(Oct. 12, 2026 / AEPi International)
On Oct. 7, 2023, AEPi brother Maor (Pennsylvania, 2026) knew that two of his cousins had tickets to a festival in Israel. Since he is Shabbat-observant, he had heard fragments of the news but could not follow the unfolding attack on his phone. All day, the same thought stayed with him: “I know they have tickets. I know they might be there.”
The cousins’ mother had told them not to go, and he later learned they were safe. The fear did not end there. Friends he knew from a gap year at an Israeli yeshivah had their military training cut short and were sent to the front lines. From Penn, he heard what they were facing and felt the distance between his life and theirs. “I want to be able to help the country, and I felt like I couldn’t do it,” he said.
In the weeks that followed, Maor stood on campus with an Israeli flag, silently facing a large rally. AEPi brothers stood beside him, along with students from other Jewish and pro-Israel groups. He remembers people coming up to scream at them.
“How is this real?” he wondered.
Maor says he loved Penn, but that semester was among his hardest. The AEPi community gave him people to rely on when he felt disconnected from the wider campus. The brothers beside him became part of what carried him through those months and part of his growing resolve to serve Israel.
Today, Maor shares an apartment on a kibbutz with three AEPi brothers from three other campuses: Elijah (California-Berkeley, 2025), Sam (Duke, 2026) and Avi (Rochester, 2026). All four have made aliyah and are preparing to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces through Garin Tzabar, a program that supports young people who choose to serve as lone soldiers.
They met by chance. What brought them to the same program was a decision each had made in the years after Oct. 7. What made them choose to live together was brotherhood.
‘Defending the Jewish people’
Sam had joined AEPi at Duke as soon as he was able and served as president of Duke Friends of Israel. He says he was fortunate not to face many antisemitic incidents on campus. Yet he knew friends who were fighting in Gaza, and the news from Israel left him unable to settle back into the life he had known.
“I was completely numb for about a month,” he recalled. “I had this weird feeling of helplessness.” From his dorm room, he asked himself, “What can I do that’s actually meaningful and real and authentic in a way that can help Israel and the Jewish people?”
Sam needed people with whom he could express those feelings aloud. “It took a while to find a home and to feel comfortable around people,” he said. He found space in AEPi, alongside Hillel and Chabad, to “really talk to people about the feelings that I was feeling.”
Around his brothers, he said, he could express his true self. That sense of belonging mattered as he considered what to do after college. He wanted those years to have purpose beyond a job he might take. Moving to Israel and preparing to serve, he said, is “one big step in defending the Jewish people as much as we can.”
On Oc. 7, Elijah was at Chabad at Berkeley as the first reports reached the students around him. In the days afterward, brothers in his AEPi chapter who had held different views about Israel drew close. “Everybody kind of came together and really was there for each other,” he said. The chapter became part of a wider Jewish community that organized and spoke up on campus. Elijah took on more of that work himself.
He also recalls how frightening it could be. At an event featuring an Israeli speaker, he says protesters broke glass, and one person shouted an antisemitic slur at him and spat toward him. “I remember being in such shock,” he said.
At the AEPi house, he spoke with AEPi associate regional director Noah Levinson, who lived there and encouraged him as he weighed moving to Israel and joining the IDF. Brother Noam Hoffman showed him how to begin the Garin Tzabar process. “So it really, for me, it did start at AEPi,” Elijah said. His brothers and the people around his chapter helped turn a conviction into a plan.
Avi’s first days after Oct. 7 felt disorienting in another way. At Rochester, he didn’t immediately understand the scale of the attack. Then his parents urged him to call cousins in Israel, and he could not reach a friend who had been mobilized. On a campus where he was one of the few men wearing a kippah, he says he was also singled out by people looking for someone visibly Jewish to confront.
He knew AEPi brothers socially, but after Oct. 7, he wanted to belong fully. “It mattered, suddenly mattered so much more to me, to truly belong to AEPi,” he said. He joined the fraternity later in college and found that the students willing to show up for Israel were often AEPi brothers. Rochester Students for Israel, he said, was “run, basically, through AEPi.”
A Birthright trip with AEPi brothers also helped solidify his wish to serve.
Maor had brothers who stood beside him. Sam found brothers with whom he could speak honestly. Elijah found encouragement and a practical path forward. Avi found the belonging he had come to need. When the four met at an orientation seminar in the United States, each understood what it meant to find another AEPi brother. Avi delighted in greeting brothers with the fraternity handshake. Elijah even visited Maor’s Penn chapter after one of the seminars.
Sharing an apartment and a purpose
By their final seminar, the four chose to room together; at their kibbutz, they chose a four-person apartment. They had met by chance, then made a home together on purpose.
Now the four brothers share the ordinary work of preparing for an extraordinary commitment. At their kibbutz, their days include Hebrew study, workouts and the practical steps required before enlistment. Their enlistment dates may differ slightly. They expect to return to the kibbutz on weekends once they begin serving.
On Oct. 7, they were on four campuses, separated by thousands of miles. Today, they share an apartment, a purpose and the brotherhood that has helped each of them through the years since. Their military service lies ahead, but their answer to that awful day has already begun.
They came to defend Israel. They chose to make the journey as brothers.
Originally published by AEPi.