Lone Soldier…Fallen Hero

Earlier today I found myself sub­mit­ting a blog entry in honor of the death of Ingmar Bergman, a man whose work has influ­enced me greatly but to whom I have had no direct con­nec­tion through­out my life. While this tends to be a forum for my thoughts on film and other arts, it seems fool­ish to go with­out men­tion­ing a good friend of mine who the world lost a year ago, Michael Levin.

Mike was a friend of mine back at Council Rock High School, where we sat next to each other in geom­e­try our Junior. But that, of course, was to be our least excit­ing aspect of that year. From February to April of 2001, we went on the same trip to Israel with the Alexander Muss High School in Israel. It was an intense eight-week pro­gram in the mid­dle of the school year that fol­lowed a rig­or­ous cur­ricu­lum of Israeli and Jewish his­tory, from the Torah to today. We also had tutors keep­ing us up to speed with our American stud­ies. Mike and I had the same tutor for Geometry over there, which was just a lit­tle bit of a joke for the two of us. We just had too much fun.

We were all greatly moved and changed by that expe­ri­ence in Israel, though any­one that went on the trip could attest to the fact that Mike was affected on a more pro­found level. When we came back, there were a few of us who remained in yarmulke and tzit-tzit (the fringes that hang from your shirt), but as the weeks strained on back in our trendy, sub­ur­ban, over­whelm­ingly Jewish pub­lic school, we all fell back into rou­tine. Not Mike though. His mind was made up dur­ing the trip about how he would live the rest of his life.

Many of us con­sid­ered mak­ing Aliyah and mov­ing to Israel, serv­ing in the Army, and mak­ing a life in the Jewish home­land. But for many of us, the allure of an American col­lege expe­ri­ence won our hearts over. Of course, not Mike. He told us his plans all along, to move there after High School and join the para­troop­ers, an elite unit of the Israeli Defense Forces. We of course ragged on him, for we weren’t sure yet how seri­ous he was. His Hebrew, like our own, was inad­e­quate for most things let alone tak­ing orders in the army.

Mike was also seemed an awk­ward fel­low at times back then. He was obsessed with dance films, espe­cially those with Julia Stiles that were so pop­u­lar in high school. He even knew a num­ber of bal­let posi­tions. Whenever this sub­ject came up a macho but­ton inside of me would go off, but the joke was always on me. Talking about dance always got him the best girls. Always. For his abil­ity to climb most any­thing put in front of him, his nick­name on the trip was Mogley, which matched per­fectly to his curly hair.

After high school we all went our sep­a­rate ways and tried our best to keep in touch. But with Michael in Israel, at first as a stu­dent and then as a cit­i­zen, he and I grew far out of touch. I have always regret­ted this, but I fig­ured once we all set­tled and the tumult of col­lege and army were through, there would be plenty of time to catch up on those lost years.

While my close friend Kevin, who was like a brother to Michael, was on a trip to New Orleans with his campers last sum­mer, I called him to say hello, tak­ing advan­tage of pre­cious cell ser­vice out­side of the camp. He was excited to announce “I’ve got Michael on the other line!” and then con­nected us via con­fer­ence call. He was back home in Holland, PA, cut­ting his leave early to go back and join his unit as war had bro­ken out in Southern Lebanon. He was leav­ing the next day for Israel. As usual, he was of few words, even though I hadn’t spo­ken with him in many months. I had to press him for infor­ma­tion on his life, for there was noth­ing glam­orous about it to him. It was just his own life. When he told me why he was head­ing back, I said two things to him: “Be safe. Kick some ass.”

Now, this is about the point where the Michael we all knew ends and the leg­end begins. I do not mean this as an insult to his mem­ory, for every­thing that hap­pened in the ensu­ing weeks is very true. I sim­ply mean to say that a lot has been writ­ten on Mike, and much of it focuses on these last two weeks. It is so com­pelling that it almost seems like a sto­ry­book, and not the guy we knew. All I’ll say more on this is that he found a way to force him­self back to his unit in Lebanon.

On Monday night, July 31st last year, I spoke with my par­ents who had just come from an Israel rally at a local syn­a­gogue that was packed to the gills with around 1000 peo­ple. Rockets were rain­ing down on north­ern Israel by the hun­dreds every day, caus­ing major cities along the bor­der to evac­u­ate and send their cit­i­zens to bomb shel­ters. This was war as I had never seen in my life­time in Israel. This was what the Israeli Defense Forces gear up for. This was why Mike joined the mil­i­tary: not to fight for the sake of fight­ing, but to defend the Jewish state. And so in the sub­urbs of Philly, a crowd of a thou­sand stood and cheered as Michael’s fam­ily was announced. The fam­ily of a local boy fight­ing for exactly what we all we wished we could fight for. my par­ents told me how excited the whole com­mu­nity was for him. That Monday, Michael went into Lebanon.

On Tuesday, August 1st, I opted to shirk my evening respon­si­bil­i­ties at the camp I was teach­ing film­mak­ing at and head out to the town of Milford, which boasted a sin­gle really nice cof­fee­house. Toting my New York Times, I ordered a cup of joe and looked for­ward to relax­ing in its aro­mas before tak­ing that first deli­cious sip. Then my dad called with the news of Michael’s death. I had almost pre­pared myself for this ter­ri­fy­ing news, but I still could not wrap my head around it. I had spo­ken to him a few weeks before. We were to catch up and get together later, after the war.

His death was fol­lowed by a media frenzy. He was the first American killed in this con­flict, and his life story was so com­pelling that no one could resist it. His par­ents receive let­ters by the ton telling of how his story touched so many lives. By the end of the week he was on the front page of every paper in the coun­try. But his friends grieved together, with­out all that noise. It was almost, even at that dark time, enter­tain­ing to see what facts were real and which fab­ri­cated in all the sto­ries from around the world, espe­cially the spelling of his name and his age.

This past March I finally went to visit him in Israel, though sadly it was at the Har Herzl Cemetery, Israel’s equiv­a­lent of Arlington National. Here is a retelling of a trip there I wrote after return­ing to the states in March:

Our sched­ule was incred­i­bly packed, but we wanted to make sure we went to Har Herzl a few times since that was the main rea­son for our trip. Midway through how­ever, we had only been there once. So Wednesday night, after return­ing from din­ner at a friend’s in Maccabeam, we hopped a cab directly to the ceme­tery. When our cab dri­ver told us we’re crazy because it’s closed, we told him we have a friend in there. He went on to drop us off by the museum end of the moun­tain. Did he think our friend was Theodore Herzl him­self? There were light show­ers in Jerusalem all day, but at this time the rain had stopped. The cab­bie made a u-turn and dropped us off at the proper point. This had been my sec­ond time to Mike’s Grave and Kevin’s third since he was at the funeral. On our first time on this trip, Mike’s friend Baruch led the way to the grave, and Kevin could hardly rec­og­nize the place from the funeral as there were so many peo­ple around that day. Suffice it to say, we were alone on a damp night with only some clue as to where to find the proper grave. It all felt rather, I don’t know, “Scooby-Doo” I guess, but we man­aged to retain our com­po­sure and keep the solem­nity of the place. So we passed through the main gate and made our way to the first stair­way. After some dis­cus­sion, we fig­ured that was the proper way to go. So we both placed a sin­gle foot on the first step lead­ing into the ceme­tery ready to begin our way up the dimly lit stairs, when, sud­denly, all of the lights at Har Herzl went out at once with a bright blue flash. Thunder began to rum­ble from behind the moun­tain and the rain started again. There we were, in the mid­dle of a ceme­tery at night in the rain with no lights any­where. We reacted in the only log­i­cal man­ner, we bolted in the oppo­site direc­tion for the gate and back out to the street hys­ter­i­cally laugh­ing. We just couldn’t con­tain our­selves any longer. Thank good­ness no other fam­i­lies of sol­diers were there to wit­ness this silli­ness. But we both knew, with­out say­ing it, that Mike would cer­tainly join in our laugh­ter were he out­side the gates with us. More likely than not, he was laugh­ing at us from within the gates. We finally con­tained our­selves and made it back to his grave as the rain came down harder. There was much silence between us. When we came with other peo­ple, we would share sto­ries about Mike, but not this time. This time was much more per­sonal. We just stood there and thought about him. I took some pho­tos, some­thing I had hes­i­tated to do before mak­ing this trip. It felt inap­pro­pri­ate to take pic­tures of a friend’s grave, until I real­ized that it is so help­ful for those who can­not make this jour­ney to visit him so often. Not to men­tion Mike had his big SLR strapped around his neck every­where we went on our trip to Israel in high school. We stood in the rain until we felt we didn’t need to stand there any­more. We returned the next day in sleet and snow for our final visit before leav­ing Jerusalem. I guess Mike wanted to make sure we would have sto­ries to tell.

I know this is run­ning on and mean­der­ing and such, but it’s so hard to orga­nize so many thoughts on one per­son. To many peo­ple, Michael’s story and tragic end make him a hero. But I can hon­estly say, with­out pour­ing on the cheese at all, that he was a hero of mine well before he went to bat­tle, before he joined the Army, before he moved to Israel. We have a song that we sing at the Passover Seder, “Deyeinu”, “It Would Have Been Enough…” dur­ing which we recount all the things G-d did for us and how we didn’t even need every­thing. Mike, as that wiley char­ac­ter I knew and respected and loved and laughed with in high school, would have been enough. But of course, Michael Levin strove for so much more.