Parents of lone soldiers open a window to their fears, prayers, and pride 

As the war drags on, our fervent prayers have lost some of their urgency. But for those with children on the front, the war and worry are ever present — and for parents of lone soldiers, whose fear is compounded by their distance, those emotions can be even more overwhelming. Family First speaks with parents of lone soldiers, both religious and non-religious, to give a window into what it means to have a child at the front

“I’m fine, going out for an assignment rn, I love you all, send my love to everyone. It was a scary day, but I’m glad I had the zechut to help protect am yisrael. I will speak to you when I can.”

That was the text Chava saw when she turned on her phone after Yom Tov on October 8. It was from her son Yaakov, a lone soldier, who has been in and out of Gaza since the beginning of the conflict.

Around December of his post-high school year in a yeshivah in Eretz Yisrael, Yaakov, the oldest of Chava’s three children, expressed a desire to join the IDF. “I told him no, he needs to finish the year, and then go to college,” says Chava. But even though he was a good son and listened to his mother, returning to the States and starting his studies at Yeshiva University, he continued to express his desire to enlist.

Over the next several months, Yaakov’s father had many conversations with him to explore his son’s reasons for wanting to join the army, to make sure he was aware of what it would really mean to be in the IDF. Satisfied with his son’s responses, his father told him, “You can go, you just have to make sure your mom agrees.”

But Chava wanted Yaakov to finish college first, and she struggled to accept her son’s dream.

“My husband said to me, ‘Yaakov’s a grown-up. Even if you don’t think he’s grown up, he has. What he’s doing isn’t wrong — it’s right for him, and this is what he needs to do,’” says Chava, explaining how she began to accept the situation. “I realized I can’t tell him what to do. It’s his life.”

When Yaakov came to her around Pesach and said, “Mommy, I’m going to join the IDF. Do I have your brachah?” she gave him her blessing and her full support. He left the States in August of 2021, joined a Hesder yeshivah, where they prepared him for the army physically, mentally, and logistically, and he was drafted in March 2022.

Melissa lives in Washington State, a little over an hour from Seattle, and just a couple blocks from a college campus where the large pro-Palestinian protests have been a source of much distress. Even though she lives in an area that has a small Jewish population, she has always been very active in Jewish life, serving on the board of her synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, and Camp Kalsman, the URJ summer camp that her children attended.

“Going to a Jewish camp is what really instilled in all four of our kids a love of Israel and Judaism. Every summer, there’s a huge contingent of Israelis that come work at the camp, which is a big part of it,” shares Melissa.

Melissa’s son Isaac, one of a set of triplets, did a gap year in Israel with his sister. “They both came home saying that they wanted to make aliyah. I’m very proud of them and a little jealous,” says Melissa, who had wanted to go to Israel, but her planned trip had been during the First Intifada, which prevented her from going.

Isaac was part of a program to help new olim get settled and prepared for service. He spent four months on a base that Melissa describes as a Tower of Babel. “The only shared language is Hebrew,” she says. “There were new olim from South America, Russia, France, the US, and Canada.”

After months of language immersion, her son was drafted in May 2021, and ultimately ended up in a paratrooper unit. Melissa recalls how Isaac told her, “They don’t jump out of airplanes anymore, Mom, it’s modern warfare.” When I expressed surprise at that, she laughs wryly. “It’s not true. They do jump out of airplanes, for training. He knew I would be freaked out, so he didn’t tell me about that part until later.”

Rachel, from Charlotte, North Carolina, has four children in Israel right now. Three sons are serving in the IDF, and her daughter is in seminary. All of her sons attended Cooper Yeshiva High School for Boys in Memphis, Tennessee, and from there, went off to study in Israel. Her oldest son did two years of yeshivah, then joined the army. His brother stayed three years in yeshivah, then also joined the army.

By the time her third son went off to yeshivah in Israel, they could predict what was going to happen. “It wasn’t overwhelming for me because I only really had one child serving at a time,” says Rachel. But when the war broke out on October 7, all of her three sons were called up. “I never thought I would have three serving at the same time,” she says.