Great to see you, Bobo. Two Israel Defense Forces soldiers reunite at Five Towns Chabad

Hadassah Geisinsky, assistant director of the Chabad of the Five Towns Hebrew School, in Cedarhurst, believes there are no coincidences — not even the unlikely reunion of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers who served together 20 years ago, at a Hebrew school event.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Geisinsky said after watching the two men — one a visiting IDF member, the other a former soldier and the father of two Hebrew school students — embrace.

Ilan Levy visited the school’s Sunday session on Feb. 18 to tell the 4- to 11-year-old children about what it’s like to serve on the front lines in Gaza in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“We had an opportunity to thank them and supply what they needed for their units,” Geisinsky said of several IDF members who visited the Five Towns in mid February. “We didn’t know who we were being assigned for a soldier — we met them when they walked in the door.”

Levy was brought to the Five Towns by the IDF Chesed Center, an Israeli support organization in Hewlett, along with other soldiers, for the center’s IDF Unity Shabbat program, a five-day event at which soldiers spoke, and community members gathered to donate and collect combat resources for Israel.

Hatzalah Without Borders, a volunteer Israeli rescue organization of medics, paramedics and doctors, worked with the center to send soldiers and organize the event, Miriam Spitz, Levy’s neighbor and an Israel-based Hatzalah Without Borders volunteer, explained.

Levy had just returned to his home in Israel from Gaza when Spitz asked him to come to the United States, and he was happy to do so to thank the Chesed Center volunteers who helped keep him alive with the supplies they sent overseas. A flashlight, in particular, kept Levy from entering a building in which there were explosives, Spitz said.

Hebrew school students made a patchwork blanket when they learned they would be meeting a soldier who was serving in cold weather, Geisinsky said. Each student decorated a patch with words of love, prayers and comfort.
“It was incredible to see how involved the kids were,” Geisinsky said.

When Levy arrived, Gennadiy Shnayderman, a Woodmere resident and the father of two students at the school, recognized his voice. Shnayderman said that parents wouldn’t typically come into the school to pick up their children, but he was pulling his kids out early so they could make it to a soccer practice.

Shnayderman asked if the speaker was named Ilan, and when he was told yes, he called out “Bobo!” a nickname the men had called each other 20 years ago, when they served in the IDF together. They embraced as the students watched.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Levy said more than once when recounting the reunion.

“It hit me a bit later,” Shnayderman said. “I never expected to see him in Long Island, New York.”

Afterward, the men met again outside the school, their wives met and they caught up on their lives since their last time they had seen each other, when they served from Gaza to Mexico to Italy.

“The brotherhood you have in an army is something you cannot break,” Shnayderman said. “Someone that has never been in combat could never understand.”

Levy returned to Israel later that week, and is still in service, with the possibility of getting called up back to the conflict in Gaza at any time.

“He’ll get pulled up again, because he’s a skilled soldier,” Spitz said, adding that she was grateful that Levy could visit the United States. “It was a very beautiful closing of a circle.”

For more about the IDF Chesed Center, go to IDFChesedCenter.com. For more about Hatzalah Without Borders, visit Hatzalah.org.il/en.