MEVASSERET ZION, Israel — A basic aspect of life in Israel is the requirement that every adult, whether male or female, must serve in the IDF for a few years upon reaching the age of 18. While serving in the military, soldiers are trained in one of the many areas in which the IDF engages, whether in a front-line combat unit or in one of the many support units. After being discharged, Israelis are required to be available for annual reserve duty, which usually amounts to two or three weeks of military service each year.
In many families the children are simply told, “Dad (or Mum) is in the reserves,” and there is no further explanation of what is involved. The situation is taken for granted, and the children are expected to accept it as just another fact of life. But many young children have no idea what the concept of being in the reserves actually means.
So now one young mother, Talya Tomer, has decided that it’s time to make it clear to children what it means when they are told “Dad is in the reserves,” and has written a book explaining what happens. In order to make the situation clear she has involved another young mother, Daniella Koffler, to illustrate the text, and together they have launched a crowd-funding campaign on the IsraelGives project app — https://my.israelgives.org/en/fundme/miluimbook — in order to raise funds to enable them to publish the book, which will be written in Hebrew and distributed gratis to children of parents who have been called up for reserve duty in the IDF.
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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson is an author and freelance writer based in the Jerusalem suburb of Mevasseret Zion. She may be contacted via dorothea.shefer@sdjewishworld.com