“It was clear to me that this is the most important and the right thing to do now. To stand alongside the unit’s members and alongside the entire State of Israel. I boarded the first flight to Israel.”
Shai is one of the first pupils of the Zoharim Agricultural Youth Village. He grew up in a Haredi family and did not find his place living under the dictates of this society. Very quickly he was rejected by the conventional Haredi educational frameworks and lost his way.
During these difficult times, and throughout his life, Rabbi Grossman was his moral compass. Shai says: “When I first met Rabbi Grossman, I had lost my way and had very little confidence in myself. I left the yeshiva and was surrounded by crime and drugs. This wasn’t me, but I had no idea of how to make my way back.”
When he arrived at Zoharim, it still was just the Rabbi’s vision. “There is nothing here!” he said. Rabbi Grossman told him: “You and your friends will be the ones to build this place, you will build your new home. And so it was. For months they built, paved, tilled and established a beautiful village in the heart of the Ela Valley. Since that time, at age 16, the Rabbi was like a father to him.
“At the Zoharim Youth Village, we were taught to give back and to contribute to society and the State of Israel,” says Shai. As a teenager who grew up in a Haredi environment, military service was not on his agenda. Moreover, Shai didn’t know any relative or someone in the neighborhood who had been inducted into the army. At Zoharim Youth Village, an emphasis is placed on the importance of military service and giving back to the country, and Shay, along with his friends at Zoharim, enlisted into the IDF for a meaningful service in elite units.
Shai successfully completed his studies at Zoharim, served in the IDF, and built a warm and loving family with four children. “Rabbi Grossman encouraged me to marry my girlfriend and officiated at my wedding. I named my first son Ohr and my fourth son David after the Rabbi,” says Shai. Today, Shai lives with his family in Miami, Florida in the U.S.
On October 7th, Shai’s unit was called up to serve on the border with Gaza and Shai caught the first flight to Israel. The unit’s mission was to identify the bodies of members of Kibbutz Be’eri and to rule out the possibility that people were taken hostage.
“It was clear to me that this is the most important and the right thing to do now. To stand alongside the unit’s members and alongside the entire State of Israel. I was fortunate to have received so much from Zoharim Youth Village, where I learned that we must also give back. There is nothing better than giving. We were taught to give back to society and the State of Israel and this is my opportunity to do the right thing and do my part during the war”.
