A few months ago, 23-year-old Moriya Azulay resigned herself to the idea that she would have to drop out of school and give up on her dream of becoming the first person in her family to earn a university degree.

Despite family instability and economic hardship, Azulay had clawed her way into Reichman University to study government and diplomacy. Before entering, she had served as a combat soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, which recognized her as a lone soldier despite having been born in Israel, an acknowledgment of the difficulties that come with not having the family support system most other Israeli-born troops enjoy.

The military’s support structures for lone soldiers gave her a cushion to delay the full weight of the bureaucratic and financial hurdles that come with being on your own.

Once her service ended, though, that support disappeared, and the financial pressures she had managed to parry suddenly became overwhelming.

By the end of her first year at university, Azulay realized she could no longer afford to continue life as a full-time student — or even guarantee a roof over her head. But then she made a phone call.

At Reichman, she had found a mentor in Micky Aharonson, who previously served for nearly a decade as senior director of the Diplomatic Secretariat at the National Security Council in the Prime Minister’s Office.

“I called her one day and said, ‘Listen, I think I need to quit school and give up on diplomacy. I can’t afford it. In 10 days, I’m going to be homeless. I don’t know what to do,'” Azulay told The Times of Israel.

Rather than accept Azulay’s decision to quit, Aharonson decided to act, connecting Azulay with philanthropists willing to help her and others like her out.

Providing Azulay with rent help to keep her off the street and in school, the donors also supplied seed funding to establish Lone Front, a nonprofit project aimed at helping women who previously served in combat roles as lone soldiers, but who often don’t receive the same recognition as their male counterparts.

Israel is home to some 7,000 lone soldiers — young men and women serving in the IDF without parental support — each navigating the challenge of building a life without the safety net many of their peers take for granted. According to IDF figures, 46 percent of them are women.

Roughly half of the total are new immigrants whose parents still live abroad, while the rest, like Azulay, are Israeli-born soldiers who are orphaned, estranged from their families, or whose families have relocated abroad.

Azulay was born into an ultra-Orthodox family, but her father left when she was a year old, leaving her mother to raise three young children on her own.

The strain of that responsibility took a toll on her mother’s mental health. When she was no longer able to cope, Azulay and her........

© The Times of Israel