They came to Israel from the United States as lone soldiers , and found love among the pathways and groves of the Lavi kibbutz in the north of the country. Now Amiel and Talia are set to tie the knot in Boston surrounded by fellow soldiers. "But after the honeymoon we'll get a whole honey year in Israel," Amiel told Yedioth Ahronoth.

Amiel Abir, 21, was born in New York and raised in Florida. "We have always had true Jewish Zionist zeal at home," he says. "We grew up listening to Ofra Haza and Caveret and eating falafel. After graduating from highschool Amiel made aliyah to Israel, studying Hebrew for a year and then conscripting to the IDF as a lone soldier.

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He entered the Tzabar absorption program for lone soldiers and joined Lavi, a religious kibbutz in the Lower Galilee. He serves in an elite paratroopers brigade.

Talia Castelman was born in a religious Zionist home in a town near Boston. She followed the footsteps of her older sister, who made aliyah and enlisted in the IDF. She serves as a noncommissioned officer shooting trainer at a base near Lakhish. "I feel I’m on a mission here," she says.

The happy couple (Photo: Effi Sharir)

Amiel is only too happy to recall how their loved first bloomed. "It's the kibbutz that made the matchmaking for us," he says. "We were together on a bus, all the 24 youths enrolled in the program. It was then that I saw Talia for the first time and invited her to sit next to me. We talked for three hours and I felt this was it."

Amiel will be discharged in a few weeks, while Talia has three months of service left. Until they find a home of their own they'll be living in Lavi.

A year after they got engaged, the happy couple will tie the knot in Boston in two weeks' time. Their flight will be sponsored by the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel's Soldiers, as part of the "Homesick" project. But they won't be making the trip alone: 10 of their friends from the Tzabar program got flight tickets to the wedding so they could accompany their friends all the way to the Chuppah.

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