From Tel Aviv to Torah: A Former Soldier Finds Purpose

The day before his planned wedding to a non-Jewish woman, Yariv Even-Haim got a phone call that would change his life forever. His father had suffered a heart attack. Without hesitation, he dropped everything and flew back to Israel. “I found myself in the ICU,” he recalls. “My father was in critical condition. I picked up a prayer book and started reading, though I didn’t even realize at the time that I was saying Birkat HaMazon, the Grace After Meals.”

Looking at Yariv today, an observant Jew learning at Yeshivat Or HaChaim under Rabbi Reuven Elbaz, it’s hard to believe this was the same young man who once commanded an IDF elite unit, modeled in international ad campaigns, and was fully immersed in the Western lifestyle, far from Torah or tradition.

“I was born in Kiryat Gat,” Yariv begins. “The values I got growing up were not binding, just general ideas of being good. The influence of the Western world entered our home and slowly broke down anything meaningful. I didn’t know even the basics of Judaism and I didn’t want to know.”

During his army service, Yariv joined the paratroopers and rose through the ranks to become a commander. He experienced combat with Hezbollah and Hamas and lived through life-threatening missions. “There were many times when we were hanging between life and death. We saw miracles, but instead of attributing them to Hashem, we gave credit to ourselves, ‘my strength and the power of my hand.’ At rare moments, we’d look up and whisper something to Heaven and not out of connection, but out of desperation.”

After finishing his service in 1994, Yariv sought a new challenge. One day, he was approached by photographer Danny Miller, who cast him in an Israeli film. That opened the door to the world of modeling and television. He became a familiar face in commercials, billboards, and talk shows. “I never dreamed of going into media, but within a short time, I was on magazine covers and starring in ad campaigns. I was chasing success. I was chasing the world.”

His modeling career took him to Switzerland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. But when he returned to Israel in 1995, something inside felt empty. “I wanted something more. I started learning alternative medicine, Eastern philosophies, and spiritual paths but nothing felt real. I was searching for peace, and nothing I tried gave it to me.”

That spiritual emptiness deepened. Yariv decided to leave again and this time for America. He traveled through Chicago, Houston, and Florida, looking for meaning but mostly finding success. “I was sitting in a beautiful resort town, and on the night of Passover, I was in a restaurant eating bread and non-kosher meat. I knew something was off, but I had nothing to compare it to.”

Eventually, he decided to stay in the US by marrying a non-Jewish woman. It would secure his status and allow him to keep working. But Hashem had other plans. At 4 a.m. on the day before the wedding, the phone rang. It was his Aunt Miri. “I said, ‘Can we talk tomorrow?’ and she said, ‘No. Your father had a heart attack. You have to come home.’”

In that moment, his carefully built world collapsed.

“I felt everything inside me break,” Yariv says. “I packed my bag, took some money, and boarded the next flight to Israel. At a layover, I found myself wandering through the airport on a Shabbat morning. I walked into a synagogue but it had mixed seating between men and women, and I didn’t know it was a Reform service. Still, I felt something wasn’t right. It didn’t feel authentic.”

On the flight, he made a quiet, personal deal with Hashem. “I said, ‘If my father recovers, and if I come to understand that You’re real, I promise to go all in. No shortcuts. No compromises.’”

Baruch Hashem, his father recovered. And Yariv knew he had to keep his promise. “In our home, a promise is a promise. Beyond that, the empty life I had lived, parties, success, all of it, it had left me dry. I felt like I had been drinking from a broken cistern. I didn’t know much, but I knew I had to start asking questions.”

That’s when Hashem sent him a messenger.

“One day in 1997, I was walking across the Halacha Bridge in Tel Aviv when a man named Ezra Ravia asked if I’d help complete a minyan, a prayer quorum of ten men. I said yes and went into the shul, but I had no idea what to do. I was embarrassed. Ezra saw I lived nearby and invited me for Kiddush on Shabbat morning.”

What Yariv saw that morning moved him deeply. “He blessed his children. They sang songs and shared words of Torah at the table. It was peaceful. Beautiful. And then he asked me: ‘Do you really think this whole world came from one explosion?’ I didn’t know what to say, but I said I’d be willing to hear scientific explanations.”

Ezra invited him to a Torah lecture nearby. Yariv went and met Rabbi David Akuka. “He didn’t try to prove the existence of God right away. He just opened a Gemara (Talmud), and we learned a sugya (topic). It was complex, filled with wisdom and logic. I felt a pull toward it.”

Judaism began to open up for him. He wanted more. At some point, he was invited to spend Shabbat at Yeshivat Or HaChaim in Jerusalem, led by Rabbi Reuven Elbaz. “Meeting Rav Elbaz was like meeting a spiritual fire. His presence, his warmth, it shook me. And the students there? These weren’t weak people. These were top minds, guys from elite army units. That shattered the stereotype I had in my head about religious Jews.”

That Shabbat, Yariv heard a class about mesorah, the transmission of Torah from Mount Sinai until today. “I realized that the giving of the Torah wasn’t just some ancient event, it’s a chain, unbroken, passed from parent to child. I wasn’t a disconnected Jew anymore. I was part of something eternal.”

He also credits much of his growth to listening regularly to Rabbi Zamir Cohen and Rabbi Yitzchak Fanger. “Their gentle, logical approach captivated me. Every time I heard them, it elevated me a little more.”

At Rav Elbaz’s advice, Yariv decided to stay at the yeshiva for a trial period. That meant giving up a lot, his home, his company car, his lifestyle and living in a small room with four roommates. “It wasn’t easy. But the spiritual clarity I felt was stronger than any luxury.”

Week by week, he went deeper. Questions turned into clarity. He met with scientists and rabbis, and the doubts that once filled him faded away. “At a certain point,” he says, “I didn’t even know what to ask anymore.”

One week turned into two, then into a month and soon, he was living a whole new life.

“I began to understand what I wanted. I looked around at Tel Aviv’s empty lifestyle and realized, I don’t want my future family to look like this. I wanted a Jewish home. I was already close to 25 and focused on that goal. To build something real, I needed to grow.”

Eventually, Hashem helped him fulfill that dream. He married a Jewish woman, in full accordance with Torah law, and they built a home near the yeshiva in Jerusalem. Yariv studied to become a mohel (ritual circumciser) and had the merit to circumcise both of his sons himself.

Today, after eleven years of Torah study, Yariv spends his mornings learning and his afternoons dividing his time between family responsibilities and speaking across Israel sharing his story and inspiring others.