Fallen soldier Yonatan Greenblatt and I have more in common than our name

It’s not often that you wake up to the news of your own death.

And yet, when I opened my phone earlier this morning, I had several messages from friends wondering if I was OK, if I knew this person, if I had any idea.

Earlier this week, a Hamas attack on Israeli soldiers in Rafah had mortally wounded a young member of the Shaked Battalion of the Givati Brigade. This is an anti-terror section of the IDF, a special unit tasked and trained to handle threats from fighters who eschew uniforms for civilian clothes so they can blend into the crowds and hide among the innocents.

Last week on July 20, an IDF soldier who had been inside a building in Rafah was wounded when Hamas fired rocket-propelled grenades into the structure, essentially toppling it. The young man had been transported to a hospital inside Israel for treatment but succumbed to his wounds. He was the 331st soldier to be killed in Gaza, an operation initiated in response to the 10/7 massacre when thousands of Hamas terrorists swarmed into southern Israel, murdering 1200+ people.

The 21-year soldier who died yesterday was named Yonatan Ahron Greenblatt.

It hit me like a punch in the face.

Yonatan Ahron Greenblatt
Jonathan Adam Greenblatt

Dead at 21.

I knew that this young man would be nothing more than a stray statistic to the Western press, that they would ignore his sacrifice and misrepresent his death, so I went to the Israeli press to learn more about him.

When I opened the Times of Israel, I found myself looking in a mirror, an image of a younger version of myself staring back at me.

Left, Jonathan A. Greenblatt, 21 (1992) (Courtesy); Right, Yonatan A. Greenblatt, 21 (2024) (Israel Defense Forces)

Yonatan was a young man with dark eyes and short dark hair. He looked a lot like me at his age, though he peered at me from behind rounded glasses that made him look serious and studious. His broad, knit yarmulke suggested a religious upbringing. Sure enough, the article reported that he hailed from Beit Shemesh, a religious city due west of Jerusalem.

I leaned back in my chair and breathed deeply.

In many ways, our backgrounds could not be more different. I grew up on the other side of the world in a small town in New England. I was raised in a secular family that was very Zionist, but I didn’t visit Israel until my 20s. I have never served in the IDF or even the US military.

And yet here we are – two people living distinctly different lives, and yet forever indivisibly connected.

We are not just the same name. We are similarly buffeted about by the same forces, forces that affect the entire Jewish people.

And that is the real story of this moment.

Again and again, the past 10 months have left no doubt that wherever we might find ourselves – from Kibbutz Be’eri to Kiryat Shimona, Sydney to San Diego, Toronto to Teaneck – the Jewish people all are the same.

The signs in front of Union Station this past week called for a “Final Solution” for all Zionists; the language didn’t trouble itself with the nuances between hardcore Bibi fans and the young men of Shovrim Shtika.

The vandals who defaced the home of the director of the Brooklyn Museum earlier this summer with red triangles didn’t seem to pause to consider her position on “Palestinian liberation.”

The thugs who screamed at individuals walking into the Nova Exhibit last month didn’t take time to question their views on a two-state solution.

The so-called activists in the Uncommitted movement attack only one possible vice presidential candidate for his position on Israel (the Jewish one), despite the fact that all his peers have the same stated view.

Anonymous websites that target actors, authors, investors rarely take the time to interrogate their actual opinions. The crime is their ethnicity; the wrongdoing is their faith. In the end, it’s accountability based on identity.

Sometimes you hear marginal voices in the Jewish community insist that they are exempt from such forces because they self-identify as “anti-Zionists.” I have seen these people walking in pairs in the halls of Congress, proudly wearing “Not In Our Name” t-shirts. I sometimes wonder what they would have said if they had been woken up in their homes in Kfar Aza on October 7.

I’m guessing that it wouldn’t have mattered.

So yes, I did not know him, personally, but I am mourning the passing of Yonatan. May his memory always be for a blessing.

I pray that God will comfort his parents and siblings among the mourners of Zion. And I will do so, and I will remember him like a family member.

Because he was my family.

Because, if we have learned only one thing over the past 10 months, let it be that we all are members of the same family.

Rest in Peace, Yoni.