Saving Gen Z: The Israeli Way
Last night in Midtown Manhattan, I was honored and humbled to meet the two 25-year-old founders of an amazing organization SoldiersSaveLives.Org that was founded in the hours after the October 7th Hamas atrocities against Israel and has already raised and delivered tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment to Israeli troops fighting in Gaza.
Gidon Hazony and Baruch Apisdorf are that dynamic duo who snapped into action on October 7th with a desperate, improvised rescue mission in hopes of saving a friend. While they could not save that friend, they knew their efforts could not stop there, and the rest of what they have done with so little time and previous fundraising/relief experience since then is nothing short of remarkable.
After Baruch and Gidon told their stories and the story behind Soldiers Save Lives to our small gathering last night of editorial columnists and other journalists, the floor was opened up for questions. There were a lot of pointed queries, but no one question got the entire crowd more excited than one posed by a young TV news producer, (he was also 25 years old, coincidentally), who wanted to get Gidon and Baruch's opinions as to why 25-year-olds in America were not only more likely to be anti-Israel, but were generally disconnected from major news events or dedicating themselves to serious causes like our honored guests so clearly were.
While Gidon and Baruch wisely did not go into any kind of tirade against Gen Z Americans, it seemed like everyone else at the event wanted to weigh in with their answers. Everything from TikTok to poor public school education was blamed, but I think they were all off track with those explanations because they were basically putting the cart before the horse. That's because as dangerous as social media, "woke education," and even drugs are, they are examples of what young people turn to in order to replace a very important thing that the older generations have taken away from two generations of our children and counting.
That one thing is something all Israelis - male and female - are given the moment they are born: responsibility.
Israeli children know from an extremely young age that they will be drafted into the Israel Defense Forces at 18, and will have to remain available for duty until they're 60. While that sounds and can be a frightening reality, there is something else at play: young Israeli people grow up knowing that their country NEEDS them. Sure, there are plenty of "Jewish Mothers", (in Israel, everyone is a Jewish mother, so the term used in Hebrew there is "Polish Mother" to describe what we would typically just call a "Jewish mother" in America), in Israel who coddle their kids in stereotypical ways. But they also don't hide from them the heavy responsibility placed on their children's shoulders from the get go.
And that, it turns out, is a blessing. In fact, it's become much more of a blessing in our current times.
Here in America and in much of the rest of the Western world, we thought we were liberating our younger generations by removing the basic requirements their parents and grandparents faced, namely the pressure to get married, to have kids, adhere to religious rules, and for the boys, there was often the military draft. All of these "burdens" were put in the context of responsibility. We needed to get married and have families to live a clean life and extend our family lines. We needed to follow our Church or rabbinic traditions to fulfill our responsibilities to God. And we needed to be prepared to join the armed forces at any time in younger years to fulfill our responsibilities to our country.
But in eliminating those burdens, we’ve ended up sending two generations of American kids the message that they have no duty or purpose. Couple that with the 40+ years now of children in America never having unsupervised play, being told a four-year college path is the only respectable way to find success, and that there are literally no boundaries on what they can explore about their sexuality, and we shouldn't have the slightest question as to why so many Gen Z'ers are anxious, confused, and unable to do what their fellow Gen Z'ers in Israel like Gidon and Baruch do every day.
It turns out the less we ask of people, our children included, the less they will think of themselves. We have afflicted our youth with no expectations.
That was why as a parent of two Gen Z'ers, last night was encouraging and humbling at the same time. I was so happy to see young people in Israel acting so quickly and effectively to save our Jewish homeland from murderous terrorists by making sure IDF troops have all they need to survive and succeed. But I was humbled as I wondered just how much loving responsibility and "burdens" I've put on my daughters' shoulders to let them know they're too important to sit this and many other moral battles out.
For now, all of us who raise or work with Gen Z'ers can not only help Israel by donating to Soldiers Save Lives, but we can also use the story of its founders to provide our kids with some important examples to follow.