Trio of DKJA Graduates Trade in Freshman Orientation for Boot Camp
While 35 of the 38 graduates from Claire and Emanuel G. Rosenblatt High School at Donna Klein Jewish Academy prepare for their first year of college in the fall at top colleges around the nation such as MIT, Brandeis and Emory, three young men from the Class of 2018 are getting ready for a different set of challenges outside of the classroom.
18-year old George Linz and 17-year old’s Moshe Gad and Omri Bronfman will be deferring their undergraduate education for service in the U.S. Military and Israeli Defense Forces respectively.
“I was born in Israel and I still have family over there so I feel that I have this responsibility to protect them, while at the same time serving my country,” said Bronfman whose father also wore the IDF uniform.
Bronfman will begin his service in an IDF prep academy or ‘Mehina’ come September. That training lasts 10 months before he embarks on the customary two year and eight-month stint for male soldiers.
“I look at myself and I think, ‘I am a perfect candidate for this’, Gad explained of his decision. “I love Israel, I love the Jewish people and I want to experience serving in the army and protecting Israel.”
Gad officially enters the Israeli Defense Forces in October and will serve for a year and a half through a program called ‘Mahal’. Both he and Bronfman hope to be placed in the Infantry Brigade, but it was Gad who came to his path in the IDF in a most fortuitous way.
“I had been applying to schools and intended on going straight to college after graduation, but I actually got the idea to serve when I was on the March of the Living and I started talking to a commander at the Kotel, who told me about this program,” he remembered. “If I hadn’t talked to this random guy, I would have never given it a thought, so that just goes to show you how special of a place Israel is, the fact that you could have a conversation like that with a complete stranger.”
Unlike his two classmates, fellow Rosenblatt High School graduate and Parkland native George Linz will be wearing the Stars and Stripes on his military fatigues, as he reports to Ft. Benning, Ga. for U.S. Army boot camp in July.
“I’ve been to Israel four times and I love the place, but I don’t have any family there,” Linz explained. “All my family lives here so I want to protect them.”
Linz who ultimately wants to be an Army Ranger, is a DKJA lifer, having been enrolled in the school since Kindergarten. He feels like the school played an important role in his eventual career path.
“DKJA gave me the mindset to go into the military,” he explained. “Just teaching you about discipline and getting your work done, now I have to discipline myself to work-out and keep in shape for the army.”
While one student feels like DKJA has helped him shape his physique, another believes the school helped mold his mind into feeling like the IDF was the most obvious next step.
“All the trips we take bring a sense of national pride,” Bronfman explained of DKJA’s eighth grade Israeli experience and the High School’s Senior March of the Living trip. “Because of those (trips), you leave feeling a sense of pride, that Israel is your home and for me there was no sense in fighting that feeling.”
One feeling that the three will feel someday if they end up serving with one another as comrades or allies, is also a sense of pride, in each other, their countries and ultimately their school.
“I actually spoke to George and Omri about that,” Gad recalled of an earlier conversation. “Israel and the United States are such strong allies with one another, there’s a chance that would happen and that would be just the most awesome and amazing thing.”
“I would be so happy to see them especially in that situation, because I know we would all be doing it for a great cause,” Linz described of someday being able to see his fellow service-members while in uniform.”
This is the second year out of the last three that DKJA had a group of graduates enlist in the army. In 2016, Ezra Saragossi, Maya Azoulai and Daniel Dahoah all signed up for service in the IDF.
