By Carl Zebrowski
Editor

It’s hard to beat this elevator pitch for Israel advocate: Nerdy Israeli farm girl who spent a year in the hospital fighting a serious blood disorder grows up to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, enters Miss Universe competition at her mother’s prodding, wins the Miss Israel crown, gets called back to active military duty after the October 7 Hamas attacks, and turns her unlikely run of experiences into a global platform to change minds about Israel.

Noa Cochva brought her unique story to the Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley’s Women’s Philanthropy 365 Dollar-a-Day Spring Event at Temple Beth El on April 30. She spent the evening revealing surprising detail after detail of her “Beauty and Bravery” journey that brought her to her current role as a woman inspiring Jewish women to stand up for Israel and the Jewish community in this time of increased antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

After Lynne Shampain was presented with her Lion pin, Ellen Sosis, who organized the event along with her co-chairs Marilyn Claire, Gia Jones, and Amy Sams and Women’s Philanthropy president Lauren Rabin, introduced Cochva to the audience and led a conversation with her. She emphasized what Cochva is doing for the cause and how regional community members can pull together through the Federation to make an impact as advocates themselves while making sure those who need help get it.

“Contributing to Federation is huge,” Sosis said. “This does so much for just a dollar a day. What do we do? For local seniors, we are able to give them food and socialization, the human touch and love.” The Federation also supports synagogue programming  and other Jewish institutions along with kids in the Jewish Day School, the JCC, and summer camps. “We’re able to have this amazing homeland,” she continued, highlighting support for Israel and the current wartime focus on rebuilding and helping displaced Israelis.

Sosis led Cochva into her personal story of growing up in central Israel. It was a rural Eden. “I remember waking up to the sound of birds and walking around barefoot,” Cochva said.

Then illness set in. She woke up one morning, age 13, with blue hematomas all over her legs. Her dad rushed her to the hospital. The eventual diagnosis was a rare blood disorder. Sosis said, “She actually spent a year in the hospital.” 

The traumatic experience was life changing. “That’s something that completely shaped me,” Cochva said. When she later came of age to serve in the IDF, she thought immediately of medic work.

But the IDF administers a battery of medical and physical tests before enlistment. Cochva failed. But she didn’t give up. Repeatedly contacting army officers in an effort to win them over, she eventually was enlisted as a medic combat commander, an officer who trains medics for service at the front.

After her army service ended, she returned home. She fell for a young man. Who dumped her. “I was lying in my bed everyday crying,” she said.

Her mother’s unpredictable solution was to enter her for an audition in the Miss Universe pageant, which she read was seeking young women in Israel to compete. “I’m this farm girl that has never put on mascara,” Cochva said. 

But she went along with it. She spent the next six months learning to put on makeup, do her hair, and walk the walk. She won the 2021 Miss Israel crown, even though that wasn’t her actual goal. “All I really cared about was to represent my country,” she said.

She lived the life of Miss Israel for a year, then continued to travel, working to get a modeling career off the ground. Then came October 7, 2023. Her dad, a 40-year-veteran air force squadron commander, was following the news that morning. Images of chaos were everywhere. “I had a feeling I’d be called back to the reserve,” Cochva said.

She got the call, and her dad insisted on driving her to the base. “He gave me the longest hug we ever had in my entire life,” she remembered. She soon saw her old IDF friends, who she hadn’t seen since her service ended. 

Things would be different this time. They’d be needed where the fighting was happening. “We had zero experience,” she said. “I was a commander, teaching, but I was never a medic in combat.”

Three weeks later they were sent toward Gaza, encamped 500 yards from the border. “You have to sleep with your shoes on,” she said. “You’re on call 24 hours.”

The medics got their first call, and Cochva came face to face with her first downed soldier. “He had the same eye color as my youngest brother,” she said. “I just froze. My paramedic snapped me out of it.” And she launched into doing what she had previously trained others to do. 

Combat medics frequently come upon wounded enemies. Since the IDF medics take an oath similar to the physician’s Hippocratic Oath, they’re pledged to save life, no matter whose life. “I treated Hamas terrorists,” she said. “We did not get to choose. We had to treat them.

“We are showing them that we are not like them. We are the State of Israel, and this is what the State of Israel is doing.”

When her second stint in the IDF ended, Cochva carried truths like this into online and in-person Israel advocacy efforts. Hoping to grab attention, she and some friends did a video depicting her transformation from beauty queen to soldier. 

The video went viral. At that moment, she became what many would call an influencer—influencing on behalf of Israel and the Jewish people. Her platform only grew from there.

Soon she was invited to visit the United States to broaden her advocacy mission. Things went well. And not. “Whenever you speak about Israel, especially wearing our uniform,” she said, “the hate comes with it.” 

Her first stop was a San Francisco synagogue, and the hate she expected was waiting for her in the form of screaming protestors. “They showed up dressed as beauty queens,” she said. Their pageant sashes read, “Miss Genocide.”

In New York City, things only got worse. “A girl with a knife came up to us and started threatening us when we were filming content for Israel.” Cooler heads prevailed. At a more recent visit to the city, “People showed up with Israeli flags dripping with (fake) blood.”

At one talk on a college campus, she told the audience about her combat medic experience, including that they treated wounded Hamas members. She emphasized that the goal of her visit was simply conversation, to find the humanity in each other and hopefully reach some level of understanding: “I just want to speak with you, from person to a person.”

Though she keeps trying to do just that, it hasn’t been easy. “We wanted to speak,” she said, “and (the protestors) wanted to silence us. The problem is that they just don’t want to listen to us.” 

Their strategy often works. There’s an implied threat of agitation, rising tempers, anger, maybe physical confrontation. This response-in-advance is too common: “The police told us not to come.” 

But Cochva continues to come. She brought up her grandmother, a prisoner at Auschwitz. The story was often told of her grandmother boldly standing up for her sister in the camp. “I remember hearing this story my entire childhood,” she said. 

Her dad has put a finer point on it. “Remember your grandmother,” he told her. “She couldn’t do what you are doing right now. We have a privilege right now. We have a privilege that our ancestors never had. We need to use that power and use that strength.”

For Cochva, that means speaking out loud for Israel. She told the audience to keep doing what they’re doing, that they’re all already doing the right thing. “Every single person here is doing so much for Israel,” she said. “No platform needed, whatever you’re doing.”

You can join Federation’s Women’s Philanthropy in standing up for Israel and the Jewish people, helping those who need it, and ensuring that our local Jewish community keeps thriving into the future. Contact Lee Kestecher Solomon, Jewish Federation director of community engagement, at [email protected].