The first thing you need to know about the Brothers Grinberg is how very much they have in common.
Which is an understatement.
They’re both articulate and courteous young men, for one thing, and very respectful of their shared ancestors and heritage.
They were both born in Australia, grew up in Denver and are now residing in Israel, which they are seriously thinking of making their permanent home.
The brothers are serving in the Israel Defense Forces, as members of paratroop units whose responsibility is protecting Israeli citizens residing close to the troubled and perilous Gaza Strip.
They both signed up as Lone Soldiers, the IDF’s program for non-citizen troops who hail from different countries.
Oh, and they are both 19 — and twins.
Identical, of course.
One of the few things about Eitan and Jacob Grinberg that doesn’t seem identical is, interestingly, their accents. Eitan still carries the ghost of an Australian patois in his speech while Jacob’s is 100% apple pie American.
This became evident during a multilinear telephone conversation last this month between the Intermountain Jewish News and the brothers, speaking from their respective army posts, Jacob’s near the southern border of Gaza and Eitan’s virtually on the northern border of Gaza.
The call was set up and expertly moderated by an IDF spokeswoman whom, one suspected, was listening to make sure no classified information was inadvertently divulged, which apparently it wasn’t.
Taking turns talking as the waves of distance played games with the phone transmission, the twins provided some personal background.
The sons of Alex and Pearl Grinberg were born in Sydney, Australia and moved to Denver with their family at the age of eight.
They lived in the Cherry Hills area and attended Cherry Creek High School before enrolling in Colorado’s Finest High School of Choice. an alternative public high school in Englewood, from which they graduated. Their father still lives in the Denver area and their mother currently resides in Sydney.
Eitan went to CU Boulder for one semester while Jacob opted for service in the IDF as a Lone Soldier straight out of high school in late 2018. Eitan followed him into the IDF four months later.
Their reasons for enlisting in the Israeli military for a two-year hitch are, not surprisingly, similar.
“When I was 17, I had the opportunity to go on a study tour of Israel,” Eitan says, “and one night we were touring in the Negev and over our heads we saw a drill for F-16 fighter jets. From that moment, I knew that I wanted to serve in the Israeli army.”
The brothers didn’t have a coordinated plan to join the IDF; their decisions came independently, Eitan explains.
“Jacob knew 100% that he didn’t want to go to school first. He wanted to go straight to the IDF out of high school. I decided I’d wait and see how things worked out.
“I finished the first semester at CU. It was great, but I decided that if I didn’t do it now I’d never do it, so I decided to leave everything and go right then. It definitely made my decision easier that Jacob was already here.”
Jacob’s decision was inspired by the same now or never attitude.
“I knew that as soon as I went to college and settled down there wouldn’t be time for me to do it,” he says.
When asked about his own motivations, Jacob turns to the past. He and Eitan are the descendants of Holocaust survivors on both sides of their family. Their grandparents escaped the oppression and horror of that dark epoch, and the twins value their continued appreciation and support greatly.
One of their grandfathers, Nathan, in particular, inspired the twins.
Nathan lost his parents and siblings in the Holocaust and managed to survive as an orphan.
“Somehow,” Eitan says, “the Red Cross took the orphans to Israel and he eventually ended up living on a kibbutz.”
Nathan (still living, residing today in Sydney) served in the Palmach, a pre-state armed Jewish militia, during Israel’s War of Independence.
“He was a fighter in the Palmach and he did it so I would have the opportunity to come to Israel today,” says Eitan. “I hope that one day, my grandchildren will have the same opportunity.”
Serving in the IDF, Jacob adds, is the twins’ way of following the example of their grandfather.
“It was a really important thing for me to do my duty as a Diaspora Jew to fight for the same right that he had fought for — the opportunity for every Diaspora Jew to come to Israel so that it can be a safe place for all Jews everywhere.”
Jacob was very glad, he adds, when his brother eventually made the same decision.
While the brothers came to Israel enthusiastic about doing military service, neither were planning on making the Jewish state their home for good.
Things have changed.
“I came here hoping that I was going to do my service, give up my life for two years, and then go back to America or Australia,” Jacob says.
“But being here, surrounded by the people and the culture . . . I think I want to raise a family here. It really is still a question of what works best but I’m thinking more about aliyah, which wasn’t the case when I first got here.”
Eitan adds in a twin-like echo: “I came with pretty much zero intention of making aliyah. I intended to serve and go home, do my piece and leave. But lately I’ve been considering spending more time in the army, and possibly making aliyah. I’m not entirely sure yet.”
Jacob currently serves in the 202nd Paratrooper Battalion; Eitan in the 101st Paratrooper Battalion. Their units are stationed relatively close to one another and share similar duties.
“We’re infantry,” says Jacob, “so we get the gritty, on-the-ground jobs, but we love what we do.”
Security patrols constitute the bulk of their military duties. Jacob’s unit is assigned to protect three small communities near his base.
“Our main duty here is to let the residents of those communities be able to sleep at night, knowing that they’re safe,” he says
It is much the same for Eitan’s unit, which protects two communities, one of which is located only 400 meters from the fence marking the border with Gaza.
“That’s what we do 24 hours a day,” Eitan says, “so that they don’t even realize that they’re 400 meters away from that fence.”
Like it has across the world, the coronavirus pandemic has radically changed life in Israel.
Surprisingly, however, the Grinberg brothers’ battalions have performed their regular duties with little noticeable changes in their military routines.
The troops are regularly out on patrol, so they’re not under the same strict stay-at-home orders as the Israeli civilian population, but the soldiers are practicing the same social distancing, sanitation procedures and other precautions as everybody else.
“The civilians are more or less quarantined,” Eitan says, “unless it’s something they absolutely have to do.”
They are impressed with how the army is handling the pandemic.
“In terms of the IDF,” says Jacob, “our leadership has done a really, really good job of helping the citizens by sending units to help sanitize hospitals, pack boxes for people who can’t go out to get food or go shopping, enforcing the quarantine orders.
“As combat soldiers, we have been relatively untouched by it, which is quite frankly amazing. I go about my job every day pretty much the same as I would before the virus. We do take extra precautions and things like rules for exiting and entering the base have changed, but for the most part we’re going about things as usual.”
Eitan adds that the IDF has strict rules governing routine military life. No more than 10 people are allowed in the same room at the same time; social distancing between soldiers is recommended at two meters, roughly six feet.
Those soldiers who have begun to show symptoms have been tested and quarantined in short order, hence, the IDF “has been almost 100% untouched by the virus,” Eitan says. The pandemic has not left the twins untouched, however.
They were planning to spend their designated leave periods in Denver for Passover.
“Unfortunately,” says Jacob, who hasn’t seen his parents in almost two years., “our time to go home coincided with corona. It would have been nice to see my family, but I know I’ll seem them eventually and the work I’m doing is more important right now.”
Eitan says he was scheduled to fly to Denver on March 25, “but even before the situation became as serious as we now know it to be, the army took precautions and said I could take my flight another time, but not now.
“They didn’t want me to get stuck in the States and be unable to come back, so they deferred my leave. I’m honestly happy that it happened. The time I would have missed here on the Gaza border is something I know I would have been worried about.”
The brothers have not been able to avoid worrying about their parents and grandparents during the virus, however.
“It’s absolutely something that we worry about,” says Jacob, “especially our grandparents, who are even more at risk than our parents.
“But they’ve all been taking precautions and taking care of themselves, helping each other. My mom is going to the supermarket for our grandparents. It’s been tough but I think they’re handling it well. They call me every day and say they’re more worried about me than they are about themselves.”
“I think about it constantly,” Eitan says. “They’re healthy in general but, especially in this time that we’re in, my family has, thank G-d, been very careful. My grandparents haven’t been leaving their homes, thank G-d. I still worry, but I know that everything will be OL.”
Amidst their worries over loved ones and the arduousness of their military duties, the twins express profuse gratitude for those who have been supporting them.
They laud the efforts of the organization Friends of the IDF, in particular, for its sustained efforts to lend help to Israeli soldiers, particularly the Lone Soldiers, the vast majority of whom are thousands of miles away from their families.
“We’ve received an endless number of supplies from them — socks, underwear, soap, shampoo, board games,” says Jacob.
“They’ve been amazing to us, not just now, but every place I’ve gone in the army. They’ve been helping us in general, especially Lone Soldiers. Even when I was still in training, they’d hand out presents, pillows, blankets, anything you can think of.”
The twins are equally thankful to the Jews of Colorado who have gone out of their way to offer support
“I really can’t say enough about the Jewish community in Colorado,” says Eitan.
“I was involved in a lot of activities in Colorado — modern Orthodox to Reform and everything in between – and since the time I was drafted into the IDF, I’ve been getting calls from kids I went to Jewish day school with when I was 11.
“People are sending me messages, even money, which I don’t want to take. There’s just a tremendous amount of love and support from the Jewish community in Colorado. They’ve helped me through this entire process.”
Adds Jacob: “I get calls from friends and their parents all the time from the Jewish community in Denver, thanking and encouraging me. I’d like to say thank you for all your prayers and presents.”
There’s nothing like love and support from home, the brothers say.
But “home” is a concept that the Grinberg brothers — now proud soldiers in the army of the Jewish state — seem to be redefining.
“I hope everyone can come here to see what Israel is like,” says Jacob, “because every Jew should know that this is their home, and it always will be.”
Chris Leppek can be contacted at IJNEWS@aol.com
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