Dying Acts of Heroism: Remembering Michael, Noam and Yosef

VOI's Ari Abramowitz and Jeremy Gimpel are joined by Mark and Harriet Levin -- the parents of 22-year-old, American-born IDF paratrooper Michael Levin, who was killed during the Second Lebanon War in 2006 -- to discuss what it is like to be back in Israel for the eighth Memorial Day since their son's passing. Does time really heal pain? How can meaning be made of such an unfathomable tragedy?

Then, Ari and Jeremy are joined by Josh Flaster and Ari Kalker of the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Center, to describe how they harnessed their personal loss of "Mikey" to establish the largest lone soldier center in the country.

Then, Ari and Jeremy each tells a personal story of loss. Noam Apter, one of Jeremy's closest friends in the Torah Academy, was killed on a Friday night (on Shabbat leave from the IDF) while on kitchen duty at his yeshiva. With bullets in his stomach and hip, Noam managed to lock the kitchen door and prevent the terrorists who had shot him from entering the dining room and killing the dozens of people inside.
Yosef Goodman, Ari's friend from Houston, died in a training accident while serving in the elite IDF commando unit, Maglan. On a jump from a plane, his parachute got entangled with that of his commander. His response was to cut the ropes of his parachute, saving his commander's life at the expense of his own.