Ari Abramowitz is the battle buddy for lone soldiers once the adventure ends

Photos: Jeff Zorabedian

While IDF combat soldiers often need a support system for processing trauma after their discharge, lone soldiers from abroad — many of whom had challenges before donning their IDF uniforms — are particularly vulnerable once they return home to civilian life. And no one understands them better than  Ari Abramowitz, who has already helped hundreds of these young men find their footing once the adventure is over

Ari Abramowitz is a guy of firsts.

He’s also a guy for whom dreams don’t die

As a six-year-old tossing around a baseball on his dead-end street in Monsey, Ari Abramowitz knew was going to be the first frum player in major league baseball. Of course, he’d make a huge kiddush Hashem.

In mesivta, as his Yiddishkeit matured and he discovered deep joy in helping people, that dream took another shape: He’d start the first hardball league for struggling frum boys (everyone knew he’d never touch a softball). The structure, rigorous training, and teamwork would help them find their way.

But then life led him to the IDF; he was the first person he knew to enlist. The outlines of his old dream were reconfigured but still firm as he used his physical abilities to help Am Yisrael.

He came home and noticed a grim reality: The challenges lone soldiers — IDF recruits from abroad — faced when they returned home were much greater than those faced by Israeli veterans, yet resources and support for them didn’t exist as they did in Israel. He watched as these one-time soldiers fell into a tailspin they couldn’t climb out of. And so his dream morphed again into what would become his life’s work.

“There was this huge unrecognized need, and someone had to do something,” he says. He made himself that someone, creating a network of life-renewing support for lone soldiers across the United States, the first of its kind. Since its inception in 2017, his organization Nevut has helped about 3,000 American IDF soldiers surmount the myriad challenges they face so they could build stable, healthy, productive lives.

(His dream of creating a frum hardball league lives on, though it’s been relegated to his bucket list until he has more time).

“It’s all about finding a way to take what you love doing most and channel it toward helping Am Yisrael. When you do that, you’ve hit a grand slam,” Ari says.