Soldier On: A Woman's Memoir of Resilience and Hope by Bracha Horovitz
A first-generation Israeli citizen unpacks the joys and heartbreaks of her experiences as soldier, entrepreneur, wife and mother in the moving memoir Soldier On (Endeavor Literary Press) by Bracha Horovitz.
The Sabra Generation
The daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, Horovitz grew up in Israel as part of the “Sabra” generation — the first to be born as Israeli citizens since the nation’s founding in 1948. From an early age, Horovitz learned about her parents’ sacrifices as part of the Jewish diaspora and their part as “Pioneers” in building up the new country. Her generation was a source of boundless hope for Israel, like a phoenix rising from the ashes after the horrors of the Holocaust.
On a walk with her father one day, the young Horovitz asks about her grandparents, whom she has never met. The stunning revelation that she will never meet them — they died in the concentration camp her father survived — marks a new beginning in Horovitz’s young mind, one forever focused on helping her homeland thrive. She learns as well that the children of the Pioneers are named for the hardy desert fruit, the sabra. “Your goodness is kept safe by a tough exterior. You’re prickly. Resilient. Some would say you have grown up in a harsh and unforgiving environment, but you were built for this. You have the strength to survive.”
When Two Aspects of Identity Disagree
Charting her childhood and the guiding ethos her parents and nation instilled in her, Horovitz eloquently describes the unique perspective and commitment of the Sabra generation. Noting how Israel at the time was “about my age, a teenage nation,” Horovitz recalls the new country rebelling against “the false image of the ‘weak and wretched’ diaspora Jew.” She accepts the challenge of living up to the “Sabra ideal,” one that present to the world “an authentic view of Israel’s dignity, vivacity and indomitability.”
Joining the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at eighteen, Horovitz took the mandate to heart and survived the crucible of military training that included desert navigation, marksmanship, parachuting and wilderness survival. The experience gave her confidence and “reshaped my view of womanhood.” Anticlimactically, her military training led to a secretarial position at IDF headquarters, where her good looks attracted the attention of fellow soldiers who encouraged her to enter the Miss Israel pageant. The issues of femininity, achievement vs. appearance and the ambidextrous nature of womanhood in Israel are an underlying theme of Horovitz’s memoir. She puzzles out her own role in the beauty contest — where she came in as runner-up — and learned for herself that “pageantry did not seem to fit with the Sabra ideal.”
Sunlight Beaming Through Dark Clouds
A slim memoir, Horovitz tightly moves through the big moments of her life: college, marriage, starting a business, having children and emigrating from Israel to America for her husband’s career. At 25, with two young daughters and a promising career of her own, Horovitz “looked for ways to maintain a perfect balance between work, home, marriage and children … like the experiments in my high school chemistry class, which taught us about maintaining a stable chemical reaction, I believed I could find the exact formula to keep everything balanced in my life.” The balance would prove illusory, however.
Settling into the environs of Boston, Horovitz soon gave birth to a third child — a son, Ronny. Here her Sabra toughness would be tested to an excruciating degree, when she learns that Ronny was born with severe and life-threatening disabilities. As her “soul raged and rebelled” and wondered “why me?”, she reflects on where she came from: “My father had a number tattooed on his wrist. He went through a Nazi death camp. He lost his entire family. Yet he chose to believe that beauty transcended life’s ugliness … his response to severe hardship was like a ray of sunlight beaming through dark clouds.”
An Ode to Women, Wives and Mothers Everywhere
The latter half of Horovitz’s moving memoir captures the essence of suffering as that of an intruder. “That is what suffering does: it intrudes. Intrusion is its specialty. Its mission is to shatter our naïveté and confront us with our vulnerability.” But it is Horovitz’s response — her choice — to “soldier on” and endure what life brings that is the ultimate source of hope in this brief, brilliant ode to women, wives and mothers everywhere. Her military experience in the IDF and the Sabra seed nurtured in her from childhood provide Horovitz the strength “to shoulder the weight and keep marching.” Soldier On is a thoughtful, elegantly written ode to the beauty and resilience of the human spirit in its darkest moments.
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Bracha Horovitz is a first-generation Israeli, a mother, entrepreneur and businesswoman. Having served in the Israel Defense Forces and then becoming a runner-up in the Miss Israel beauty pageant, she went on to earn a degree in textile engineering. She has lived and worked in the United States while raising her children, including her son Ronny, who was born with severe disabilities. Bracha continues to advocate for parents with disabled children and the organizations who help them.
