1948 youths return to serve

On the landscape of Israel, the most daring generation of Jewish youth since the Maccabees and Bar Kocha are the veterans of 1948, who forever changed Jewish and world history. Now elderly and frail their spirit has not faded as they now set to serve again opening the Shomrei HaAm youth leadership training centers in Cedarhurst, Flatbush and Herzliya, Israel. Under the leadership of my father, the famed Palmach Commander Mordechai Schwartz, otherwise known as Motzik HaGrazan, Motzik the Axeman, and his comrade, Michael “Mike” Shamah, they are trailblazing a new initiative in Jewish leadership aptly called “Real As 48”.

Within a very short time since its inception, Shomrei HaAm has instituted a Palmach Torah Youth Center that is officially linked to Israel’s Palmach Museum, a meeting of the minds that would have been unthinkable to reach decades earlier. This significant act of reconciliation between such different mindsets - the Torah community and the Palmach - was quickly noticed, earning endorsements from such leading and illustrious rabbis such as Rav David Feinstein,

Rav Shlomo Herbst. “They have innovated a new youth movement that combines true Torah and Palmach leadership skills,” Rabbi Herbst said.

My father remembers how in 1948, the Jewish fighting groups put aside their political differences in their struggle to defend the newborn Jewish state. “All of us strove to create a new reality for the Jewish people, each in his own way. 64 years later we need to rekindle the passion of service that was part and parcel of all the four groups,” my father said. “The establishment of Israel was a conflagration of extremely talented, intelligent and dedicated young adults, both in Israel and America, who focused and envisioned on creating an Israel of high moral caliber and selfless dedication to the Jewish people.”