Since the beginning of the current war with Hamas, Jewish communities and friends of Israel in the Diaspora have been contributing to the war effort by coming to Israel on solidarity missions, donating funds and supplies, and contributing to hasbara (public diplomacy), among other initiatives. One impressive initiative was established by Young Israel of Holliswood in Queens, New York.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Boots for Israel (BFI) has sent over 30,000 pairs of high-quality boots to IDF soldiers, and they’re not stopping. Although it started small, they now send 270 to 320 duffel bags to Israel a week – on an average of eight El Al flights per week – filled with special orders. Each bag contains about 16 pairs of boots.
Young Israel of Holliswood, an Orthodox congregation under the leadership of Rabbi Moshe Taub, includes Ashkenazi and Sephardi members of all ages and walks of life. Most of the community members have friends and family in Israel. “For our shul, aside from the hessed [act of kindness], this project has also brought unity,” Taub told the Magazine. “In addition to focusing on Torah and prayer, everyone has risen mightily to this occasion, leaving their rabbi with a sense of pride.”
The project has since expanded well beyond that community.
How did Boots for Israel begin?
It all began with a phone call from IDF Major Daniel Jacobs to occupational therapist Yakir Wachstock five days after the war began, saying that his soldiers were in desperate need of tactical combat boots.
During COVID, when schools were closed, Wachstock – who works in yeshivot– had no work, so he began reselling Amazon products. But he had never sold footwear.
“I told him I didn’t know anything about boots, but he said they really need the help and don’t know where else to turn,” said Wachstock. “But then I thought about it. My friend Avi Shakarov, who lives in Holliswood and attends Rabbi Taub’s synagogue, is a wholesale footwear distributor.
“I called him, and he said he had one type of army boot that he was making a good profit on. It’s a brand out of Italy called Garmont, and he donated 88 pairs for Maj. Jacobs’sa unit. My friends and I packed them and got them on [an El Al] plane. Security helped us at the airport.”
The next day, Wachstock received a message from Israel that concluded with “Thank you from the Yakir Battalion.” They did not name the battalion after him, but in a remarkable coincidence, that was its name.
Since then, the orders have been coming in non-stop.
“When 350,000 soldiers were called up [for the war], many went without proper boots,” Wachstock said, noting that although the IDF does supply the soldiers with their basic needs, including army boots, no one was prepared for such a massive call-up.
“Some of the soldiers have had great boots, but they’re four years old and are falling apart. It’s not that they didn’t have boots. It’s that it’s hard to keep up with what’s going on. Some of these soldiers who need the boots have been fighting in Gaza or Lebanon for so many weeks, and their army-issued boots have fallen apart or given them blisters, or they have duct tape on them to try to hold them together, and now they need new ones. The quality of our boots is 15 times better. This is wartime. The war is intense, and we don’t know how long it’s going to go on.
“We vet every candidate. We say ‘No’ to many soldiers who are not in combat because we have a limited number of boots and limited resources. We have to verify the needs, the situation, and the type of boots for each one,” Wachstock explained.
The ZAKA search and rescue organization has also called with a request for boots because some of their volunteers are in Gaza. Normally, they’re not in a war zone.
WACHSTOCK, WITH the help of volunteers, has been working day and night to fill the tens of thousands of orders. He considers this project a form of pikuach nefesh, the principle in Jewish law that saving a life – in this case, the lives of the soldiers in danger – takes precedence over all other commandments.
“We need to pack the boots, ship them, move them from warehouse to warehouse, and then to the airport. We need people to receive them in Israel and then unload them and get them to the soldiers,” he elaborated.
That doesn’t include the packing events and fundraising initiatives that go along with it. “We rely on donations,” he said a few weeks after the project was launched. “I’ve been going on Shabbat speaking tours. I’ve been walking six to 12 miles to different neighborhoods, speaking at shuls to help fundraise and bring awareness about the situation.” Since then, he has also been flying to various cities across the US.
And it’s not just the boots. “We have an exact one-to-one correspondence with the soldiers” who receive them, Waschstock continued. “We get the exact shoe size.”
Inside the boots, they add letters from students from dozens of schools in California, Florida, Illinois, and other states, as well as donated thermal socks and woolen hats.
Wachstock’s sister-in-law, Michal Wachstock, who lives in Modi’in, took up the challenge on the other side of the ocean, notwithstanding her busy schedule. The mother of three, two of whom are IDF soldiers, she is the vice president of marketing for Akooda, a Tel Aviv-based start-up.
When the project began, she divided her time between helping with the boots and doing her regular work. “We are eight here in Israel working on the project, primarily with additional volunteers called in when large shipments arrive to pick up, unload, pack, and deliver the boots. Now, I’d say I spend about 20% of my time on boots and 100% at work,” she said.
“When boots are delivered, my guy at Ben-Gurion Airport lets me know, and one of the volunteers goes to pick them up and deal with customs. Then we take the bags to the warehouse in Modi’in. We organize, pack orders, and notify the soldiers, who usually come and get them, but sometimes we deliver when they can’t get away.
“We’ve gone to Gaza, the northern border, and everywhere in between. I also deal with requests from soldiers or their friends or families. I deal with the back-end database, the customs office, and documentation for the nonprofit, ordering boots, reporting, and working with the US team to ensure we are getting what we need.
“My company has been really understanding about the time I take for the project,” she said. “It’s a small company with 17 employees, two of whom are still full time in the army, and several others who are part time in the army and part time at the office. They give me the time I need to balance the project and my responsibilities at work,” she said.
ON A RECENT Sunday evening, at a unity event at a hall in Great Neck, New York, hundreds of volunteers from diverse congregations in the area packed 500 duffel bags that together held about 6,000 pairs of boots. That was just one of many social events organized for the cause.
“We have done a ‘boot mitzvah’” – a play on the term “bat mitzvah” – “where 12-year-old girls pack boots and write letters, as well as a boot-packing event called Find Your Sole Mate with the matchmaking organization YU Connect, Wachstock recounted.
Despite everything he has done and continues to do, he said that he is only one person among many working tirelessly on this project. Asked for a photo of himself for this article, he declined, saying: “This isn’t about me. It’s about my community. So many American Jews feel like they cannot do enough to help Israel in its great need. These boots empower them.”
Wachstock “never, ever imagined” he would be doing something like this. Initially, he was hesitant to take on the project. “The real message here is that if you don’t say no immediately, although you might think it’s too hard, and just try, you never know what will happen. I know nothing about footwear, and I could have just said, ‘Sorry, I’ve never seen an army boot in my life,’ but I said, ‘Let me look into it,’ and it turned into something huge.
“We tell people, ‘Not only are you helping a specific soldier, it’s the one son, the one nephew, the one brother whom you’re helping.’ We have also given boots to many female soldiers. But it’s the one-to-one correspondence that’s special. We got lots of thank-you videos back.
“We had one boot that was going to a commander of 400 soldiers. He’s a Druze, and he’s fighting for Am Yisrael [the Jewish nation]. We’re trying as hard as we can to fundraise and keep it [the project] going, and we need help to supply the soldiers. All night long, I get calls from soldiers and their families. All night long. On the other side, the same is true for Michal and her team.”
Occasionally, a real challenge arises. Once, some boots didn’t get on the plane because it was too full, but the team worked with El Al and creatively solved the problem. “If you remember, there was a huge rally in DC,” Wachstock said, referring to the March for Israel and against antisemitism in Washington on November 14. “Our boots that didn’t make it on the flight went back with the hostages’ families,” who flew to the capital via New York.
“El Al has been an amazing partner to help make it work,” he said. “We work on logistics with El Al at least three times a week, and then work with the staff at the airport. It’s unbelievable how, together, we’ve been able to help our soldiers. At this point, according to the Ben-Gurion Airport side of El Al, depending on the week, we are the first- or second-biggest duffel bag sender of non-cargo equipment to Israel,” he said.
“I can’t walk away. I feel so responsible for every single order. Right now, we have about 2,700 exact shoe sizes that we don’t have the boots for yet. We need to solve this problem; we can’t give up.
“This is all day and all night. I don’t have time for my regular work, which I love, and I want to get back to it, but this is more important now.
“There is not a dime going to a single person involved,” he stressed. “No overhead. Everyone is doing what they can to make it happen.
“This is an ongoing project. We will continue for as long as the war goes on to help the IDF soldiers,” Wachstock concluded.
For more information, visit: www.bootsforisrael.com/