‘All he wanted to do was help,’ says brother of US-born soldier killed in Golan blast
Jeffrey Tower pays tribute to his sibling, Sgt. Shlomo Rindenow, 20, who grew up in New Jersey and joined IDF as lone soldier
The brother of an American lone soldier killed Sunday morning in an accidental grenade blast on the Golan Heights said his sibling was motivated by the desire to help other people.
“All he wanted to do was help out,” Jeffrey Tower, 37, told The Times of Israel about his younger brother, 20-year-old Sergeant Shlomo Rindenow, who served in a combat engineering unit.
Rindenow moved to Israel from Passaic, New Jersey, when he was 18, and spent a year volunteering with a search and rescue organization in Israel before enlisting in the IDF. His brother affectionately remembered him as a “bookworm” and someone passionate about giving.
The family was notified of Rindenow’s death this morning, shortly after he was pronounced dead in the explosion which occurred when a grenade went off in the hands of fellow soldier Staff Sgt. Hussam Tafesh, 24.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Tower said.
Sunday morning’s incident occurred when Tafesh drove his army vehicle up to a military outpost at the entrance to the northern town of Majdal Shams at around 7 a.m. He exited the vehicle while holding a grenade, the army said. The grenade then exploded, killing him and Rindenow, who was standing near the vehicle. The three soldiers inside the vehicle were wounded.
Shlomo was the youngest of five brothers, all of whom moved to Israel from New Jersey and volunteered with the IDF. He was living on Kibbutz Sde Yoav in the Negev as a lone soldier. His older brother Gami Rindenow, 22, currently serves in the paratroopers.
Rindenow’s parents were to board a flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to Israel. Arrangements for the funeral hadn’t yet been made.
Udi Borovitch, the head of the kibbutz where Rindenow lived, said that the lone soldier was adopted by a family “who opened their home to him and turned him into one of our own.”
“Although he wasn’t a native of the kibbutz, he was raised on the values of giving and enlistment [to the military] that characterize our kibbutz,” he said in a statement.