{"id":35372,"date":"2020-09-11T03:40:54","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T10:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=35372"},"modified":"2020-09-10T10:56:45","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T17:56:45","slug":"helping-israels-lone-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/09\/11\/helping-israels-lone-soldiers\/","title":{"rendered":"Helping Israel\u2019s lone soldiers"},"content":{"rendered":"

MK Michal Cotler-Wunsh, right, with Michal Berman, chief executive officer of the Lone Soldier Centre in Memory of Michael Levin, and Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon at the inauguration ceremony in August of a new home for female lone soldiers in Jerusalem. (photo by Yossi Zamir)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Michal Cotler-Wunsh was an 18-year-old new immigrant from Canada when she enlisted for the Israel Defence Forces some 30 years ago. Unlike most of her fellow recruits, she had no home to go to on weekends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was a \u2018lone soldier,\u2019 without close family in Israel. There was no real framework that supported us \u2013 but much has changed since then, as this matter has become more acute,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Now a Knesset member (as a representative of the Blue and White coalition faction led by Benny Gantz), Cotler-Wunsh has taken up the welfare of the more than 6,300 lone soldiers lacking family in the country: immigrants, volunteers, orphans and youths estranged from their families.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn retrospect, serving in the army was the most amazing exposure to Israeli society in many ways,\u201d said Cotler-Wunsh, whose father Irwin Cotler was Canada\u2019s minister of justice and attorney general from 2003 to 2006. \u201cI did a squad leaders course and served in a very ragged anti-tank base at Nitsanim. The company slept in tents and went on marches in the dunes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The army gave her rent support and, on weekends, she stayed in a room in a Jerusalem apartment. \u201cI lived with an elderly man who usually went away on weekends, so I was alone in the apartment,\u201d she said. \u201cTo this day, I have connections with people from the Machane Yehuda market, especially the owner of the marzipan shop and the Tzidkiyahu delicatessen. These two would prepare boxes of food for lone soldiers at the end of Friday business, and we would get to Jerusalem after everything was already closed, go through the market and take the boxes of food prepared for Shabbat. To this day, I don\u2019t forget them and they don\u2019t forget me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond material needs, she recalled the psychological hardship of being far from home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know how important it is for lone soldiers to have their parents accompany them,\u201d said Cotler-Wunsh, who served in the days before digital communication. \u201cOne aspect that has changed is parents\u2019 involvement in day-to-day matters. Nowadays, it\u2019s possible to convey to the lone soldiers\u2019 parents a reality that they do not understand \u2013 and there\u2019s no chance that they will understand \u2013 but they\u2019re very concerned about. This communication calms both them and the lone soldier throughout their military service.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLone soldiers need somewhere to live, a hot meal on Friday night \u2026 things other soldiers take for granted,\u201d Michal Berman, chief executive officer of the Lone Soldier Centre in memory of Michael Levin, a nonprofit organization that looks after their welfare.<\/p>\n

The LSC, established in memory of an American immigrant soldier killed in the 2006 Second Lebanon War, currently operates nine apartment homes, offering low-rent housing to about 100 soldiers in Jerusalem, Petach Tikva, Herzliya and Ramat Hasharon, as well as social clubs catering to about 1,000 soldiers in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Be\u2019er Sheva. Only financial restraints are preventing the opening of more facilities and programs.<\/p>\n

Beyond the social-psychological aspects, soldiers\u2019 needs are often prosaic. \u201cThey need basic things like clean underwear, a toaster, somebody to look after them when they are sick,\u201d Berman explained. \u201cWe have hundreds of volunteers who cook and do their laundry for them \u2013 many of them former lone soldiers or others immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

The organization\u2019s staff also provide advice on how to navigate Israel\u2019s bureaucracy, and attend military ceremonies, taking the place of their parents who cannot be there. \u201cThey say this means the world to them,\u201d Berman said.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
MK Michal Cotler-Wunsh (photo by Avishai Finkelstein)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe difficulties continue beyond their army service,\u201d noted Cotler-Wunsh, who returned to Canada after studying law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. \u201cAfter 13 years in Israel and with a small baby, for the first time in my life I missed my family. I was pregnant with my second child and also wanted to do a second degree, at McGill University, and took the opportunity to be close to my parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

She returned to Israel 10 years later with four children and pursued a legal career that led her to the Knesset, where she has taken up a host of social issues, including the welfare of lone soldiers before, during and after their service.<\/p>\n

\u201cNowadays, when they do have a support system, the loneliness hasn\u2019t disappeared \u2013 it\u2019s just been postponed. It\u2019s harder when you\u2019re used to an all-embracing system then, suddenly, to find yourself really alone. In any case, getting out of the army is a shock. For a lone soldier, it\u2019s even harder to go from a hierarchic system to being an independent citizen who has to make decisions that will affect their life. That\u2019s part of the reason why so many young Israelis go traveling after their army service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the High Holidays, the LSC is launching a global crowdfunding campaign to help lone soldiers get through the toughest time of their lives. For more information, visit charidy.com\/lsc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Daniel Ben-Tal<\/strong> was a lone soldier serving as a paratrooper before becoming a journalist. Over three decades he has penned hundreds of articles in a host of journals and websites around the world. Formerly an editor at the <\/em>Jerusalem Post and the English version of <\/em>Haaretz, he is now an Israel-based freelance writer, editor and translator.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MK Michal Cotler-Wunsh, right, with Michal Berman, chief executive officer of the Lone Soldier Centre in Memory of Michael Levin, and Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon at the inauguration ceremony in August of a new home for female lone soldiers in Jerusalem. (photo by Yossi Zamir) Michal Cotler-Wunsh was an 18-year-old new immigrant from Canada when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35373,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4329],"tags":[5777,1739,1168,8313,19705,2763],"class_list":["post-35372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-israel","tag-army","tag-idf","tag-israel-defence-forces","tag-lone-soldiers","tag-michal-cutler-wunsh","tag-philanthropy"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}