Hewlett supports IDF soldier Sara Krown
Though she doesn’t often admit it, Sara Krown, an Israel Defense Forces “lone soldier” from the Five Towns, is always in need of support, and Hewlett organizations have consistently stepped up to help.
A lone soldier is an IDF member with no family in Israel.
“She’ll say they don’t need anything, but they do,” Esther Krown, Sara’s mother, said.
Now a member of an artillery unit, Sara, 26, was living in Israel when she was drafted into the IDF in 2017. She had grown up in Hewlett, where she and her family are 20-year members of Young Israel of Hewlett.
She felt drawn to Israel when she was young, she recalled, after attending summer camp there, then she went to a seminary in Poland. Eventually she found herself back in Israel as part of the IDF, and repeatedly extended her stay, deferring her enrollment at the University of Maryland for four years.
“My parents always tell me when they come to visit, ‘You were happy in America, but in Israel it’s different,’” Sara said.
Last Oct. 7, when she was in Jerusalem, she was called up to fight.
“It’s killing me that I’m sitting here,” she recalled thinking after Hamas attacked Israel. “It’s easier for me to be in the army when chaos is happening, to me. I feel like I’m contributing.”
Since then, Krown has been released and called up two more times. At this point she is on active duty.
“Being in the army is really not easy,” she said on July 3. “I’ve been pulling all-nighters for five days now. It’s worth it.”
When she’s not serving, she will volunteer, packing cookies and snacks for fellow soldiers, she said.
Krown and Noah Dure, another IDF solider from Young Israel of Hewlett, spoke at the shul on their time off.
“It was a really great tag team of telling our stories,” Krown said, as she focused on the emotional toll and Dure shared more of the technical details.
YIH President Erik Rodgers described the two soldiers as “the sweetest, softest, kindest people.”
Rabbi Simcha Hopkovitz said that despite the distance, he speaks with Krown and Dure regularly.
“They’re not alone,” Hopkovitz said. “There’s absolutely people oceans away that have them on their mind.”
Though they were hesitant to ask, Krown and Dure requested that the community donate money for equipment. Before she received a new helmet, Krown was using an old U.S. Army model from the Vietnam War, her father, Stephen Krown, said.
“Even though she had a strap, the helmet would fall off, so she wouldn’t wear a helmet,” Stephen said.
Sara added that letters from Americans to the IDF have more power than supporters can imagine.
YIH’s Israel Emergency Fund and the Israel Chesed Center, which serves as a donation collection and distribution center for IDF needs, held a benefit concert at the Israel Chesed Center on July 11. There were performances by local musicians Richard Borah and Playing Dead, and money was collected and donated equipment was accepted, as the war in Gaza continues.
“As a father, being 5,000 miles away is very hard in general,” Stephen Krown, who helped organize the event, said. “When you get the stuff you need, they could be a little bit less in harm’s way.”
Marc Bodner, an Israel Chesed Center coordinator, said that the demand for funding and equipment is only increasing.
“The goal of the concert isn’t any different than the goal of having a soldier speak in the warehouse (at the Israel Chesed Center) or having a comedy show, or anything else,” Bodner said. “The goal is to get people in here. The goal is to is to raise some money and to also remind people that, you know, you can have fun.”
For information on how to donate to the Israel Emergency Fund at YIH, visit YIHewlett.org. For the Israel Chesed Center, go to IsraelChesedCenter.com.
