The Fallen Soldier and the Fallen Coin

As other guests took their seats at round tables for a late-afternoon meal on Nov. 18, Avishai Hlondo tilted a serving bowl filled with sachek saba’i—cooked antram lettuce and beef intestines—so that the liquid dripped into a plastic cup, whose contents he then drank. Sitting next to him, Esther Thangluah similarly poured from a bowl of bitter leaves cooked with rice, seltzer, and salt into a cup and offered it to me.

The dishes and the beverages are traditional in Mizoram, the state in northeastern India from where nearly all of the approximately 200 people in the reception hall, or their parents, came to Israel beginning in the late 1980s. The meal, in the Jezreel Valley town of Afula in northern Israel, was held to memorialize a member of their community, Gary Lalhruaikima Zolat, whose face stared out from banners adorning a stage at the front of the room.

The gathering came at the close of the last day of shiva for Zolat, 21, a staff sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces’ Kfir brigade who was killed on Nov. 11 in a missile attack by Hamas terrorists in Jabalia in the Gaza Strip. He was the first soldier in the 4,000-member Indian Jewish community, known as Bnei Menashe, to be killed in Gaza or in Lebanon in the more than yearlong war. (Another Bnei Menashe member, Staff Sgt. Gary Hanghal, who also served in Kfir, was killed in September by a Palestinian terrorist who rammed his truck into Hanghal at a checkpoint near Eli in Samaria.)

“The pain of the family and of ourselves is one. We have a special connection as a community,” said Thangluah, who in 2006 moved to Israel with the Zolat family and 200 or so others from Bnei Menashe. “I’m crying all the time.”

Thangluah converted to Judaism three years before reaching Israel. She was raised Christian, but her grandparents spoke of having descended from the ancient Israelites and told her that, “like a prophecy, we must return to the land of our forefathers,” she said.

Thangluah’s story mirrored that of many Bnei Menashe members, especially the older ones, whom I interviewed at the meal, at a graveside memorial service two hours earlier, and at shiva four days before. Some mentioned the oral history transmitted in their families: that their paths went from the Assyrians’ exile of the 10 tribes (later dubbed the “lost tribes”) from the Kingdom of Israel some 2,700 years ago—in their case, the tribe of Menashe (Manasseh)—to China, Burma, and eventually India.

Most of those who immigrated to Israel in recent decades live in the northern communities of Tiberias, Akko, Nof Hagalil, Migdal Ha’emek, Beit Shean, and Afula Illit (adjacent to Afula and home to 80 Bnei Menashe families), as well as Beit El, Kiryat Arba, and Nitzan. All who immigrated converted first or once in Israel. Thousands more remain in India today, hoping to reach the Jewish state.

On Nov. 18, while their parents partook of the memorial meal, scores of the community’s teenagers and 20-somethings congregated outside the hall in a light drizzle, chatting in Hebrew and smoking cigarettes as might any other young Israelis. The adults inside spoke primarily in Mizo, their homeland’s mother tongue; the men covered their heads with kippot and the women with scarves, just like other religious-Zionist Israelis. Several dozen of the men assembled near the stage for Mincha services as the event began, and for Maariv prayers as the crowd dispersed at about 5:30 p.m.

Young and old said they felt they’d integrated well in Israeli society and weren’t made to seem different. But their distinctive look sometimes marks them as such.

“Our physical features are like Philippine and Thai people. Someone asked me if I’m looking for work as a caregiver,” said a smiling Thangluah, who is employed by a dental-implant company. Filipinos in the country typically work as home-care aides to elderly Israelis.

A Filipino Israeli soldier killed in Gaza in January, Cydrick Garin, came to mind while researching Zolat’s story, and not only because of similarities in complexion and their Christian backgrounds. Like Garin, the subject of an article I wrote in April, Zolat was highly motivated to succeed in the army and to protect Israel. Both men struggled as teenagers but found their bearings, only to die in their early 20s. Garin had just gotten married; Zolat was in his first serious romantic relationship, for five months, with Joyly Bensimon, an immigrant from Peru. He brought her home one Friday to join the family for lunch. His sisters were mortified because the place was a mess, the pre-Shabbat cleaning not having begun. “Gary wasn’t embarrassed: ‘This is who I am. Accept it or don’t accept it,’” said his sister Efrat. “He was who he was.”

She added: “He saw a future with her. He really loved her.”

Efrat, who’s now on reserve duty in the air force, said her brother’s army service was “his happiest” time. “People taught him about life,” she said. “This was when his life started to come together.”

Being in the IDF spurred Zolat to achieve, said his friend, Roni Ralte. Zolat matured. He cut out vices, slimmed down, and worked out like a demon—all in striving to become a combat soldier. In their mid-teens, they and their friends were content to hang out to drink, smoke, and play soccer.

Another friend, Nehorai Boganin, remembered calling to say he’d come over in an hour, only to be told to wait an extra hour because Zolat was leaving for a run.

The boy’s personality, creativity, and drive first spiked at age 12—in breakdancing. Zolat then was mischievous, shy, and quiet—traits enduring throughout his life. He also was chubby at the time. His father, Dagan, suggested dancing to get fit. The boy found it challenging, but kept at it.

“With breakdancing, if you don’t give it your all, you won’t succeed. Gary didn’t stand out, but he never gave up,” said the leader of the breakdancing class, Dael Thangluah, Esther’s son, who is a career army officer and a colleague of Zolat’s other sister Tiferet.

“Gary danced the worst, but he finished second in a contest. It was amazing,” Ralte said with a chuckle as we sat on a bench in the near-empty cemetery following the ceremony. “In breakdancing, it’s not just your dancing. It’s your vibe. He had the vibe. It was how he projected the vibe, how he expressed himself, without embarrassment.”

Zolat enjoyed PlayStation, frequently playing with younger brother Emanuel. He adored his two cats. The night before his death, he called his father Dagan. “He said he saw cats in Gaza and joked that he wanted to take a cat home,” Dagan said after we’d stepped away from the shiva guests in his living room to speak privately in the mourning tent erected in their yard.

In that last conversation, Zolat mentioned to his father that he had fallen and hurt his leg but could persevere.

Parents know, though.

A day or two before their call, Dagan said, he had a feeling that something “unfortunate” would happen. And on the night of Nov. 11, he didn’t feel like indulging in his favorite late-night activity: watching soccer on television. Instead, he went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. His wife, Shaked, got up and entered her son’s room. Their doorbell rang. The parents answered it. Tiferet was in the foyer with three army colleagues.

They issued no words.

“I said, ‘Gary fell,’” Dagan related. In Hebrew, the verb nafal applies to when someone or something falls or a soldier who was killed.

At the funeral the next day, Dagan finished delivering his eulogy, then faced his son’s grave and saluted.

Asked during our shiva conversation about his gesture, Dagan said the idea arose from the soldiers’ painful visit.

“When I found out,” he said, “I saluted in my heart.”

Someone’s death frequently spurs people to consider his or her legacy. With Zolat, a carat of it is his generosity: of spirit and of funds. That comes through in stories his loved ones related.

He once asked Efrat to make a shiva visit for one of his fellow soldiers who died in a grenade accident. Zolat couldn’t leave basic training to attend. Efrat declined his request, insisting that she was too busy. Make the time, he retorted. She held firm. Zolat was steamed at her.

“I didn’t know the pain. [The visit] would’ve done them good, even though I didn’t know them,” she said.

Another time, Zolat’s army friend, an American immigrant, had drunk too much at a party they’d all attended and couldn’t make it home. Zolat prevailed upon Efrat, who hadn’t been drinking, to give the friend a ride. She agreed.

“He was very considerate, even from a young age,” Efrat said of her brother. The lesson she drew from the two episodes is this, she said: “that I have to let go more and see the good in people, help people, not be self-absorbed.”

This spirit of generosity extended to how Zolat handled money.

Six months ago, Ralte owed someone 2,000 shekels ($540). Zolat loaned it to Ralte. He didn’t ask why Ralte needed the money or when he’d pay it back. On Zolat’s army leaves, Ralte contacted his friend to arrange to return it. Each time, Zolat put him off, saying he was too busy. “Next time,” he told Ralte. In retrospect, Ralte said, Zolat was avoiding being repaid.

Said Ralte: “I really was intending to return it when he got back. He never came back. The money will get back to the family.”

In August, Boganin was short 500 shekels. Zolat didn’t hesitate and loaned it to him.

Said Boganin (the only non-Bnei Menashe person interviewed for this article): “Unfortunately, I didn’t get to return the money to him. I will return the money to the family.”

Proverbs 10:2 teaches that charity saves one from death. Dael Thangluah cited the maxim when he urged Tiferet to place some money in her brother’s boot before he departed to fight in Gaza. She, Efrat, and Joyly drove him to a military base near Beersheba, the assembly point for soldiers entering Gaza. At the base, she placed the coin in an opening on the instep of his right boot. She then snapped a photo of it. That was Nov. 1, a Friday. The idea was that when Zolat returned from battle, he’d give the coin to charity. Carrying the coin and then contributing it, Thangluah said, was so God would protect such a person; if the person died, God evidently needed him more.

When we spoke at the shiva house, Thangluah wondered whether the coin remained in Zolat’s boot. The last he’d heard, the army hadn’t yet sent Zolat’s possessions to the family.

A week later, I asked Efrat whether she’d retrieved the coin.

“The army told us that they bury soldiers in their uniform and boots,” she said, “so we don’t know if the 10 shekels are still in his boot, or fell.”