Living Torah Archives

Mr. Yisroel Katzover is senior military correspondent who covered the IDF for numerous Israeli newspapers and media channels. (year 1970)

Recent generations have witnessed a paradigm shift in the art of warfare. Whereas it used to be the quantity of one’s soldiers and weaponry that deterred war or proved victory in the battlefield, today it is the quality of one’s arsenal that matters most. One technologically advanced weapon outweighs vast quantities of enemy manpower.

During the Yom Kippur War, Israeli fighter jets from 1967 faced cutting-edge Russian-made surface-to-air missiles. Shortly after the war, Israeli Air Force engineer Mr. Yitzchak Rappaport was sent to America on a mission to update the IDF’s technology for the future.

Mr. Nash Kestenbaum, president of the National Council of Young Israel at the time of the Yom Kippur War, was instrumental in securing the Nixon Administration’s weapons airlift to Israel. His son, Dovid Kestenbaum, recalls his father’s interactions with the Rebbe at the time.

During the Yom Kippur War, Reb Efraim Mol was stationed at Israel’s southern border with Sinai, when intelligence came in about a possible imminent chemical attack by the Egyptians. Ordered to shave his beard in preparation to don a gask mask, Efraim convinced his superiors to allow him to consult the Rebbe first.

In 1973, at the time the Yom Kippur War broke out, Mr. Aryeh Morgenstern was director of the Torah Department of the World Zionist Organization in the United States.