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Nevut provides mental health, career advancement and family support to American lone soldiers who return from Israeli battlefields, including thousands who have enlisted since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
By Mike Wagenheim, JNS
Two lone Israel Defense Forces soldiers met about four months ago at a rooftop cocktail party in Manhattan organized by the nonprofit group Nevut. One of them, Roei, recognized the unit depicted on the shirt of the other one, Jeremy. It turns out they had served in the same IDF unit in the Gaza Strip.
Digging deeper, they found out they served in the exact same battalion. In fact, they discovered they had unknowingly already met in Gaza during their first engagement with Hamas, when they were involved in the rescue of an injured tank commander, passing him from one man to the next to help get him to safety.
In the chaos of the moment, they had no idea that each was an American or that they would end up stateside together in the same room to help deal with their post-war stress.
Ari Abramowitz, a native of Rockland County in Upstate New York, is the executive director of Nevut (“navigation” in Hebrew).
“There are 55,000 U.S. veteran organizations here, and there’s nothing for all these IDF lone soldiers that are coming back here,” said the rabbi and former sergeant in the IDF’s Kfir Brigade, who returned to the United States in 2017 and founded the nonprofit.
Lone soldiers enlist in the IDF as new immigrants to Israel with no family in the country to support them. Some remain in Israel after their service, while others go back to their native countries.
The average soldier in Israel is generally entitled to receive from the IDF 12 therapy sessions at a therapist of the soldier’s choosing. But returning lone soldiers don’t receive the same entitlement.
And often, lone soldiers don’t seek the help they need from their normal health providers because of the stigma attached to mental-health issues and a lack of support and understanding within their own communities.
Lone soldiers who served in the Israel Defense Forces involved with the New Jersey-based program Nevut. Credit: Courtesy of Nevut.
‘You guys saved my life’
When Abramowitz moved with his family back to the United States, one of his soldiers tried to commit suicide.
“We realized there was no organization. That’s when we realized there’s a big problem,” he told JNS during an interview in the Nevut office.
Nevut provides mental health, career advancement and family support to the American lone soldiers who return from Israeli battlefields, including thousands who have enlisted since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
With the war ongoing, Abramowitz said that close to 7,000 lone soldiers who were in the United States have returned to Israel to serve. “That’s a massive number, and they’re continuing to go back and forth. So it doesn’t stop,” he said.
Abramowitz, who saw four of his own friends killed in battle, was the organization’s original case manager, handling some 70 to 100 cases at a time. While hailing from a family of therapists, he had no background in mental health himself. Four case managers are now on board.
Ari Abramowitz (right), executive director of Nevut. Credit: Courtesy.
Abramowitz organized monthly, group therapy sessions for lone soldiers in the area and found that it was important for the former soldiers to feel comfortable with one another.
One of the soldiers who attended an early group session acknowledged to Abramowitz six months later that he had wanted to take his own life at the time. The former soldier told Nevut, “You guys saved my life,” Abramowitz told JNS.
Today, Nevut has 12 chapters across 22 U.S. states. It served 3,000 lone soldiers last year with more than 60 events for veterans, their spouses and parents. It also held two wellness retreats focused on post-traumatic stress, 18 mental-health workshops and 17 wellness weekends last year and added five chapters, according to Abramowitz.
The organization, which has a full-time staff of eight and some 50 active volunteers, also subsidizes therapy sessions, wellness check-ups, emergency intervention, suicide-prevention training and managed cases.
‘Eyes and ears on the ground’
Chaim Meisels serves as Nevut’s national chapters coordinator, building new chapters and organizing local events.
He’s a captain in the Egoz unit, responsible for the elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. The New York native served on active duty for six years before assuming a regular life back home. Then, Oct. 7 hit, and he went to fight again, serving once more for a little over three months.
“I came back, and as I was wanting to start continuing life normally, some of the soldiers that were under my command who live here started reaching out to me that they need help,” Meisles told JNS.
Lone soldiers who served in the Israel Defense Forces involved with the New Jersey-based program Nevut. Credit: Courtesy of Nevut.
That’s when he reached out to Nevut to connect them. Eventually, Abramowitz asked him to join the organization himself.
Meisels tried to return to Israel a few weeks after his most recent release to be with his team and support them mentally. But the IDF said it couldn’t fund his return for that purpose.
While Nevut has held meetings with the IDF and Israeli Defense Ministry—and says the latter two have been impressed with Nevut’s efforts and results—there is no funding that flows to Nevut and no official status recognition yet from the IDF for Nevut. JNS reached out to the IDF for comment.
Abramowitz says Nevut’s growth is largely due to word-of-mouth from participating soldiers who experience the organization’s benefits. For those soldiers hesitant to ask for help, Abramowitz reels them in with a different perspective.
“We just tell them that it’s not about you. It’s about your friend that’s struggling right now,” Abramowitz said, asking those soldiers to be Nevut’s “eyes and eyes on the ground,” to watch for potential mental-health warning signs in their comrades.
“That’s how many of them feel this connection, even though they’re not necessarily connected with the organization. They don’t necessarily want to be part of it, but they’re there for their friends, and when that comes and they see someone struggling, that’s when they reach out,” he said.
And Abramowitz stresses the organization’s biggest creed: “When you’re good, now is your time to go help the next person.”
Lone soldiers who served in the Israel Defense Forces involved with the New Jersey-based program Nevut. Credit: Courtesy of Nevut.
‘We’re going to save a life’
Nevut tries to pair each lone soldier with another of a similar unit or age and have them speak with each other at least once a week, providing a steady amount of direct support, as well as a constant “eyes and ears” on soldiers to help identify those who may have taken a turn for the worse.
Meisels stressed that every case is different. He told JNS that a soldier’s mother called him a couple of months ago, telling him that her son hadn’t gotten out of bed for three weeks. The soldier refused to speak with Meisels on the phone, so he went over to the family’s house.
After the soldier relented and came down to talk, the two went for a cup of coffee, beginning the recovery process.
“The guy is already in college and able to have a part-time job. We were able to get the guy back on track—onto a normal life and not living in the past of what he went through in Israel,” Meisels said.
Still, it’s an ongoing process with lone soldiers back in America constantly learning that their comrades have been killed or injured in battle, triggering PTSD even in those who progressing.
Beyond that, the trauma isn’t always immediately evident. It’s a reason why Nevut administrators say that a well-built organizational infrastructure is so important because the critical part of identifying red flags can come long after a soldier’s return when those around him or her feel everything is going alright.
That’s why Nevut pushes for a more comprehensive approach to care, which goes beyond a weekly, one-hour therapy session offered by career professionals.
“If they don’t have a job, and they’re staying home for 120 hours a week, they’re going to be in a bad place,” Abramowitz said. “We take a full look at the soldier and ask where they’re living right now, do they have a job, do they have friends, community?”
That has led to Nevut’s so-called mission to the frontlines, by which the organization sends a rotating crew of professionals to Israel to meet with soldiers still stationed in Israel. It has also allowed the organization to bring back a status report to a soldier’s parents or spouse, for which Nevut offers a monthly workshop, and to serve as a bridge between soldier and family.
For now, Nevut relies largely on a base of small-dollar donors, many of whom are connected to the program. The most recent financial filing (2023) shows a little more than $500,000 in grants and contributions. The organization works hard to stress to others that while they might already be donating to larger entities, there is an ongoing problem in their own ZIP code that needs attention.
“The real thing we are working on very hard is to be able to get people to understand that it’s our own nieces, our own nephews, our own neighbors, our own children and realize that this is life-saving work that we’re doing every day,” Abramowitz said. “If we could do that, we’re going to save a life.”
Lone soldiers who served in the Israel Defense Forces involved with the New Jersey-based program Nevut. Credit: Courtesy of Nevut.
‘Where do I turn?’
Nevut also offers workshops for spouses and parents struggling to understand the unfamiliar reactions they’re often getting from returning soldiers.
“Soldiers are coming back and finding that the dynamic in the house changed,” Shmuel Feigenbaum, Nevut’s well-being program director and case manager, told JNS. “Life didn’t stop. Life didn’t wait. The jobs of the family changed; they’re not getting back the same person that left.”
Lilly Romond, who served a year and a half working on international relations in IDF’s J6 cyber-defense directorate, heads up Nevut’s family support, as well as serving as its program and resource coordinator. She directs services for female lone soldiers, who number around 50 to 60 who are active in a group chat set up for them.
The Cleveland native said she was approached by Nevut as she finished her service as a standard check-up.
“The first event that I went to, I just felt a sense of community there because there are people who have been through the same thing as me. So I just felt at home,” she told JNS.
The experience in the army itself is different for female soldiers, but Romond says that “the same struggles with reintegration into civilian life and finding jobs and just feeling that sense of belonging” can be quite similar. “When I came back, a lot of my friends were getting their second degree or getting married or having kids, and I’m like, ‘OK, where do I turn?”
Lone soldiers who served in the Israel Defense Forces involved with the New Jersey-based program Nevut. Credit: Courtesy of Nevut.
Abramowitz concedes that Nevut’s wide-ranging services sometimes simply aren’t enough. He was teary-eyed and choked up when detailing the more than one dozen suicides by Nevut-affiliated soldiers, and many more attempted.
“Right now, there’s over 100 high-tier cases that we’re dealing with,” he said. “It’s usually every week or two that we have a critical case where there’s a soldier that we have to really get immediate support to.”
Feigenbaum learned about Nevut during a Shabbat activity program in 2020, after the Israeli with American parents moved back to Rockland County following his immigration and IDF service.
A sergeant first class, he ended up running Nevut’s Rockland County chapter two years later, as he completed his studies to become a psychotherapist. Much of his studies centered around post-traumatic stress and veterans.
He said at the time that Meisels compelled him to go to that Shabbat event—and that he didn’t realize he was even in need of support.
“I didn’t really understand how crucial it was until I really started learning about it. And once I learned about it, I’m like, ‘OK, so this makes sense,’” Feigenbaum told JNS. “So this is why I didn’t want to go out of my house. This is why I didn’t really want to be friendly. And the impact was just amazing.”
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