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In early August, I was asked to speak last minute at a funeral for my “exchange father,” Yeheskel (Ezekiel in Hebrew) Nezaria. He went by the nickname Hezi and was the father of Yehuda (Udi) Nezaria, an Israeli exchange student my family hosted my junior year at Hagerstown High School. Udi’s family then immigrated to the United States. Our families became very close over the past few decades.
Hezi was born into a Jewish family in Kashan, Persia (now Iran), in 1934. At a young age, his family moved to Teheran (now Tehran). In high school, he investigated communism. In fact, he once told me of a time when he was riding a bus as a teenager and had a brochure of Tudeh (Iranian Communist Party) sticking out of his shirt pocket, when a member of the secret police boarded the bus. He was very lucky he wasn’t arrested!
Following high school graduation, at the age of only 18, Hezi made a very dangerous aliyah (immigration journey to Israel), with his parents following later. As Farsi was his first language, he made it his goal to speak Hebrew like a native-born Israeli. He enrolled in an intensive Hebrew school at a kibbutz, or communal farm, eventually losing his Farsi accent. He served in the Israel Defense Forces and in three wars. Hezi studied mechanical engineering and was employed in Israel’s defense industry.
While Israel is a vibrant democracy, Hezi was fed up with left-wing Israeli politics, so he and his family immigrated to the U.S. in 1986, knowing little English but quickly learning it as his fourth language. He first resided in Brooklyn, New York. His wife, Sara, a nurse, and his teenage son, Yair, and young daughter, Shira, later joined him. Following completion of his Israeli military service, Udi joined them. At the time, I was a cadet at West Point and able to get away some weekends to visit them.
As is the case with many legal immigrant families like the Nezarias, Hezi was not allowed to work as a mechanical engineer, and Sara was not allowed to work as a nurse without green cards. Therefore, Hezi worked many long hours driving a livery (a New York term for a vehicle between a taxi and limo), while Sara worked in her home studio as an electrolysis esthetician.
During my visits, Hezi and I loved talking politics. Hezi could not understand why so many “left parties,” as he called them, had taken over Israel, although today, Israelis have shifted much more to the right.
Tired of city life, Hezi and Sara moved to Manalapan, New Jersey. Sadly, they lost Shira to bone cancer in 1994. Having completed my active-duty Army service, my first post-MBA job was in Morristown, New Jersey, which allowed me to visit them often. Hezi and his sons became U.S. citizens.
Over the years, my extended family has been blessed to attend weddings and bat and bar mitzvahs of the Nezaria family.
Udi graduated from medical school and is a podiatrist and podiatric surgeon on Long Island. He is married to Gamile, a real estate agent and office manager. They have three children, one of whom is a biomedical engineer, and twins who just graduated from college (one graduated from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business).
Yair, a successful entrepreneur, founded Shira Esthetics. He and his wife, Danna, an attorney from Iowa, co-founded Hatikvah International Academy, a very high-performing 600-student K-8 charter school in East Brunswick, New Jersey. They have four children, three of whom are in college, and one still in high school.
Choking back tears at Hezi’s funeral, I tried my best to recite Psalm 1:3: He [was] like a tree planted by streams of water, yielding his fruit in season and whose leaves never wither and whose legacy prospers.•
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LaMar, an international manager, served as Henry County Council president from 2009-2019.
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