A collective sense of urgency

Yosef Lazar said his sister, one of 12 children, was always "a very girly girl."

But when she enlisted in the Israeli military at 19, he said, Sara Lazar became a soldier's soldier, proud to be one of the few women serving in a combat unit in the Israel's state-mandated military service made up of more than 169,000 troops.

Sara served 18 months in the Israeli military and came home "still herself, that girly girl," said her brother, who recently moved from New Jersey to Florida.

Two years after her initial service ended, she's now heading back overseas to fight. When Hamas attacked Israel, she joined a group of Jewish Americans who feel a collective sense of urgency to unite against an enemy bent on Israel's destruction.

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