by Lou, Ft. Washington, PA

I certainly agree that for the community as a whole, moments like The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, the Summer of Love or a Bruce Springsteen concert should top the list of memorable moments. However, I would like to record a personal moment when music brought a large, disparate group together and lifted us up to a very emotional high.

In 1987, my wife and I and our four children were living on a kibbutz in Israel. I was drafted into the Israeli army for my basic training. My group was made up of about 80 men, all immigrants from many different countries, ranging in age from 25 to 35. Most were Jewish, a few were Christians that had married Israeli women and became citizens. Some were Orthodox Jews, most were not. A few like me were from a kibbutz, most were not. About half were from America or Western Europe, the rest were from Ethiopia.

Other than the fact that we had all just been drafted, we really didn’t have that much in common. We struggled through our training together. One thing you learn in the Army — you succeed or fail as a group. There are no individual successes. When it came time to celebrate our graduation, we gathered in a trailer in the desert. We had a decent (by Army standards) meal and acted out a few funny skits. We didn’t have a record player, but someone started singing “Ahm Yisrael Chai” and we all joined hands in a few circles and started singing and dancing together. Our boots stomped in unison on the wooden floor. We danced faster and harder. The singing got faster and louder. The stomping of the boots got faster and louder. At some point we stopped being 80 men and really did become one. We were ready to fight and die for each other.

We may have been a bunch of old, poorly trained soldiers, but at that moment, we could have done battle with the best units of any army in the world.