Josh Goldberg, 36-37, is a Canadian from Hamilton. In 2015, The Hamilton Jewish News (HJN) published an article titled, “A Tale Of Three Soldiers: Why The Grandchildren Of Three Iconic Hamilton Rabbis Joined The IDF,” which featured Goldberg and two other individuals included in this database: Rebecca Baskin and Shmarya Green.
The article stated, “The common thread in the aliyah stories of Goldberg, Green and Baskin is twofold — each of them grew up in families with deeply Zionistic roots.” It noted that Goldberg’s parents are Joel and Lanie Goldberg. It also states that he is “grandson of the late Rabbi Israel and Gloria Silverman.” Lanie told HJN in April 2016 that her four children had attended Camp Ramah, a Jewish summer camp.
The 2015 HJN article states that Goldberg “was in his third year abroad at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem when he first heard about Garin Tzabar. Attracted by the program’s kibbutz setting and its offering its recruits a built-in support system, he decided to finish his degree at York University and return to Israel the following year. In 2011, Goldberg, then 23, boarded a chartered Nefesh b’Nefesh flight out of JFK along with 150 other lone soldiers. His group settled into Kibbutz Sa’ad near the Gaza border; that would be their home away from home for the next two years.”
It added: “What motivates a person with a terrible fear of needles to sign up for a combat medic course? What does it say about someone who, despite a fear of heights, decides to try out for a paratrooper unit? These are the questions that come to mind as Goldberg cheerfully recounts the time he fainted during a mock trauma exercise on the second day of medic training, or how he got through five parachute jumps.
‘You have your parachute on and it hurts your back,’ he said. ‘You’re nauseous. It’s really hot. Then you line up and all your friends just start disappearing out the door of the plane. And you just get to the door, you stick your hands out and you’re outside of the plane.’
It only takes a few minutes of conversation with Goldberg to grasp that his ability to see the world through an almost child-like lens of enthusiasm and positive thinking has served him well, and given him a level of maturity beyond his years.
Being an IDF soldier, ‘you overcome lots of psychological and mental blocks,’ he said. ‘Lots of weeks when you’re in training exercise when you don’t get as much nourishment as you’re used to. You definitely don’t get as much sleep … but you just have to push through it and paint a smile on your face.’
Did coming from a relatively sheltered, North American background put him at a disadvantage?
‘There are a lot of Americans who feel like that but I personally didn’t,’ he said. ‘I knew what I was getting into, you know, the volunteer spirit, and I was very excited about getting my ass kicked a little bit.’
If anything, Goldberg said he felt at an advantage.
‘I was 23 when I first drafted and everyone else was 18 or 19. So I had a little bit more perspective on life and could joke about things … If I get punished for an hour, it’s only an hour, it’s not the end of the world, while these kids are basically just out of high school, an hour extra being on the base instead of getting to go home was a really big deal for a lot of them.’
Goldberg was in the regular army during the 2011 Gaza operation and in the reserves during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, but fortunately, he has never seen actual combat. Still, his IDF experiences have brought him a level of acceptance into Israeli society that he feels he wouldn’t have had otherwise.
‘It’s an experience that’s a really important part of the country,’ he said, ‘and you’re just able to relate to people of the same generation a lot easier when you served in the same bases, you understand the same slang.’”
The article noted, “Goldberg is currently living in Jerusalem where he is enrolled in the Ministry of Tourism’s challenging tour guide course.” And it ended by stating, “The life choices made by these three young people serve as the greatest possible affirmation of the values in which they were raised. They do their parents, their grandparents and all of us proud.”
