Michael Levin Lone Soldier: The American Who Ran Back Into Israel's War

A one hundred thirty pound teenager from the suburbs of Philadelphia once climbed onto a dumpster, wriggled through a window at an Israeli army office, and talked his way into a tryout for the toughest unit in the country. Everyone told him he was too small, too foreign, too American. He proved every single one of them wrong. And two thousand strangers came to his funeral to say thank you.

His name was Michael Levin, and if you have never heard his story, you are about to understand why so many people who never met him still cry when they say his name.

Michael Levin (Photo: Family album)

The Michael Levin Lone Soldier Story That Still Makes Soldiers Cry

Michael was born on February 17, 1984, in Holland, Pennsylvania, the grandson of Holocaust survivors. From the time he was a small boy he was obsessed with Israel. Not casually interested. Obsessed. He decided around age ten that he was going to live there, and he never wavered. His friends remember a kid who wore Israel on his sleeve before it was cool, who could not stop talking about the Jewish homeland, who felt the pull of the land the way some kids feel the pull of a sports team they would follow to the ends of the earth.

When Michael finished a program at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel, his mind was made up. His father Mark wanted him to finish college first, the way a loving parent would. Michael wore him down. In 2002, at eighteen years old, he packed his life into a suitcase and made aliyah, alone, with no family waiting for him on the other side. He was what Israelis call a chayal boded, a lone soldier. It is one of the bravest choices a young Jew can make, to leave everything familiar and go serve a country because you believe with your whole heart that it belongs to you and you belong to it.

He spent a year learning Hebrew at an ulpan and volunteering at Kibbutz Tirat Zvi. Then he set his sights on the Paratroopers Brigade, the elite of the elite in the IDF. The problem was that Michael did not exactly look the part. He was skinny. He was accident prone. During training he once dropped a machine gun on his own foot. When the induction center turned him away, most people would have taken the hint. Michael found a window instead. He climbed a dumpster, squeezed through, and made his case until they let him try out. He passed. A teacher of his later said something that has become almost legendary among the people who knew him. Michael, he said, "out Israelied the Israelis." A volunteer who did not have to be there inspired the ones who had no choice.

That was the thing about Michael. He was not some untouchable comic book hero. He was a goofy, warm, young man who made people laugh and would, in the words of one rabbi who loved him, "lie down in traffic for you." That is exactly why his story lands so hard. He was ordinary in all the ways that make a person real, and extraordinary in the one way that counts.

Michael Levin's grave from Mount Hertzl (THDpr, Wikimedia)

He Flew Back Into a War He Could Have Skipped

In the summer of 2006 Michael was home in Pennsylvania on leave, seeing family, being a normal twenty two year old. Then war broke out on Israel's northern border. Hezbollah had crossed into Israel, killed soldiers, and dragged two of them, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, back into Lebanon. Michael's unit was heading to the front. He was thousands of miles away, safe, with every reason in the world to stay put.

He caught the first flight he could back to Israel. His sister Elisa remembered him being "itchy to get back." He did not go because anyone forced him. He went because his brothers were going, and Michael Levin was not the kind of person who let his brothers walk into danger without him. Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, the old saying goes. All of Israel is responsible for one another.

On August 1, 2006, in the Lebanese village of Aita al Shaab, Michael's platoon was searching house to house, part of the effort to find the kidnapped soldiers. Hezbollah fighters were waiting. In the firefight that followed, Michael was killed. He was the first American and the 36th Israeli soldier to fall in that war.

Two Thousand Strangers Came to Say Goodbye

His funeral was set for Har Herzl in Jerusalem, in the middle of a war, for a lone soldier with no family in the country. His father Mark braced himself for a small, lonely goodbye. Instead, roughly two thousand people showed up. Mark looked around, stunned, and wondered aloud if there was some other funeral happening at the same time. There was not. Word had spread, Jew to Jew, that an American Jewish young man who chose Israel had given his life for it, and thousands of people who had never met him dropped everything to make sure he was not buried alone. Am Yisrael Chai. The people of Israel live, and they take care of their own.

Michael's death could have been the end of the story. His parents refused to let it be. Out of their grief they helped build the Lone Soldier Center in his memory, and later the Michael Levin Base, so that no young man or woman who comes to Israel alone to serve would ever feel forgotten. Thousands of lone soldiers have since walked through those doors and found a hot meal, a bed, a shoulder, a family. Because of one skinny kid from Pennsylvania who would not take no for an answer.

People ask why Israel produces so many heroes. The answer is standing at Michael's grave every single year, where former lone soldiers and total strangers still come to plant a flag and whisper a thank you. Michael Levin was not born in Israel. He chose it. And in choosing it with everything he had, he reminded a nation what it is worth. Yehi zichro baruch. May his memory be a blessing.