Yediot Aharonot: From the Tents of Torah to the Officers Quarters By Yossi Yehoshua (translated) 2/24/2006

Source: Yediot Aharonot

The top cadet marching yesterday on the parade ground, at the officers course graduation ceremony, didn’t look for his excited parents in the crowd. His father, a rosh yeshiva, had opposed his decision, four years ago, to leave a prestigious yeshiva in Jerusalem, but Zvi Ozeri was not prepared to give up: “I wanted to try and fulfill myself in the Army,” explained the young second lieutenant.

Ozeri, the second haredi officer in the IDF, serves in the Nahal Haredi, and already had a more significant achievement under his belt, having been selected by his superiors to be awarded the Battalion’s Citation for Outstanding Service. Chief of Staff Dan Halutz awarded him his insignia of rank, and stopped to speak with him briefly.

After the ceremony, on his way home, he stopped at his regular stopover, Beit Hachayal in Tel Aviv, where he went in as an officer in uniform, but came out in a black suit, which he always carries in his kitbag. It was only then that he got on the bus to Bnei Brak, and came back to his own neighborhood.Ozeri was born to a haredi family, and he has ten siblings at home. When his first call-up notice came, he had not even dreamed of enlisting. Instead, he commenced his studies in a prestigious Jerusalem yeshiva. “At the induction tests I put in all sorts of garbage into the computer. I did everything I could not to serve,” he said yesterday.

When he enlisted, he had to fight again, this time to bring his medical profile up sufficiently so that he could enlist in the Nahal Haredi. He later completed a squad leaders course with distinction, and half a year ago went into the officers course. “Ozeri has been outstanding all along. He has shown a particularly high level of professional ability, in addition to his natural leadership abilities and high sociometric score,” said his commander, Lt. Col. Eran Makov.

His parents did not come to the ceremony yesterday, but Ozeri was pleased to see there Rabbi Dovid Fuchs, one of the rabbis who supports the battalion. “[Ozeri] is a very sharp minded individual, who, even in the Army, remains a ben Torah [faithful to the Torah lifestyle]. Every day he completes two pages of Talmud study,” the rabbi said yesterday. “I know that the more one progresses in the ranks and becomes a commander, the harder it is to keep the mitzvot, but I do not intend to allow myself to lower my standards. For example, I only eat glatt kosher meat, and at [the officers course] I couldn’t get it. So, for eight months I went without meat in the Army, which physically weakened me, but I would not compromise.”

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