Pierson Grad Will Serve in Israel

While many of her peers were taking care of last-minute dorm shopping and picking their first college classes, Zoe Vatash was getting ready to join the Israeli Army.

Ms. Vatash, who has lived in Noyac since she was 4 years old, has committed to two years in the Israel Defense Forces because, “I just feel like serving is the least I can do. College can wait, and I think I will have invaluable experiences while I’m there,” she said in an email as she prepared to fly out of Kennedy Airport. “I am a third-generation Holocaust survivor and a proud Zionist. I believe in the state of Israel and its right to exist as an official homeland of the Jewish people.”

The 18-year-old joined 59 other soldiers from across North America through Nefesh B’Nefesh, or Jewish Souls United, a nonprofit organization that promotes immigration to Israel, on a flight to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on Monday. “If I’m going to be living and serving in Israel for two years then it just makes sense that I make aliyah, becoming a citizen,” Ms. Vatash said. “They’ve been really patient and informative and really made the complicated bureaucratic process go as smoothly as possible.”

She is part of Garin Tzabar, a program that puts lone soldiers in groups of about 30 people who will experience military service together as a social unit. The largest I.D.F. immigrant program in Israel, it has supported more than 2,000 soldiers since it was founded in 1991, and is partnered with the Israel Ministry of Immigrant Absorption. “They’re all amazing people and the sense of community and support definitely encouraged me to pursue enlisting,” she said.

After an opening ceremony Wednesday, she was to board a bus and go north to Kibbutz Beit Zera, where she will live for the next three months during an assimilation period. “It’s meant to become my home, where I’ll be staying on weekends when I’m not at whichever base I am assigned to serve at,” she said. In November, she will officially enlist and begin basic training.

Ms. Vatash officially made the decision this past May, about a month before she turned 18 and graduated from Pierson High School, where she earned an advanced Regents diploma. “Halfway through my junior year, I was 16 and all my friends were thinking about college, and I suddenly realized that this was an option for me. It felt like the right thing to do,” she said. In Israel, it is required that young adults serve: two years for women and three years for men. “Nowadays there are programs that would allow me to serve later in life for a shorter amount of time, but I think that serving now will allow me to give my best to Israel. College will be there when I get back.”

She’s not the first member of her family to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Her parents, Sue Vatash and Dr. Gal Vatash, their siblings, a few of her cousins, her grandfather, and her great-grandmother all served the Israeli army.

Still, her parents were surprised by her decision. “I’m very antiviolence, more an artsy than athletic kind of person,” she said, “but they’ve been incredibly supportive and so helpful. They probably know what I’m getting myself into more than I do and have been invaluable resources and influences in my decision.”

Ms. Vatash did not idle the summer away as she prepared to go off to Israel. She worked at Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton, and, she said, spent as much time with her loved ones as she could. A budding photojournalist, she had a photography exhibit at Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, of which she is a member. The display was of 19 of her images from her past two trips to Israel. The money she made is going toward trips and necessities during the three-month assimilation period. 

In two years, she plans to return to the states for college.

For now, she is focused on the journey ahead. “Israel’s security has been and continues to be a great concern on a daily basis. Although physically small, Israel lives in the hearts of millions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims all over the world. The existence of Israel is a universal concern.”