(L) An Israeli Air Force Phantom jet fighter flying over the Lebanese capital of Beirut, August 21, 1982, during Israels Peace for Galilee military campaign. (R) Rabbi Brody

Fighting in Hashem's Army

Rabbi Lazer Brody, referred to by the secular media as "Rabbi Rambo" for the dozens of commando missions he carried out in the Israeli Special Forces, was miraculously saved from a suicide mission in Lebanon during the first Lebanon war of 1982, after which he felt obligated to turn his life around. Today he's still a soldier, but he's fighting an altogether different type of war.

By Gavriel Horan

Before one of the recent elections in Israel, tensions were rising among the various demographic groups in Israel - Ashkenazim, Sephardim, the secular and religious Jews. The night before the election, friction had reached a dangerous high. Rav Ovadia Yosef, shlita, made an urgent call to the head of Kol Ha'emet, Israel's popular Sephardi-owned-and-operated radio station.

"Find Lazer Brody and put him on the air immediately," ordered the Rishon Letzion. "He oozes brotherly love; he'll calm everybody down."

A decorated combat veteran of two wars and dozens of top-secret missions on both sides of Israel's borders, Rabbi Brody uses his experience under pressure to diffuse potentially explosive situations. He has successfully counseled countless couples around the world using his unique combination of Torah, psychology, and military training. He once even settled a feud between two warring Arab clans in the village of Tira, east of Kfar Saba.

For years Rabbi Brody was involved in a quiet revolution among Israeli baalei teshuvah as the Rosh Kollel of the Ashdod branch of Rabbi Sholom Arush's Chut shel Chessed Breslov yeshivah. With the release of Rabbi Arush's book The Garden of Emunah, translated into English by Rabbi Brody, he has achieved public recognition. The Garden of Emunah has sold over one million copies - a phenomenon in the Jewish publishing sector - and is having a profound effect on readers all over the world.

The story of Rabbi Brody's journey from his position in the IDF Special Forces to his status as a Breslover chassid and popular mashpia has become a bit of a legend. It was an honor to be able to hear a personal account from Rabbi Brody himself in an exclusive Hamodia interview.

Upon meeting Rabbi Brody for the first time, I was surprised to find that he looked nothing like the lethal weapon he was alleged to be. This bearded chassidic rabbi of average height and build, with his warm and gentle smile, was the furthest thing I could imagine from someone who had once served in one of the most elite units of the Israeli army. Rabbi Brody, now sixty years old, assured me that he was still in excellent shape. 

As we sat down together on a bench in a secluded Ramat Bet Shemesh park, Rabbi Brody asked me if I had thought of an angle for this article. When I replied in the negative, he was silent for a moment and then turned to me with a twinkle in his eyes and a mischievous smile. "I have one for you," he said. I sat on the edge of my seat for a good part of the next hour, listening raptly as the story unfolded.

Military Tactics

"Couldn't I have been born in Meah Shearim into a good chassidishe family?" Rabbi Brody asked. "I realized over the years that Hashem put me in my place for a reason. There aren't many rabbis today who were members of the Special Forces. I have the ability to see things from a military perspective."

As a reconnaissance NCO (non-commissioned officer) for the IDF, Rabbi Brody's main duty was to find the right way for the army to penetrate enemy territory. "There's a problem with the way we're fighting the yetzer hara nowadays. We're attacking him in his own domain. A head-on attack usually leads to a bloody war with many casualties. The key is to send a spy into enemy lines to assassinate the leaders - then nobody will get hurt."

Rabbi Brody explained that the usual tactic today is to condemn various outlets and behaviors. Although he agrees that it's essential to alert people to the danger of these things, he feels that there are more central issues that must first be addressed. issues that we are fighting today are merely symptoms of a bigger problem. There are so many baalei teshuvah becoming frum all the time, but there are kids falling out on the other side - it's like filling a potato sack that has a hole on the bottom.

"The way I see it, the main problem of this generation is that we don't have a strong-enough foundation in emunah. Many people are growing up frum today and don't know the ABCs of what faith is all about. What reason do they have to keep mitzvos and learn Torah without emunah? Emunah is the secret weapon that has the power to get behind the enemy lines and kill the 'foolish old king' - the yetzer hara. Our job is to fight the yetzer hara day and night. This outside world is enemy territory. We need to learn proper avodas Hashem to enter enemy territory without getting hurt."

Return to the Land

Rabbi Brody was born in Washington, D.C., in 1949 into a family that was traditional but not religious. Growing up, he always had strong Jewish pride and values. His mother was born in Grodno, Belarus, and got on the last boat out of Europe in 1939; his father was born in Canada to Ukrainian Jews and helped to liberate Europe from the Nazis as an Air Force pilot in World War II.

Rabbi Brody always felt that American soil was foreign territory and he longed to make aliyah to Israel to become a chalutz, a pioneer, to "make the desert flower." After studying agriculture at the University of Maryland, he moved to Israel in 1970 at the age of twenty-one. When he later joined the Israeli army, the combination of his bachelor's degree, Zionistic ideals, and superb physique - he was a long-distance runner and a wrestler - made him an ideal candidate for the Special Forces.

He joined the elite Sayeret Matkal, most famous for its role in the Entebbe rescue mission, and completed twenty months of intense training, focusing on martial arts, weaponry, navigation, and reconnaissance skills. Rabbi Brody served in many counterterrorism, reconnaissance, and intelligence-gathering missions deep behind enemy lines and achieved the rank of sergeant major.

After finishing his army service, he bought a beautiful mountaintop farm in the Shomron and began cultivating the land, using the techniques he had studied in university. He soon won the Israeli agricultural prize for his innovations in drip irrigation, making it possible to grow almost anything almost anywhere. He was living his dream life and had everything he had ever wanted.

Suicide Mission

In 1982, his peaceful existence was interrupted when he was called up as a reservist to serve in the first Lebanon war. Israel invaded southern Lebanon in an effort to bring peace to residents of the Galil who were being pounded by Katyusha missiles from the PLO across the border.

The first six days of the war met with great successes. Israel made it as far as the Beirut airport on the western front, but on the seventh day, they were hit with some heavy losses. "Back then, if a soldier got killed, it made the front-page headlines," Rabbi Brody recalled. "Today we are totally desensitized." It was soon discovered that four Katyusha missile launchers had been placed in the courtyard of the Russian embassy - in Russian sovereign territory!

Ariel Sharon, the minister of defense at the time, wanted to bomb the Russian embassy. Prime Minister Menachem Begin adamantly refused. It was bad enough fighting against the Arabs; they didn't need to give the Soviet Union a reason to get involved. Sharon proceeded to devise a plan to send twelve of the best commandos into the heart of Beirut to destroy the missile launchers without damaging the Russian embassy. Eleven members of the Sayeret Matkal "tank-hunter" team were chosen to carry out the mission. Because of his expert knowledge of the Beirut streets, Lazer Brody was chosen as the twelfth man.

From the beginning, Rabbi Brody had a feeling that this wasn't a typical mission. The twelve men were flown from the eastern front, where they had been fighting for the past six days, and taken to the Beirut airport. They were then given two precious hours to sleep - the first in six days - followed by a meal fit for kings. That never happened in the army, especially not in the middle of a war.

Afterward they were briefed by commander-in-chief Rafael Eitan, who explained their mission to enter Beirut by foot the next day. Lazer Brody thought that it was suicidal to attempt to enter the heart of Beirut in broad daylight dressed in IDF uniforms. Furthermore, the route they were taking required them to travel four kilometers (about two and a half miles) on foot through deadly enemy territory, carrying heavy equipment, even though the Russian Embassy was only one and a half kilometers from the coast and could easily be reached by boat!

"Who thought of this ridiculous plan?" he asked.

"I did," the commander-in-chief said, "and if you weren't Lazer Brody, I'd jail you for that comment!"

Despite the grim odds, the soldiers accepted their mission with confidence. Rabbi Brody is certain that the army never intended for this mission to be successful.

"It had 'suicide mission' written all over it; we were set up. We were never meant to get out alive," he said. He believes that the mission was organized knowing full well that it would be a disaster, in the hope that it would rally support for the plea to bomb the Russian Embassy. Fortunately for those soldiers, no one ever factored Hashem into the picture.

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