Ariel Riesenbach, 35-36, is a Canadian from Toronto who completed an undergraduate degree in psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University, according to his LinkedIn. After doing so, Riesenbach immigrated to Israel, initially spending six months as a volunteer medic for Magen David Adom as part of a program created for young people abroad. Then, in 2012, Riesenbach joined the Israeli military, where he served as a paratrooper, according to his LinkedIn profile.
After finishing his service, Riesenbach returned to Canada and completed a paramedic diploma at Humber College. He has since worked in a variety of paramedic roles, including as an operations superintendent and primary care paramedic at Toronto Paramedic Services.
In May 2018, Riesenbach appeared as part of a panel hosted by First Narayever Congregation, a Toronto synagogue, on volunteering for Magen David Adom. In November 2024, Riesenbach gave a lecture about his military service, alongside his mother, Perla Riesenbach, at the Temple Kol Ami synagogue in Thornhill, Ont. The lecture, which is available online, was advertised on Instagram and Facebook, and it noted that Perla would speak about her experience as a parent of a lone soldier.
Perla is the founder of Parents of Lone Soldiers, a support group for people in the Greater Toronto Area who have children in the Israeli military. She told The Canadian Jewish News (CJN) in 2014, “Every soldier is like a son or daughter. Not just the Canadian ones, not just ours. Our heart aches and breaks for all of them.”
An earlier CJN article, from 2013, reported that about 30 parents and grandparents of Canadian lone soldiers gathered at the Riesenbach house to help set up the support group. Perla was quoted as saying, “For me, the group is a support system for Canadian parents with a son or daughter in the Israeli army. Some parents feel so alone and helpless and don’t know what they can do to help their child with a problem […] there was a couple whose son has had many problems and they didn’t know what they could do about it from here. Now they do. They’re surely not the only set of parents in that situation. Parents have to know that they’re not alone, [that] there is some sort of ‘customer service’ that they can access. Basically, just like there is support for the soldiers in Israel, this is support for the parents in Canada.”
Ariel’s father, Ron Riesenbach, also helped create the group. He told the CJN that a common theme in the conversations he had with other parents was “the thirst for information for ourselves and to raise awareness in our children to be able to advocate for their own rights in Israel.” Ron is listed as an executive vice-president at a health centre in North York, Ont.
