Hi, it’s Ariel Serber at the Israel Chesed Center. I’m here with Yakir Wachstock who started and is running the organization Boots for Israel. We’re going to have a quick talk about his mission, what he’s done, what he is looking forward to doing. So why don’t you give a little background, a little backstory, so we can get going.
Yakir Wachstock: Thank you for having me and thank you to the Israel Chesed Center. I’m an occupational therapist in elementary schools. I know nothing about boots. I know nothing about armies. Never been involved in a project like this. But I got a phone call in the middle of the night from a major in the IDF asking for boots, and I had no clue what to do, but I knew I had to help.
So I started researching and finding out, and luckily there was someone in my shul who could help out. He actually had these Garmont tactical boots that chayalim really love. He donated the original 88 pairs, so we got them out. And we were told that chayalim need more. So a whole bunch of volunteers in my shul and my neighborhood got together and said, “How can we make this happen?” And Boots for Israel was formed. And since that point, we’ve delivered over 73,000 pairs of boots, with 9,000 soldiers verified right now waiting on us. And we don’t yet have the solution.
So let’s take a step back. What were you doing October 6th and before? What was your connection to Israel? Was it just sort of going out the parade and doing the sort of typical things?
My connection to Israel was always knowing that’s where we belong. And somehow we ended up here; I live in Holliswood, Queens. We should be there, we should be in Israel, but lots of things get in the way. I’m always going to shuls, Young Israel of Holliswood, going to schools, my kids are in MTA, Har Torah, schools that believe strongly in Medinat / Eretz Yisrael. We’ve always gone to visit, send our kids to yeshiva and it’s vital and important, but actively getting involved in day-to-day things going on in Eretz Yisrael. So I was never involved in that, but I was involved in Queens Hatzolah and my shul and my schools, locally things like that.
And now you’re going basically to different Jewish communities almost every weekend. If not more than one.
The last 54 Shabboses, 53 of them I’ve been going to Jewish communities every weekend.
I didn’t go Yom Kippur. So that Shabbos I was home! But all over the country.
You got the call October 9th from a major. How do you think he found you?
So it’s a pretty wild story of how he found me. One of his soldiers, he’s in the miluim; he’s a reservist who lives in Modiin, where my brother and sister-in-law live. At a Shabbat table, there was talk about this crazy Wachstock family who sells on Amazon, in Israel and in America. So he called me to ask about getting boots on Amazon, and people were just making phone calls, just trying, trying, searching.
Because there was such a lack of supplies. And that’s why the Israel Chesed Center got started. Can you talk about your involvement here with the Israel Chesed Center and how you also kind of partnered up?
The Israel Chesed Center started up and moved to this warehouse that we’re in now. They’re involved in so many aspects of bringing achdus on the American side to Eretz Yisrael. We’re just a small portion of that. We’re involved in boots. Only in boots. But we’ve been able to team together with Israel Chesed Center, working on it, whether it be helmets or backpacks, or getting involved in the hostage situation and the tefilos and the shiurim, all the things that are happening that make it a whole community. And it’s a big bracha that Boots gets to be a part of that, because it’s a bigger community of people trying to help Am Yisrael.
So can you talk about this pair of boots here and what it represents?
This pair of boots itself represents the community involvement as well as what we do together. The Israel Chesed Center reached out that they want to get involved and help out. And they helped buy boots that are needed. These actual boots are donated l’ilui nishmas Gil Shalom ben Avraham, an Australian kid who passed away and whose friends donated to be given to a lone soldier fighting in the IDF.
So what are your hopes for Boots for Israel? What comes next?
The transition of going from behind the scenes to a little bit in front of the scenes really comes from that first time I got a chance to speak; I’d never spoken before in public. It hit me, hit me to my core, and I’m so nervous to speak, petrified because I’d never spoken. But I said to myself, “There are chayalim who don’t have boots. If this doesn’t work, there are chayalim who don’t have boots. If it works, there might be some chayalim who do have boots.” So I said, “What bad can come from this? Let’s just try this!” I’m not a speaker and I’m not a person who can get in front of a camera. But somehow I got this call, Hashem put me in this place. There are chayalim waiting on us, so gotta go on video, gotta try to get the word out there that we need the help.
Where can people find you to support the organization and the work and get involved, from a small way to a bigger way?
I go all around North America speaking, so people say all the time, “But I’m not in Queens, I’m not in Brooklyn, I’m not in the Five Towns, so can I really help out?” Yes, we have tons of behind-the-scenes jobs. You can find us on bootsforisrael.com. You can follow us. You can know exactly what’s happening every week. There’s packing every week; there’s bags going to the airport. Every week there’s behind-the-scenes work, finding a new audience to talk to. There are all types of things, from packing to social media to articles to finding different shuls to find boot- packing events, which are a tremendous Kiddush Hashem, and also a way on this side, not just in donating because sure, we need donations, but doing, the actual packing, writing notes—it’s a huge, beautiful, chaotic but exciting event.
I’m sure you have gotten a lot of feedback from the ground. What have been some memorable moments or direct feedback?
Unfortunately, our boots are 10 to 20 times better than anything that the soldiers had. I wish it wasn’t the case. So the feedback is incredible because we’re making a huge difference. There’s one soldier who told me something: “You think you’re just doing boots, and what’s a boot? Who knows about a boot? We need goggles, we need helmets. There’s lots of things we need! Why are boots so important?” The reason is because I got the call about boots.
He said, “No, our rabbis knew, the boots are everything. The bracha that we say every morning—“she’asah li kol tzorki”—that Hashem made for me all of my needs—we say it about putting on our shoes in the morning. They put it in the tefillah because Hashem does everything for us when I put on my shoes, because our shoes are everything. We don’t think about it. You lose the war if you have cold feet, you lose the war if our feet are wet. It’s over. So that one soldier told me, you think it’s just a boot? It’s everything! She’asah li kol tzorki. That’s really powerful. I didn’t think about it till he said it. Yeah. And it really meant a lot.
That’s very powerful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. And thank you to the Israel Chesed Center for having me. For partnering with us. Please everyone, partner in so we can help Am Yisrael together!
I think that you can’t get better than that last statement.
Yakir Wachstock is the founder of Boots for Israel, an organization formed immediately after October 7, 2023, that has supplied nearly 80,000 pairs of tactical boots to IDF soldiers.
The complete interview can be viewed at https://tinyurl.com/icc-yakir
