Today, under the open sky at the funeral of Josh Boone z”l, I stood among those who came to honor a man who gave so much of himself to Israel. Josh was not born here. He came from the quiet, wide-open landscapes of Boise, Idaho, choosing this land as his own and dedicating 748 days of reserve duty to its defense.

That number matters. All 748 of those days have been served since October 7. Out of a possible 831 days since the war began, Josh was in uniform for nearly all of them. This was not intermittent service. It was a sustained and relentless commitment during one of the most traumatic periods this country has faced.

Josh grew up experiencing antisemitism and carried a fire within him to protect the Jewish people. That fire brought him across an ocean and into uniform. It led him into a service that most people will never fully understand.

At the funeral, stories were shared by friends, by those who served alongside him, and by his partner, Keren Ouliel, whom I have known and worked with for many years. Together, they revealed not only a soldier but a human being who gave everything he had and carried far more than anyone should have had to carry alone.

There is more than one battlefield.

There is a........

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