“When I was lying in the hospital bed, I couldn’t even imagine myself walking again.”
One of our brothers said this recently during training with our Prosthetics Running Team.
What stayed with us was not only the sentence itself, but the distance between
those two realities.
Between lying in a hospital bed after a life-changing injury and standing on a running track again.
For many wounded soldiers, rehabilitation begins with very small goals. Standing up. Taking a few steps. Learning how to trust the body again. Running belongs to another life, to the version of yourself that existed before the injury.
That is part of what makes this program so emotional to witness.
The Prosthetics Running Team was created through the Brothers for Life Medical Project together with physiotherapists, prosthetic specialists, coaches, and rehabilitation experts. On paper, it is a running program.
But standing beside the track, it becomes clear very quickly that this is about much more than running.
One of the brothers recently told us,
“For the first time in a long time, I feel like myself again.”
Again, what stayed with us was not only the sentence itself, but what sits underneath it.
After catastrophic injury, many wounded soldiers learn how to function long before they feel like themselves again. They return to work. To reserve duty. To family life. From the outside, life appears to move forward.
But internally, there is often a quiet fear that the person they once were is gone forever.
That is why moments like these matter.
Not because someone completed another lap around the track.
Not because of athletic achievement.
But because each run quietly pushes back against that fear.
One of the most moving parts of the program is watching the way the soldiers interact with each other. The encouragement. The dark humor. The communication that happens with the eyes and with no words necessary.
Nobody there needs to explain what it means to start over physically.
And nobody there mistakes progress for something simple.
At the end of one training session, a brother bent over catching his breath and laughed,
“I never thought I’d complain about running drills again.”
Everyone around him laughed too.
Not because it was funny.
Because everyone understood what had to happen for that sentence to become possible.
A Defining Moment
“This is the first time since the injury that you feel like you belong.”
Amit wrote these words after returning from a recent Brothers for Life delegation in Boston.
Not supported, or even helped, but “Belong”.
Amit, a Paratroopers combat officer wounded in Gaza in December 2023, arrived on the delegation unsure of what the experience would actually mean for him.
Like many wounded soldiers, he had already learned how to continue functioning after the injury. Returning to responsibilities. Returning to reserve duty. Returning to normal life, at least from the outside.
But later in his writing, he described something deeper:
“That people understand you. That they embrace you. That they see you. That they love you because you are you.”
What makes delegations like this meaningful is not one dramatic moment, but dozens of small ones that slowly build trust and connection.
A conversation late at night.
A host family opening their home.
A meal shared together.
The feeling of being surrounded by people who understand without needing explanations.
| Later in his letter, Amit described the delegation as one of the defining moments of his life. In the past month, we have had delegations in Boston, Houston, New York, California, and right now in Seattle. We are grateful to our BFL communities around the world. You make us so proud to be IDF wounded soldiers. |
| Shabbat Shalom from Israel. |
Yaniv Leidner
Yaniv is the CEO and co-founder of Brothers for Life, overseeing the organization’s daily operations. He resides in Leshem, Israel, with his wife and their five children.
As a former company commander in the Duvdevan unit, Yaniv served with distinction. On the sixth night of Hanukkah in 2004, during an operation to apprehend a terrorist, he was shot through the hip—a wound that still carries the bullet as a reminder of his sacrifice and resilience.