SOLDIER ON

Horovitz recalls her upbringing in Israel and how the example of her Holocaust survivor father helped her weather troubled times.

The author was born in Israel in 1952, a member of the Sabra generation (the first to be born in the new nation); this is a vital part of her identity. “Being a Sabra influenced the way I came to portray myself. Israel was about my age, a teenage nation. I grew up at a time when Israel was rebelling against the false image of the ‘weak and wretched’ diaspora Jew.” Her father moved to Palestine in 1946, even before the birth of Israel as an independent nation, fleeing war-torn Europe. He was born in Poland and, at 19, sent to Auschwitz along with his entire family. He was the only one to survive. So while the author enjoyed a joyful childhood, one “wrapped in love, cultural diversity, and natural beauty,” she also detected a “quiet undercurrent of suffering” in Israelis like her father who stoically avoided discussing the pain of their pasts. Horovitz inherited her father’s strength of character that helped her during her teenage years serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. Then she faced an even greater challenge: After moving to the United States with her husband, Zvi, she gave birth to a boy, Ronny, who had a serious mental and physical disability. Doctors told her he likely wouldn’t live a year, but she refused to succumb to pessimism or self-pity and managed Ronny’s care into his adulthood—he lived to be 39. Horovitz thoughtfully relates three tales—her father’s survival of the Holocaust, the birth of Israel, and her own personal trials—each connected by the theme of perseverance.

The author always rejected the question so often posed by victims of disaster: Why me? Reflecting on a long family history of triumph over adversity, she accepted her challenges with grace and fortitude: “I had grown up in a community marked by war, genocide, poverty, famine, and disease. That being the case, why did I expect to be exempt from hardship? In a world where horrific things happened to good people, why not me?” Admirably, the author goes well beyond the simplistic platitudes characteristic of contemporary self-help books—this is not a cheery injunction to stay positive but rather a call to consider the tribulations of life a necessary feature of one’s moral existence. The author interprets this not as an opportunity to indulge in emotional suppression or self-conscious introspection but rather as a chance to celebrate the beauty of human life and to enjoy its splendors as much as possible. In the end, it’s a stubborn love of life she finds at the very heart of Israel’s founding ethos. The reader will be hard-pressed to find either bitterness or a shallow sanguinity in this moving memoir—the entire remembrance radiates a remarkable combination of moral pragmatism and an enthusiasm for being alive.

An emotionally affecting, historically edifying memoir brimming with cultural insight and wisdom.