Eighteen-year-old Eva Ben Sira is training to become a squad commander in the Negev desert - a far cry from the frozen wastes of her homeland. Eva was born to a Yupik Eskimo mother and a Cherokee American father before being adopted by an Israeli couple. Her twin brother, Jimmy, will become the army’s second serving Eskimo, when he joins the force next year.
The twins’ remarkable journey to Israel began when their mother, Minnie, found herself unable to support Eva and Jimmy after their father walked out. Alaskan social services stepped in and, at the age of two, the twins were sent to live with their grandmother, who struggled to raise the children herself. Their plight came to light when an Orthodox Jewish couple, Meir and Dafna Ben Sira, came to visit Minnie’s neighbour - Dafna’s mother - a Swiss Catholic woman, who had emigrated to Alaska from Israel in 1989. The Ben Siras offered to adopt Eva and Jimmy, but had to overcome a welter of religious and cultural obstacles to get the adoption approved by both tribal elders and an Alaskan Orthodox rabbi. "We got to know the children and they needed a home," Dafna told BBC News Online. "We wanted to have a family and the children had no place to go," she said. They remained in Alaska for five years until the adoption process was completed. Eva and Jimmy were brought to Israel (they learned to speak Hebrew in three months), converted to Judaism and integrated into Israeli society among the Orthodox community of Nir Etzion, a village near Haifa.
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