IDF Major (Res.) Yaakov Selavan is part of a special project in memory of IDF officer Major Yochai ‘Juha’ Kalangel OBM.

“Yochai ‘Juha’ Kalangel was a commander in the Givati Infantry Brigade, he was a company leader in the Sabra Battalion, and he was killed on operational duty by a missile that was shot by Hezbollah from Lebanon in January 2015,” Selavan explains. “He left behind a wife and a daughter who he celebrated with on her first birthday the day before, and six months after he was killed his second daughter was born. He left behind five siblings and parents. On Memorial Day I think the essence of this day is to try focusing not on how he died but on how he lived.”

The special project, which is called Bamba, Coke, Memory, is about inspiring people with Yochai’s life story. Selavan talks to people around the world about what they can learn from Yochai, who was also known as Juha.

How do international audiences connect to Juha’s story?

Selavan comments that he just finished a webinar with over 300 people from South American, the U.S., Canada, Berlin, the UK, South Africa and Israel.

“We got requests to talk about this story, we did over an hour of talking. We met Yochai’s siblings and the audience got to ask them questions. There’s thirst, people asked us, ‘How do I connect? I want to feel this day.’ And we said, ‘That’s why you’re here, why we’re here.’ The best way to connect people is to introduce them to personal stories such as Yochai’s.”

The Bamba, Coke, Memory initiative is so named because Yochai’s father found out after Yochai was killed that when he would see a depressed soldier he would walk over and give him his credit and tell him to “go buy yourself Bamba [the famous Israeli snack] and Coke – and cheer up.”

“If he knew there was a soldier in the unit who didn’t have money he would say to buy it for him also, you know what he didn’t tell him why,” Selavan says. “When the teenagers in our town, Moshav Yonatan in the Golan, met his father and heard the story they decided that every year on the day Yochai was killed, we’re going to run a nationwide project where Israelis come out and show gratitude to the troops that are protecting us through giving them Bamba and Coke. It’s showing gratitude and it’s remembering Yochai.”

He explains that Yochai was a special person who was exceedingly generous to those around him. He would always be there for someone who was struggling, especially as a commander in basic training with his soldiers, who he would get to know first by disguising himself without his officer badges and walking among the new troops to see how they were coping. He would also always be there for soldiers with financial troubles or whose families had financial hardships.

Selavan recounts that after Yochai died people who were in need began to speak about how Yochai had bought them a washing machine or a refrigerator, or had brought them food every weekend.

“As the family calls it, it’s being Yochai. The essence of the day is to see someone and to say and to show him that you care about him, and to show him that you’re there for him and that you have gratitude for what he’s doing,” Selavan says.

“We really feel that we’re fulfilling the essence. We’re bringing this dear person’s legacy, we’re making it live and commemorating people is not through stones, it’s not through death. It’s through life, it’s through living commemorations. This operation, which reaches over 30,000 soldiers every year, is a great example of that.”