community, general society — are also absent. In Israel, everyone gets it; it’s just part of the fabric of life. For those who return to other countries, it’s a lonely journey that too often involves hiding their service for fear of anti-Semitism; soldiers even hesitate to share with friends because their experience is so unrelatable.

A soldier Ari knows came home with significant trauma — the chayal he shared an apartment with off base was killed by a terrorist disguised as an IDF soldier. “People said to him, ‘At least you weren’t in combat,’ implying that what he was experiencing couldn’t be that bad,” Ari says. “What does that do to a person who’s suffering?”

To top it off, the lone soldier feels cut off from the only people who do get him — his teammates in faraway Israel, who are processing their experiences together, without him.

The Israeli government offers veteran benefits such as mental health care, financial aid, and career advancement, but the group that needs it most can’t tap into it — it’s only available for those who remain in Israel.

The lone soldier is truly alone. He comes home and suffers in silence.

But he knows he’s got to move forward.

“I see soldier after soldier struggle to find a path,” Ari says. “Yesterday I was a special forces soldier doing extraordinary, deeply meaningful things — sacrificing my life to defend Am Yisrael — and today I’m going to work in a car dealership or sell insurance? They sit home lost, or flit from job to job, unable to find fulfillment in regular life. They grapple with self-worth and can fall into deep depression. I often recommend soldiers join Hatzalah or become firefighters — it offers them some of that higher purpose they crave.”

Advance the Troops

Ari Abramowitz was paying close attention to all of this; he understood what these soldiers needed and was determined to give it to them.

It unofficially started one day in 2017, when he got a call from a soldier he knew who had served in Operation Protective Edge three years earlier. “I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end of the day —  I have a black hole in my heart,” he said. Ari got his mother-in-law, a therapist, to join the call, and over the next few hours they talked him to a safer place. “It hit me that many more soldiers must be struggling like this guy, and no one’s doing anything about it.”

He arranged a shabbaton/ski trip to Hunter Mountain for fifteen soldiers, and then a group therapy session in Crown Heights shortly after. Without yet realizing it, he was creating an organization.

As it grew it needed a name, and he chose Nevut, which means navigation. “It’s a term used in the army, but we’re applying it to life. To navigate you use a map — the MAP to a good life is through Meaning And Purpose. That’s what we help soldiers discover, because without it, you’re in a bad place,” Ari says.

Nevut’s mission is to provide a supportive cocoon for and of people with similar experiences, so that soldiers can process their service in a healthy way and move on. “Our goal from day one is to help people get back on their feet as quickly as possible,” Ari says.

The organization addresses three pillars that are crucial for a soldier to successfully integrate back into civilian life: community, career, and well-being/mental health.

Being part of a community of people with a shared profound experience provides a space for healing that can’t be matched. At a recent Nevut event, a tank commander named Roi noticed the insignia on another soldier’s shirt, and they realized they were in the same battalion. About thirty seconds of conversation revealed that the first engagement they each had with terrorists in Gaza was at the same incident. A company commander had been injured, and Roi’s tank was the first one on the rescue scene. Jeremy, a paratrooper, had been right behind him; they had worked together to evacuate the commander. It was an intense moment of connection and emotional release.

Even just a little bit of connection can have an astounding effect. “A guy from New York fought in the 1982 Lebanon War and acted heroically to save a bunch of lives under fire,” Ari shares. “He came home and had no one to share the experience with. His life was a mess for many decades — he had crazy dreams and was unsure if his wartime experiences really happened. A few years ago, in his sixties, he found an online group of soldiers who fought in 1982. He managed to connect with his commander, as well as some of the people whose lives he saved. The group got together for a reunion in Israel, and this man received an award for his heroism. This was transformative for him — he somehow came out the other end and is now living a normal, happy, fulfilling life.”

Nevut community members receive training in psychological first aid and learn to identify signs of struggle and distress, allowing them to become each other’s eyes and ears on the ground. This vital function literally saves lives.

“A few weeks ago, we got a call from a soldier at midnight. He was with a friend who just got back from the army and was in a bad place — he’d been drinking heavily and was planning on driving — and the caller wasn’t sure how to handle it. We told him to take away his friend’s keys and send him home in a cab. We followed up the next morning and got him the help he needed, because his friend saw the signs and reached out,” Ari says.

It can take a practiced eye to identify the cracks under a perfect veneer. “One guy seemed to have it all together — great family, successful job. But when he told me he was working eighty hours a week and sleeping in a sleeping bag in the office, I knew he was in trouble,” Ari says.

The action happens in the 11 established Nevut communities — ten in cities across the US and one in Israel for soldiers who remain there after their service. Volunteer coordinators run monthly events in each location, and each has its own group chat to keep the conversation going. A few months ago, a soldier came home from many months of war concerned about not having anyone to speak with about his experiences on a regular basis. This sparked the creation of a buddy system, and now 80 sets of buddies check in on each other weekly.

But while camaraderie is a critical piece, Ari says, if someone isn’t engaged in productive work, he simply won’t recover. To that end, a team of 20 volunteer organizational psychologists and career coaches give workshops and help soldiers with career advice, job networking, résumé writing, and the like.

Sometimes, it’s not about how to find a job, but whether to give one up.

“At least once a week I get a call from someone who wants to go back for miluim (reserve duty) but is afraid of losing their job,” Ari says, and Nevut advises them how to approach the conversation with their employers. For some soldiers, miluim is their highest priority, and they live from short-term job to short-term job to make it happen.

The mental and emotional sequelae of combat often need to be dealt with head-on. Six case managers and two psychologists are available 24/7 to help soldiers and their families find equilibrium; those who need ongoing therapy get it at no cost.

Ari once received a voice note from a soldier who was ready to take his own life; he hadn’t served during wartime but was still suffering severely after being home for two years. Dr. Eric Pollack, PsyD, Nevut’s clinical advisor, immediately connected him with the appropriate help. Six months later, Ari saw him at another soldier’s wedding. “Ari, you saved my life,” he said. Just a few years later, he’s a well-adjusted husband and a father.

This wrenching text message says it all: I had no direction in life… no community, no one who understood… I was laying [sic] there, not having slept well in almost six months…. I was just a nobody with nothing. I started thinking about how the pain of life would go away if I just ended it. I thought about reaching out to someone to talk to, but didn’t have anyone who I knew who would be able to understand me. I reached into my top drawer… but at the last moment I just thought about a few kind words that were spoken to me a few days ago. ‘You’ve done something many people can’t do, you were… a Jewish warrior.’ These words from Ari pulsated through my head. I put the gun down and just started crying…. Ari worked hard to find me a therapist, a direction in life and a community… through Nevut I… am now in a much better place.

Helping a family in freefall reverse course is most rewarding of all for Ari. A chayal wanted to go fight in the current war, but his wife was adamantly against it. He went anyway and was gone for months, during which time he lost his job. His relationship with his wife deteriorated to the point that they stopped speaking to each other, until one day she told him they were done.

“We put tremendous effort into this couple,” Ari says. “We worked with their rav, sent them to therapy, got them to go on date nights, arranged financial assistance, and much more. About a year later the husband sent me a message thanking us for helping them get to a much better place. Nevut is saving neshamos. Every little message we get like this feels amazing.”

Nevut events cover all three focus areas — fun activities such as paintball, hikes, barbeques, boat rides, bonfires and the like provide community, while lectures and workshops focus on wide-ranging business and mental health topics such as “Returning from War,” “Tips on Money Management,” “Grief,” and “How to Use LinkedIn.”

For the past ten years, Ari’s wife and Nevut cofounder Rochel Shira Abramowitz has been raising her young family with her husband away on the battlefield many weeks each year in miluim. She’s become the rebbetzin of sorts to another overlooked demographic, of which she is part — wives of lone soldiers.

A soldier often knows whether he’s in or out of danger, but for the spouse worlds away, every minute is potentially the worst. “Their imagination goes wild. Living like that can cause secondary PTSD,” Ari says. “One woman received a call from her husband at 6 a.m., and when she answered it, all she heard were loud booms and screaming. She called him repeatedly, but he didn’t answer. She thought he was being kidnapped and reached out to us in a panic to see if we could find out what happened. I was able to reach him and told him to call his wife. Turns out it was a pocket call, and the sounds she heard were the normal background noises of Gaza in wartime. For the rest of his service, she was traumatized.”

And spouses quickly learn that soldiers on the battlefield can’t be relied on for support — they’re too busy trying to survive. Running the home singlehandedly, dealing with a spouse who returns home changed, and remaining patient and supportive when his recovery stretches on are among the significant challenges. Rochel Shira supports and guides wives of chayalim, and arranges courses, events, and therapy for these unrecognized heroines.

Every Man’s Land

The exact location of Nevut Headquarters can’t be publicly disclosed — the risks are all too real. Type “The Maple Project” into your search bar, click on the website that pops up, and your mind will struggle to absorb what your eyes see: a list of Canadian soldiers who’ve joined the IDF, with as much personal history and information they could find on each one. With words on the site like “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes,” their view of the IDF is unequivocal. While the site’s stated aim in printing the list is calculatedly vague, intimations such as “Canadians deserve to know who they are,” and “Please share this project as widely as possible” leave little to the imagination. “This information is… not being collected and republished here to encourage any harassment of individuals named,” the site states — but the mundanity of the information on each soldier and its nefarious undertones leaves one chilled.

Closer to home, last year a sensitive Nevut undertaking in Israel was compromised and resulted in a breach of personal information about its reservists. Twenty-five of them received death threats from pro-Palestine fanatics; security apparatuses on both sides of the Atlantic were involved. “It was a very scary time,” Ari says.

What can be said is that the 1.5-acre property abuts 48,000-acre Harriman State Park in New York; hiking trails start in their backyard and end up on the Appalachian Trail. From the street, one sees a typical suburban colonial perched on a small hill; Ari, his wife, and their five children, ages newborn to eleven, call it home. But peek through the windows and you might find two, four, ten, or twenty former soldiers on the living room couches, whipping up eggs in the kitchen, shooting pool in the game room, or sleeping in the dorm-style basement bedrooms. The Abramowitz home is a free wellness retreat for soldiers who want to get away, hike, or relax with likeminded folks. It’s also the indoor and outdoor venue for many Nevut events.

Chayalim in distant locations aren’t left out. “We flew in families from Iowa, Texas, Florida, and other states to join our most recent shabbaton,” Ari says. “This past Rosh Hashanah, we paid for a traditional family from Colorado to come join our program, and they said it was the best Rosh Hashanah they ever had.” The robust virtual community enjoys Zoom get-togethers and lectures every few weeks, and the annual Yom Hazikaron Zoom meeting is one of the highlights of the Nevut calendar.

“Soldiers share about friends they’ve lost — it goes on for hours. It’s so intimate and meaningful, and they have no other opportunity to share in this way,” he says.

When that’s not enough for an out-of-towner, Ari will call the rabbi of the soldier’s shul and encourage him to involve the soldier in the kehillah in any way possible.

“A concerned rav recently called me about someone in his community who was struggling. I suggested he use him as a security guard for shul events. Keeping a soldier connected to his kehillah can be a crucial layer of support.”

Nevut’s varied demographic, Ari says, is one of the most special things about it. “We are a mixture of every kind of Jew,” he says. Watching a Yid from Williamsburg share a beer or deep conversation with a secular guy from Long Island, “is just spectacular. There’s a sign hanging out of a window in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood that expresses exactly how I feel at Nevut events, and I quote it often: ‘Ein chilonim, ein datiim, rak Yehudim kedoshim (There are no secular Jews, no religious Jews, just holy Jews).’ ”

With their budget handled by just a two-man fundraising team, Nevut’s reach is truly remarkable: 3,000 soldiers helped to date, ongoing mental health and career support for 90 current open cases, nine paid staff members (in addition to 30–100 volunteers at any given time), monthly events in 11 cities, visits to lone soldiers on the front lines every three months, financial assistance for Yom Tov for those who need, mini shabbatons for soldiers and their families every two to three weeks, and macro shabbatons every four to six months.

“Our annual budget has almost tripled in the past year alone,” says Ari, and perhaps it’s his unlikely-but-potent blend of serenity and passion that helps account for his success.

Ari and his team have presented to both Israel’s Minister of Defense and Minster of Diaspora Affairs, highlighting Nevut’s critical work and appealing for funding, arguing that lone soldiers deserve the same benefits that Israeli veterans receive.

“They say they love what we do but they have to help Israelis first. For now, we’re on our own,” Ari says.

Left, Right, Left

In those early Nevut shabbatons, an uncomfortable moment would repeat itself often. Ari would catch a whispered Not in front of him!, and looking up, he’d see someone quickly trying to hide the joint he was smoking. He was bothered on multiple levels: Why were so many of them using drugs, why the chillul Shabbos among those from frum homes, and as painful as their chillul Shabbos was for him to witness, why did they feel the need to hide it from him?

“I didn’t see myself as their dorm counselor, but apparently that’s the way they viewed me,” he says.

Wanting to understand more, Ari took training sessions with Avi Fishoff, Rabbi Shimon Russell, and others experts in dealing with struggling youth. He learned about deep pain, its effect on a person’s religiosity, and the power of unconditional acceptance to turn lives around.

“I learned to be wholly accepting and nonjudgmental, and this has shaped our entire approach,” he says.

Story after story demonstrates that pressure-free warmth works. “One kid came back from the army, and he didn’t know who he was — he’d keep Shabbos when he was in the mood, then skip the next. His relationship with his family was poor and he got no support from them. We put tremendous effort into keeping this guy close and helping him heal — we were his home away from home for years. His Yiddishkeit is now on solid ground. In fact, he’s now a mentor for others. Once someone is healthy, it often just flows from there.”

A young man from a staunchly anti-Zionist family in Monroe was struggling with his Yiddishkeit and decided to join the IDF. His relationship with his family was so rough that he wasn’t invited to his siblings’ weddings. After a very long journey in which Nevut played a pivotal role, he’s a frum husband and father, and has a positive relationship with his family.

Then Ari discovered that the approach can go light years further when it’s successfully transmitted to parents.

When a child in the normative yeshivah system joins the army, it’s easy to understand how challenging that is to their parents: They’ve invested a lifetime of effort into raising their child with a certain derech, and when it’s tossed aside, they feel burned, hurt, rejected, and angry. They fear the loose moral standards, the danger, and what killing another person might do to their child. But most of all, there’s a universal fear they’ll return from the army irreligious.

“They usually call me in a panic, having nowhere else to turn,” Ari says. “I have them take me back to their child’s childhood, and we look for clues. Maybe there was a divorce, a trauma, or a learning disability? Does he have friends? He hasn’t been in yeshivah since he’s fourteen — what does he do every day? Is there meaning in his life, or does he feel like he’s at a dead end? We put the pieces together and begin to understand what their child is seeking and why. Sometimes it’s validation, sometimes it’s the need to make a real difference. And I help them understand how protecting Am Yisrael fills them up with a higher purpose like nothing else can.

“When parents are anti-Zionist, their child joining the IDF is extra tough for them to swallow. I point out that their philosophical views are really irrelevant, because their child is an adult and will do whatever he wants in any case — but if they throw him under the bus now because of it, it will be so much harder to get him back.”

The formula for the best outcome is this: Understand where your child is coming from, so that you can fully accept him where he is, so that you can offer warmth and love with no pressure, so that he stays connected to you. This offers the best chance of him staying connected to Yiddishkeit.

“If you stand there with open arms, he’ll likely figure out the way back home,” Ari says.

Execution isn’t as simple as it sounds. Ari once got a call from a man whose son wanted to join the army, and he was very concerned that his son would go off the derech. He insisted that his son had everything he needed at home, he was a “good boy,” and there was no reason for him to leave yeshivah.

“I pieced together that the parents were baalei teshuvah who had a hard time integrating into frum society, and as a result, their son never felt comfortable in yeshivah. When I pointed out that the army would give him a place to be himself, the father became belligerent. Months later, the wife told me that through our conversations (there were many), she and her husband came to see that the yeshivah system really hadn’t been a good fit for their son. They’ve become fully accepting, and recently shared how proud they were as they watched their son receive an award for ‘most excellent solider in the company’ at his beret ceremony.”

Tragically, Ari has seen parents who are unwilling to bend, cutting their child out of their lives completely. All they gain is even more pain.

All Hands On Deck

Nevut Headquarters was hopping on Shemini Atzeres 2023: Soldiers sleeping in every available corner, with many more joining for the seudos. It had been a late night — the meal ended at 2 a.m., after a sudden massive rainstorm brought the succah crashing down. At 8 a.m., one of the soldiers who had left a few hours earlier was back at the door with news: Israel was at war.

“He must be drunk, I thought, but then remembered he wasn’t a drinker, so I assumed he had a nightmare or mental breakdown,” Ari says. “I didn’t think for a minute that it might be true.”

But soon another soldier appeared with the same report, and then another and another. Everyone had the same question: What’s the fastest way to get to Israel?

“For the next month, we became a command center for chayalim desperate to go fight,” Ari says. “Lone soldiers aren’t assigned to reserve units after discharge, but no one was fazed —  they’d figure it out once they got there.”

In those first two weeks, 25 volunteers fielded 3,000 calls. (Before October 7, Nevut had helped a total of about 900 soldiers.) They booked flights to anywhere on the globe that had El Al flights to Israel, using every bit of pull they had; much of it was paid for with credit cards or frequent flier points of donors who called to offer them. They even worked on arranging boats from Cyprus (which ultimately weren’t needed). Ari and his team of therapists guided hundreds of soldiers grappling with questions such as “My wife is nine months pregnant, is it right for me to leave her?” and “I just started a new job, should I give it up to go serve?”

For those who couldn’t make it back, the struggle has been tough. “It’s like there’s a fire burning, they have the equipment to put it out, but they just can’t get there to do the job,” Ari says.

It’s a frustration laced with guilt and shame. At this year’s Purim seudah, Ari spoke with a former IDF paratrooper who didn’t go fight because his wife wasn’t on board. Another chayal there asked him when he last served. “Recently,” was his vague response. Whether 15 years (with three intervening wars) can be called “recent” is debatable. “Spouses feel guilty as well, for discouraging their partners from going,” Ari says.

As a reservist, Ari’s phone rang that Shemini Atzeres; it was his commander Amitai ordering him back to Israel ASAP. After a short deferment due to his work in getting as many soldiers as possible to the battlefront, he did a stint in the north that November, and then another the following March.

This past Rosh Hashanah, Ari’s unit was serving in Lebanon, but because of Nevut’s Yom Tov programming, he arranged to join them right after Succos.

“In the middle of our Simchas Torah seudah, a secular soldier approached me and asked, ‘Are you in Chativat Carmeli?’ I said yes, and he told me that four soldiers in Carmeli were just killed. Carmeli is a brigade of a few thousand soldiers so I assumed I wouldn’t know them, but before I knew what was happening, he whipped out his phone and shoved a picture of the dead in my face. They were from my machlakah (team) of 22 mostly religious men — we served together for ten years and we’re all very close,” he says.

In Lebanon the day before, the team had discovered a massive shed filled with explosives. Setting out to search for hidden terrorists and secure the area, they noticed a small indentation in the ground, and it was over as soon as it started — two terrorists jumped out of a tunnel shaft, remotely detonated a mine, and threw grenades at them. Six were injured, and four killed: a father of six, a father of five, a father of three, and a single man.

“The death of my squad commander, Sammy Harari Hashem yikom damo, left me devastated,” Ari says. “He was my mentor — as a former New Yorker he took extra care of me. Just a few weeks earlier, my wife and I had a long talk with him about whether I should join this round of miluim.”

The blow shattered the team, gouging an irreparable hole in each man’s soul.

What had been the strongest team in their plugah (company) was now a remnant of twelve broken men. This past February, the week before the team was scheduled for their next round of miluim, a private donor sent them on vacation to South Africa to relax and recover together. Ari couldn’t make it, but he met them on their return to Israel, where they helped defend the northern border from infiltrators.

“I desperately needed to be back with my team to close the circle: to hear exactly what happened, to visit the kevarim and families of my friends who were killed, to process what happened with the others,” he says. “Being back with the team was heartbreaking — so much emotion and tears and rehashing of the event, but also lots of sharing stories about the friends we lost. One guy couldn’t get the blood from the incident off his vest, and the constant reminder was traumatic for him. But hard as it was, it was the most healing thing possible.”

Six months after the incident, losing friends and then not being with the team as they attempt to recover together continues to be the most painful challenge of Ari’s lone soldierhood.

“You just can’t heal the way everyone else does when you’re alone and far away. I constantly thank Hashem for Nevut, because even as I give support, I also draw tremendous support from it.”

According to pre-October 7 IDF data, 1,000 lone soldiers enlist each year from the US, and another 2,000 from around the world; that number has almost doubled since October 7. Ari’s dream is to reach every one of them (which might sound unrealistic, but once you meet him seems reasonably attainable).

“Our long-term vision is to build supportive communities around the world. Right now our only physical space is in Rockland County, NY, but we’re in the process of setting up centers in New York City, Florida, and California — and from there, who knows. Soldiers sacrifice so much for Klal Yisrael, and seeing them move forward in life is the biggest nachas you can have.”

And through it all, Ari can’t stop smiling — even when the moment ostensibly calls for a more somber demeanor. “It happens every time I speak, no matter the occasion,” he says. “It makes for some awkward moments, such as when I spoke recently at Sammy Harari’s shloshim. Of course it was devastating, but I thought of his positive energy and just couldn’t get the smile off my face.”

It’s the love behind that smile that has helped thousands to live again.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1070)