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Poster boy By Na'ama Lanski Tags: male model, Yonatan Wegman On a Wednesday three weeks ago Yonatan Wegman, the new house model for the Castro fashion company, combat officer and medical student, arrived for the photo shoot for the winter catalog. At the height of the heat wave, under the broiling Tel Aviv sun, Wegman posed for hours while embracing co-model Gal Gadot, dressed in heavy boots, tight jeans and a wool coat and scarf. When he left the set and headed off to be interviewed by crews from various entertainment programs, his back was dripping with sweat and he was nearly burning up. "Well, after all your combat duty, this is no big deal for you," the interviewers complimented him, one after the other, before asking, "How do you manage to fit in modeling with your medical studies? And tell us: Who's the lucky girl you're dating now? And did you ever think, when you were running around in the army, that you'd be a model?" When you see Wegman, 26, currently in his second year of medical studies at Tel Aviv University, it's hard to know what do first: bring him home to meet Mom, adopt him as a grown-up son or just keep staring at him. He was indeed a model kid, who grew up in Arad, always played sports (swimming, running, Aikido and basketball), was president of the student council and a counselor in the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, volunteered with the Magen David Adom emergency services, was a counselor in the Zionist Aharai movement, won the Bible quiz in Arad, played recorder and clarinet - and, on a trip to India after his army service as a deputy company commander in the paratroops, worked on discovering his inner self. Advertisement While doing the photo shoot against a white backdrop, one wondered how Wegman felt when told to open his mouth, lower his chin, move his thumb. He says he feels he has a role to play. "The photos are the final product, but there is more going on here, especially in terms of the public relations, which to me are really the essence of what being a presenter is all about," he explains. "I bring with me different values. It's in how I express myself and that's what people take away with them." So you're a model who sets an example? Wegman: "The only reason you and I are talking now is that there's something interesting about me, that I have done and am doing things with my life. Young people today look at the presenter for Castro, at Yonatan, and say: Hey, here's a guy who was in the army, who was an officer, who's devoted a good part of his life to things that have a purpose, to Zionist activity. The day we were filming outside, a bunch of girls passed by and shouted, 'What a hunk!' and then they came over to me and asked, 'You're also a doctor, right?' "Or I get young guys who come up to me and say, 'It's cool that you were a combat soldier. I want to be in a combat unit, too.' I think that people who are role models have to contribute to the state, to society, to the community, to represent basic Zionist values, to aim high. It's sad to see people behind the fashion labels who don't understand that the men and women they put out front need to represent these important values. If you're going to be a model and a teen idol - then yes: I'm glad that I come from the right place and the right background." Wegman's father Dov is an aeronautical engineer; his mother, Aliza, is an accountant. He is the third of four siblings. "We moved to Arad because of my father's work at the Dead Sea Industries," he says. "Once, there used to be admission committees for people who wanted to live in Arad; every year the high school produced members of elite units and pilot trainees. The city's not like that anymore ... A very large population of immigrants has been injected into the city because people thought Arad was strong enough to absorb them and they were wrong. "People like me are becoming more scarce and it's sad," he notes. "For example, it was always clear to me that I would go to serve in the best place possible and that I would devote four years to it, minimum. The original plan, at least in my mother's mind, was that I would serve in the navy commandos and eventually become chief of staff. It didn't turn out that way. "I had a lot of injuries during my service, but they took me to places within myself that I wouldn't have got to otherwise and in a certain sense they also led me to medicine. I had a broken ankle, they put in a pin and right after that they let me return to my platoon, and I felt like the luckiest and happiest guy in the world." After leading his charges, as a squad commander, on a 60-kilometer trek, Wegman began the officers' course, but then had to undergo another operation to have the pin removed: "The day after the operation I returned to the course on crutches because I didn't want to miss anything." He has no complaints about the army, he says: "The guys in the army know what they're doing, things have to get approved. You believe that thought goes into it. I'm very loyal and very faithful to the system by nature - certainly to the military establishment. I did things that weren't healthy for me and it hurt me, but I'd do them again. I always really relied on whoever gave me orders. I had complete faith in all my superiors." And this faith in the army never faltered? "When our unit was on a training exercise, they rushed us into action as part of Operation Defensive Shield, when the Israel Defense Forces entered Balata [refugee camp near Nablus] for the first time. That's something hardly ever done with someone who's in the midst of that kind of training. It was a mess. We weren't trained in combat procedures, we didn't have the right bullets, we just took huge amounts of ammunition and went for it. It was scary ... Nothing was supposed to happen to us, supposedly, but people were injured. Our sergeant lost an eye, another soldier was hurt. Our tanks fired on the building where we were posted. In short, no one was really sure what to do. I didn't really get what was going on ... [but] I can't be critical. It was something very innovative that the IDF did. And, actually, that was when I understood that I wanted to be there, as a fighter, at the decisive moment." Wegman later commanded combat troops. "Right after my discharge one of my soldiers, Dan Talasnikov [brother of soccer player Jan Talasnikov], was killed in an operation in Tul Karm. My soldiers called me to tell me. A phone call at night is the scariest thing for me. When one of your soldiers is killed, even if you weren't there, it's a horrible thing. I couldn't come to terms with his death properly. Not until I was in India, alone, was I able to deal with it. I sat there on some beach, I got in touch with myself and cried for hours." Longtime dream During the week I tagged along with him, Wegman was studying human reproduction. On the window of his room he'd taped up diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems, and he was memorizing the details of fallopian tubes, prostate glands and the urethra. He usually goes to bed around 10 P.M. and wakes up between 5 and 6 A.M. to study at home, which is a small apartment near the sea, shared with a roommate and two cats. His room is sparsely furnished: a double mattress covered with an Indian fabric, a small desk crammed with books and a laptop, a closet, a bookcase and a painting of the moon. Studying medicine has been Wegman's longtime dream. It began with the tragedy at the Arad music festival in 1995, where three teens were trampled to death: "I was there and saw how everyone was being crushed and carried away on stretchers. Right then I thought that I needed to do an MDA course and volunteer as a paramedic." After his discharge from the army, he studied for the psychometric exam and worked to improve his marks from the matriculation exams. He applied to Ben-Gurion University, but was not accepted into the medical program there. On that same trip where he says learned how to cry, he also decided to study medicine in Hungary. Before that, Wegman realized another dream when he participated in an Aikido camp in Japan - "'Karate Kid'-style. I found a dojo where you live with the sensei and are basically part of the household. It was a highly respected place. There's nothing there, the conditions are very Spartan. You sleep on a mattress on the floor, in the morning you get two slices of bread with jam and peanut butter ... It was during the harshest winter they'd had there in at least a decade. The morning begins at 5:30, there's a warm-up and then weapons training in the forest: swords, knives and clubs. It's minus-5 degrees and you have no warm clothes, no gloves, nothing. The sensei shouts at you in Japanese and you're supposed to understand what he wants." When he returned to Israel, shortly before he was due to begin his university studies, the second Lebanon War broke out. In light of what went on, even Wegman's absolute faith in the military system was shaken. It was the first time he was called up for reserve duty, and he was assigned to command a platoon made up mostly of reservists who were all five to 10 years his senior. "I commanded people whose combat ethos I'd been brought up on, and they were the biggest ray of light for me in the war. People of such high caliber - you wouldn't want to be risking your life with anyone else. We went into Lebanon three times. The first time we went in, my balls were shaking. We didn't know yet what was going to happen, we were rusty, we didn't know one another. To them, it was: Here's this young, 24-year-old officer who's suddenly supposed to lead us into a war where no one is really sure what's going on. "We entered right at dawn, completely exposed. It was supposed to have happened in the dark, but it took time until we received the permission to go. I didn't ask why. In the end, you have your mission to perform. What's most important in the reserves is to bring all your soldiers back home safely. These weren't 18-year-olds eager to take out a terrorist, but guys with families, with kids. That's something I'm very proud of, that aside from the emotional damage - which occurred, without a doubt - everyone made it home safely. We advanced through an abandoned village, completely exposed all around. I was just centimeters from a bomb explosion at the entrance to one of the houses. After a day in which we accomplished some things under dangerous circumstances, we were suddenly told to retreat. There was a lot of uncertainty. When we got back, I made phone calls to everyone in my family. I had this feeling that either I or the other platoon commander wouldn't make it home. The next time we went in, everything was organized and clear." During Wegman's second stint in Lebanon, his platoon took over part of a village. One evening after the shooting died down, he recalls, "a mortar shell landed right next to us and hurt [Lieutenant] Yonatan Levin, who was the most seriously wounded soldier in the war. You feel like you don't know where it's going to come from. Outside you're exposed to mortar shells, inside the buildings you're exposed to bombs and rockets. It was a war where I didn't feel the supremacy of the IDF. We just played into Hezbollah's hands. We decided to spend the night inside an abandoned building. A very tense night, one of the scariest of my life ... Sitting and waiting for something to happen. In the morning we pulled back again without having any clear idea about what the purpose of it all was." And you still report for reserved duty? "Of course. Right during exam time I'm doing a month of reserve duty. There's no choice." 'The hottest thing' After Wegman completed his first year of studies in Hungary, his older brother decided to sign him up for Tel Aviv University, and this time he was accepted. Around the time of his return, auditions were being held for the Castro summer-season model: "It was the hottest thing at the time. Gal Gadot had already been selected and it was pretty clear that they also wanted a male presenter. It happened pretty quickly for me." How did you get into modeling? "You remember the days of Betty Rockaway [referring to the owner of a local modeling agency], when scouts were going all over the country and signing good-looking kids? Well, they never came to Arad. Only my cousins or friends told me I was handsome. The idea of modeling never occurred to [me or] my parents. Before the army, when the artist Adi Nes was just starting out more or less and did those pictures of soldiers, he came to Arad to find guys to photograph, and he found me and photographed me in uniform. After a while, my sister saw this picture in an exhibition in New York and kept track of it until it was sold at a public auction at Sotheby's for $20,000. "After my discharge, a friend took a few pictures of me in an orchard near her house and we sent them to a few agencies. They responded immediately. I was close to signing with Roberto, and then at Karin Models, but in the end things clicked the most with Look. The week I signed, I had my first audition for Castro. I was hired right away ... Aside from that, I did small, low-profile jobs, PR photos, fashion projects in newspapers. I wasn't really part of the industry. The story with Castro really began when I came back to Israel after a year away and since then it's been a big thing. It's been the most amazing year of my life." How do you feel about everything that goes along with this job? The paparazzi, gossip, loss of privacy? "As for gossip, it's part of the reality and it will only grow. So far it hasn't been hard for me, because as long as it's all positive and the energy is good it's okay. I'm sure I'll eventually get burned, that something will come up and I won't have any idea where it came from. It scares me to think that lies will appear about me. I'm in a new relationship with someone who doesn't want to be exposed and isn't part of this field. Just this morning there was a stupid, gossipy report about the two of us and it was annoying, but we'll keep on going." Do you feel famous? "I feel the publicity. People recognize me, they notice me. I'm always being pointed at. When the first campaign came out there was a time when I was still taking the bus, before I bought a motorbike, and I was constantly getting looks. I'd get on the bus, keeping my head down, and sit at the back and read a book. Even now, when people give me a compliment, I'm embarrassed. The thing that protects me, that's most important, is that I got to this place at a mature point in my life. People say to me: Listen, just don't go changing on us all of a sudden. Don't let all the girls that are flirting with you turn your head and don't get all confused by the gay guys who start up with you. It makes me laugh. I've already got my values set, I know who I am, I know what my goals are. A few years from now, when I'm busy working at the hospital, I won't have these options anymore, but I'll have some good memories." Is there any chance we'll see you performing in a musical or in a telenovela one day? "I'd do a telenovela if it were right for me. But my dream is to be a doctor, not an actor or a singer. It's hard for me to picture where else I could go with modeling, because I feel like, with Castro, I've already reached the top. If someone had told me a year ago that I'd become their model and then, before you know it, I'd be the hottest thing in the country, I would have said: You've got to be joking."W Bookmark to del.icio.us   By the numbers A study shows Jewish Israeli men live almost four years longer than Israeli Arabs. Local threat The Shin Bet arrests two Bedouin, accused of supplying information to al-Qaida.

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