These soldiers died as Jews, I reflected, as tears fell from my eyes. Maybe I should start living as a Jew.
“They’re a vestige from the past, Rich,” he declared.
I never did put on that pair of tefillin again.
After graduating high school, I went on to study media and film production in college and then continued my graduate studies in mass media, after which I was hired by a New York company that produced commercials and other television programs. I was steadily climbing the totem pole in the filmmaking industry, and was poised to vault into the Hollywood scene, when my friend David proposed a different idea.
David and I were childhood friends back from our days together in Camp Boiberik, a Yiddishist camp affiliated with the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute. David had gone on to become an officer in the Israeli army, and he invited me to join him in Israel. I decided to take up his suggestion, thinking I would become an actor or director in Israeli theater and film and eventually enlist in the IDF’s paratrooper unit.
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