Adam Oknin watches over the children at the early childhood program at Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center with paternal patience, confident care, and the innate concern of a big brother.
On a warm spring day in Wisconsin, it is difficult to imagine this charming 18-year-old in an Israeli paratrooper’s uniform armed with an automatic weapon.
In a few months, Oknin will return to Israel and voluntarily enlist to protect his homeland.
For him, serving has never been a question. “We moved here when I was not even 14. I told my mother, ‘I’m going back no matter what and I’m going to serve,’ because in Israel you grow up knowing you’re going to be enlisted, you’re going to be drafted, you have to serve, and I don’t want to run away from that,” he said.
Oknin is not a man without a country; he is, like so many Jews, a person with two lands he loves. It would be easy for him to avoid military service; he holds dual citizenship and could stay in his adopted America, but that’s not what he wants.
Oknin admits that he has some apprehension, but not enough to overcome his unwavering loyalty. He admits, “I always have doubt about going and knowing I could get shot, I could get hurt, I could get kidnapped … but I’m not going to run away from my commitment.”
That commitment is born of a love for his homeland, a deep sense of connection to it, and the same sense of protection he seems to exhibit over the preschool children he watches.
“People built this country out of nothing with no one’s help and I wouldn’t want to see that destroyed,” he said. “To me it’s like Zion. It’s the land to go to when you’re in trouble. It’s our homeland and I don’t want to see anything bad happen to it.”
A big change
Marcy Yavor agrees. She and her Israeli-born husband, Moshe, have raised their children as they were raised, to be Zionists.
“I think [Israel is] the only possibility that if, heaven forbid, we need a place to go that’s the only place we’re going to be able to go, and we need to continue building it and continue keeping it strong. If it’s not me, it’s going to be my children,” Yavor said.
The couple is proud that their sons are willing to serve in the Israeli armed forces. 26-year-old Ilan is finishing up officer training and 21-year-old Amir plans to go to Israel this summer to enlist in a nine-month army program this summer.
Speaking of her elder son, Yavor said, “When he went to Israel he felt that he would not be able to stay as an Israeli citizen without serving in the army. That was a conviction that he would never waver.”
It’s not a conviction she questions either. “I would never ever deny my child that right to go and protect what he feels is right. I did not discourage him from going to Israel, I did not discourage him from staying, and I’m certainly not going to discourage him from serving,” Yavor added.
While Ilan is living in an area where there have been two bus bombings, she claims any fear for her children’s safety is not exacerbated by their living in Israel and serving in the military.
“Of course I’m afraid, but I was afraid when my kids were in Madison… You want your child sleeping next door to you but eventually they’re going to go away and I really do not feel any additional fear that my kids are in Israel,” she said.
Oknin admited that he’s feeling uneasy about the change that looms before him. But his concerns don’t revolve around security, he said. “I haven’t been able to sleep a lot lately. It’s a big change, again. How major that whole moving thing was.
“[I] wonder what I’m going to do before I’m a soldier, during those months. I’m going to need a job. How am I going to contact my friends again, because some of them are serving in bases, and to try to talk to them and my family, and what about my friends here and my family here? How am I going to be able to keep in touch with them?”
But, in the end, none of that matters, he said, because he is determined.
“It’s like voters here,” he said. “They think they can make a change by one single vote, and they can change the whole election.”
He concluded, “I think if I go to Israel, I can save it the same way, by serving my country. I think that one more soldier is making the army stronger and will help us protect our country.”
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