The two Americans killed fighting in the Gaza Strip followed in the footsteps of scores of Jews from around the world who have volunteered to fight for Israel.

Israel calls them the lone soldiers: They are men and women in the prime of their lives who have left their parents and often comfortable lives behind in places like Sydney, London, Los Angeles and elsewhere to join the Israel Defense Forces, marching in the desert and taking up arms to defend the Jewish state.

There are about 2,000 lone soldiers currently serving in the military, said Marina Rozhansky, spokesman at the Israel Consul General in Los Angeles. Groups for families of lone soldiers have recently started in Los Angeles and other cities, providing a support network as the fighting intensifies.

For Jews who left Israel before the age of 15 or who never lived there, their service is voluntary. For many, it is a calling, a way to get back to their roots and unite the world’s Jewish population. Some have dual citizenship. Others speak little to no Hebrew and have only recently been to Israel.

Max Steinberg, 24, who grew up in Southern California’s San Fernando Valley, joined six months after he visited Israel for the first time on a Birthright Israel trip with his younger brother and sister in June 2012, said Jake Steinberg, who spoke to The Associated Press hours after learning his brother, a sharpshooter in the Golani Brigade, was among 13 Israeli soldiers and scores of Palestinians over the weekend who died during the first major ground battle in two weeks of fighting between Israel and Hamas. The Jewish Journal was first to report Steinberg’s death.

“He got there and felt a connection to Israel, saw that as a place he could live and be successful, and he went for it,” Jake Steinberg said.

Nissim Sean Carmeli, 21, the second American killed, was from South Padre Island, Texas, and he felt that same strong connection to the country he had only moved to four years ago.

“Lone soldiers are a kind of star in Israel,” according to the Jewish Journal in a report. “For Israeli kids, army service is a rite of passage. But because it is a choice for the young members of the Diaspora who redirect their own life paths to protect Israel, those enlistees are given a hero’s welcome — and a lifetime of Shabbat dinner invitations from their fellow soldiers, who become their surrogate families.”

Thousands of people attended Carmeli’s funeral in the northern Israeli port town of Haifa after a Facebook status called for Israelis to come in droves so that the lone soldier would be not be alone at this final resting place. Tearful mourners rested their heads on his coffin, which was draped in an Israeli flag. Before it was lowered into the grave, piles of flowers were set upon the coffin, as mourners cried beside it.