In ‘true love' for Israel, Cedarhurst boy makes aliyah, joins IDF

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Gavi Nelson took his Five Towns Torah education and background to heart and took a step no one else in his high school class did: He made Aliyah and joined the Israeli army.

His mom, Jami of Cedarhurst, said they never had a family trip to Israel because they couldn’t afford it, but Gavi did go for the first time the year before his bar mitzvah. Last year, he spent his post high school year at Yeshivat Hakotel and within a few months knew that he had come to stay.

Gavi attended the Hebrew Academy of Long Beach (HALB) for elementary school, and local day camps in the summers. He marched in the Salute to Israel parades since fourth grade. After his four years at DRS High School for boys, he spent a year learning at Hakotel and worked last summer at Bnei Akiva’s Camp Stone in Pennsylvania. He noted that HALB discussed love of Israel but, said Jami, “it was always a place that Americans visited several times a year, staying at the Inbal Hotel, etc., then coming home.”

The family davens at Chabad of the Five Towns.

Gavi is very serious about art and studied at the Art Studio of Rockville Centre. His choices for college after his year in Israel were Yeshiva University, where he received a very generous scholarship, or the State University of New York at Purchase, where he was accepted into the art conservatory. But he chose a different path.

He is anticipating being drafted in March, serving in totchanim (artillery) for 16 months as a part of the army’s Hesder program and following that service with a year in yeshiva. He said he might be interested in studying art at the famous Betzalel art school in Israel, or possibly working in art therapy.

He would like to live and raise a family in Yehuda or the Shomron for its quality of life and religious ideals, he said. He views art therapy as a good way to combine his love of art and to “put it to good use and help children who are suffering from various trauma, most notably and unfortunately, terror, here in Israel.”

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