Well, I am honorably d-i-s-c-h-a-r-g-e-d. Earlier this year I schlepped (see http://www.vidlit.com/yidlit/) out to my unit’s depot & was officially and duly discharged from the IDF. I am 42 & thanks to recent legislative changes here, since I’m neither an officer nor a doctor, I have been discharged.
I feel very mixed. I’m both pleased & a little sad. It’ll be great not to have to disappear for 3-4 weeks a year for annual stints of reserve duty and leave DW & Da Boychiks at home but I will miss not so much the camaraderie as the deep, in-my-soul satisfaction at just being one of the guys, at being an ordinary Israeli, of taking an active part in, and being defined by, this common experience. Back in (public) high school (in Pittsburgh; my 25th reunion is next year, more about that in a minute), I was never a member of the “in crowd”. (This was way before I decided to become frum & make aliya.) I certainly wasn’t a social outcast as I was a social marginal. My friends were other marginals & I lived in the school library. I’ve never wanted to stand out, to say, “Hey, everyone! Look at me!” as I’ve just wanted to belong, to be one of the guys, to do ordinary things & have ordinary experiences.
Well, I did decide to become frum & make aliya (in November 1986) but I brought with me this very intense desire to belong & to be ordinary. And as a modern orthodox Jew here in Israel, this means serving in the IDF. As an older (I was in my late 20’s at the time), married (December 1988), new immigrant, I was inducted (in February 1991) for four months’ service. I did a special 3-week basic training course (with other older immigrants, not – baruch Hashem! - with 18-year-old Israeli kids) & then the 13-week medic course. During this 16-week period, I was home only on weekends. After finishing the medics course (with a final mark of 88) & being appointed a medic (rank of corporal), I was assigned to a reserve medical unit. We were an intermediate unit, more than a battalion aid station but less than a field hospital. We functioned as a unit only during exercises & emergencies. In order to complete our annual stints of reserve duty & get our annual quota of days in, we were assigned to a pool of medics. Every year, we’d get called up, meet all together at some base & then get sent out to various units, wherever they needed a medic. This way, I got to meet lots of different people & see many parts of the country.
I had to get used to dealing with the heartache of leaving DW, and then leaving DW and Yohanan, and then leaving DW and Yohanan and Naor, for 3-4 weeks a year, sometimes over various Jewish holydays. (And of course DW had to get used to both seeing me disappear for 3-4 weeks and seeing an empty place at the table and sleeping in an empty bed and having to deal with the horrible fear that the knock at the door might be a soldier from the IDF Adjutant’s Office saying, “Please come Mrs. X, your husband is in Rambam Hospital in Haifa.")
The first time that I went off to reserve duty after Yohanan had learned to walk and he was old enough to notice my absence, DW said that he’d waddle into the various rooms of the flat, look inside and ask, “Abba?” I remember the first time I went off to reserve duty after he joined us, I had this terrible, gnawing fear that he wouldn’t remember me when I came home. I remember how overjoyed I was when I came home and he looked up at me & his face lit up and he got all excited & started waving his arms.
I’ve been on the Egyptian border (1993), on the Lebanese border (1992), in Lebanon (in 1994, by about 300 yards) and in the Jordan Valley, including on the northern end of the Dead Sea (lots of times).
In the late summer of 1993, I was at a little base on the Egyptian border, between Sinai & the Negev, way out in the middle of nowhere. One night, I drew the all night/wee hour patrol shift. Myself & three other guys were about 10 miles north of the base, on motorized patrol. We stopped for a break. Our Bedouin tracker made coffee on his little portable gas burner & we turned off the lights on the jeep to enjoy the stillness. We were at least 10 miles from the nearest electric light & it was a perfectly clear night. I looked up and just stared in awe at the heavens. I have never, either before or since, seen such a display of stars, the sky was carpeted with them! I could see the Milky Way. I saw falling stars. It was awesome (and humbling). I said the blessing: “Praised are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the Universe, who makes the wonders of creation.” I stood there, just gaping upward, for about 10 minutes until it was time to resume patrolling.
As we were riding around that night I remembered how back in Pittsburgh when my brother (3.5 years younger than me) & I were little kids, we would be afraid to go all the way downstairs first thing in the morning (we were always up before our parents) lest the monsters down there get us. So we’d go as far as the landing on the stairs & then call for Shane. Shane was our big German Shepherd (whom we adored). We’d call for Shane & wait there on the landing until he came to the foot of the stairs, all bleary-eyed & wagging his tail. Then we knew that it was safe to go downstairs (and get cereal & put on the cartoons) because good, good Shane had chased the monsters away. And I thought about this and I looked around and saw that I was armed to the teeth (M-16 with 5 clips, a heavy swivel-mounted machine gun & a box of grenades) on guard against monsters who were all too real. All I could do was remember that time when the only monsters were the ones in two little boys’ collective imagination & who could be chased away by the family dog.
I was at that base that year for Tisha B’Av. The co was cool & assigned me guard the gate (I could sit in the shade), as opposed to riding around on patrol. I had spoken to a rav at our shul in Pisgat Zeev (where we were living at the time) & he told me that since I was on guard duty, I could drink water in very small, spaced, sips in the afternoon if I felt myself getting un-alert. I did & that’s the only time since I became frum that I’ve not scrupulously kept a fast day. Only one other soldier there besides me was fasting. IDF regulations stipulate that soldiers who fast are entitled to a hot meal when the fast is out. So the cook, who was remarkably good-natured about it, fired up the grills & made this other soldier and I schnitzels, & french fries to go along with our bread, salads, fruit & juice.
I still have a small callous just on the palm of my right hand just below the babyfinger from when I spent 2 hours sweeping & mopping the synagogue at the base where I was at in 1995. I was at that base (next to Beit El) for part of Hanukkah. Some Chabadniks brought sufganiyot to the base. When one of them asked me if I would like one, I said yes but that there was one thing that I’d like even more. He asked what that was & I said, “You walking this patrol with me.”
In 1995, I was part of the medical crew that escorted the first contingent of Palestinian Authority policemen from Jericho to Kalkilya. I hope this great experiment yet works out and that my kids will never have to face off against the kids of the policemen I helped escort. Something that weighs very much on my mind is the knowledge that in 10 years, DW and I will have to drive Yohanan off to an IDF induction center as he begins 3 years’ compulsory service, and that we’ll have to repeat the process for Naor a few years later. Our babies!
I remember seeing the Hale-Bopp comet through the big binoculars in the guard tower at the base I was in the Jordan Valley in the early spring of 1997. I remember, that year, marveling at the incredible flora (lush grass, flowers of every color) and fauna (storks, foxes, ducks, mice, hawks, and gazelles) in the glorious springtime in that part of the Jordan Valley. I remember how glad I felt & how cool it was that one of the Jordanians in the base opposite ours could fall asleep at his post because he knew that we were no threat, thanks to the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan. (However, as I observed through the binoculars, the officer who discovered him asleep was not very amused. Ouchhh!!!)
I remember, in February 2003, being in the base guard tower (in the Jordan Valley) on a Friday evening, as Shabbat was coming in, in the midst of a howling rainstorm, as the tower windows (shatterproof) were rattling in the wind, and singing Lecha Dodi (and even dancing a little) and feeling as close to Hashem on a Shabbat as I’ve ever felt.
Hashem dusted Yerushalayim with a nice snowstorm that year. All I got where I was rain, mud, more rain, a lot more mud, etc. DW took Da Boychiks up to Mt. Scopus (where she works) to play in the fluffy white stuff. Yohanan found a plastic bag & said, “Ima, let’s fill this with snow and take it home and put it in the freezer for Abba when he comes home from the army.” So when I got home there was a nice blob of ice waiting for me in the freezer.
That year, when I wasn’t in the guard tower, I was a male escort. Really. I was seconded (as the Brits say) to a unit in the Jordan Valley. We rode shotgun (actually, we had M-16’s) on all the buses, vans etc. that were used to take kids from the various communities in the Jordan Valley to and from the various regional schools. It was nice riding around in a proper vehicle (i.e. one with working shock absorbers), sit in an upholstered & cushioned seat (instead of in a backside-jarring and kidney-rattling jeep) and chat with the kids. One of the very little ones came on the bus crying about something & I got him to stop crying and actually smile by walking my fingers ("Here comes the Spider!") and getting him to squash the spider (by slapping at it; I do this with Naor & he loves it).
My company commander is/was a real sweetheart, a very nice guy, who looked out for us, went to bat for us, etc. One year, we were all waiting around, on the day we had to report, to receive our assignments. One of the guys sauntered in very late. We kidded him that the company commander would be upset (he wasn’t). The guy, a big burly fellow, said, “Ah, I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of only two things in this world, G-d and my wife.” One of us (not me!) asked him, “So who are you afraid of more?” He replied, “I can see that you’re still single.”
Twice, in 1992 and in 1995, I was on reserve duty during elections here. I voted at a mobile IDF voting booth (all ballots here in Israel are paper ballots).
In August 2000, we had a 1.5-weeklong exercise at a huge base down in the Negev. We were in the classrooms at the base for a week and then packed up & shipped out for a 3-day field exercise way out in the desert. It was HOT, it was dusty (and we had huge trucks, halftracks, jeeps & such driving all over the place, kicking up LOTS of dust) and I was forced to go 66 hours (by my calculation) without showering. Sanitary facilities consisted of a convenient gully or ravine. I got home (just before 01:00) as dirty as I’ve ever been and as trans-exhausted as I was (I got about 6 hours sleep during this 66-hour period), I went straight into a shower. I had to shower myself twice; one wash just didn’t do the job. I slept for 14 hours afterwards.
I ate army food that ranged from lousy to mediocre to pretty good (but was almost uniformly bland; I started taking a bottle of Tabasco sauce along with me). In 1997, the year I saw the Hale-Bopp comet, I was in for Purim. One of the guys I was with was a chef at some trendy restaurant in Tel Aviv. He whipped up a seudat Purim for us that Achashveirosh himself would’ve envied! The rav of the Jordan Valley Brigade had a kosher klaf sent to every base in his area. One of the other reservist medics there with me (an oleh from Belgium) knew how to read it, so I corrected him as he read. We announced kriat Megillah on the base loudspeakers. What was kinda depressing was that nobody came. He read the Megilla to me for both maariv & shacharit. I always bake my own hamantaschen & was depressed that year because I couldn’t & DW had to resort to…to…store-bought hamantaschen!
I slept in sleeping bags a) on a stretcher under the stars, b) in tents, c) in barracks, d) in underground bunkers, and e) in the back of an open halftrack. I froze (wore 3 pairs of socks), and melted in 100-degree heat (at a base at the northwestern tip of the Dead Sea; after the first day, you stopped noticing the sulphury smell). I learned the joys of getting a full aerobic workout simply by walking (thanks to the enormous quantities of thick, viscous mud stuck to my boots). I cultivated my love of Turkish coffee in the IDF and learned from my Bedouin & Druze comrades the importance of buying the good stuff.
Around Tu B’Shvat 2000, I was seconded to the famous Nahal Haredi unit in the Jordan Valley. Seeing that great experiment up close & personal was completely fascinating. It was nice having regular minyanim & a rav on the base over Shabbat. On Leil Tu B’Shvat itself, I was out on motorized patrol. I looked up and admired a beautiful thin sliver of a crescent moon. Then I thought, waitaminute. It’s Tu B’Shvat, i.e. the middle of the (lunar) month. Why isn’t the moon full? I thought about it & puzzled over it and began to wonder if I had fallen asleep & was dreaming or if I had taken a knock on the head. I was waiting for the Twilight Zone music to start playing. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I finally asked the (religious) officer to have a look at the moon and he said, “Oh yeah, it’s a beautiful eclipse isn’t it?!” I felt sooo much better!
I was called up for Pesah in 1995 but (thank Hashem) got out for Leil Seder (Shabbat that year). I was at (what was then) a little roadblock just north of the northern Yerushalayim neighborhood of Ramot, between it and Kever Shmuel. During the week before Pesah, people from Ramot, Givat Zeev & Givon Hahadasha kept bringing us their hametz. We got cakes, cookies, donuts, you-name-it. The tiny (it was then) base next to the roadblock was a few paces outside the Jerusalem eruv. On the Thursday afternoon before Pesah’s last day Yom Tov, I called a friend of mine (now the orthodox Rav in Auckland, New Zealand) & asked him whether I could walk to a shul in Ramot for Yom Tov & Shabbat davening & what I could carry (or not). He said that he wanted to check with one of his rabbanim. He called me back about an hour before candle-lighting & said that his Rav said I could walk to a Ramot shul but that I should bring with me only my M-16 & the clips (the weapon & ammo of a soldier on active service are not muktze) and nothing else. He then told me that his Rav lived in Ramot & had told him to give me his address & tell me that I was cordially invited for any & all of the Yom Tov/Shabbat meals I could get away from the base for. What a mensch! I was able to go to him for Thursday night & Friday night dinner.
The Sefardic-style IDF haroset (with pureed dates as one of the ingredients) we had at the base came in little foil packets, was thick like paste & was laced with so much ginger that it might’ve passed for maror (but mixed with a lot of cottage cheese & spread on matza it was OK for breakfast).
At large bases, the kashrut supervision was generally very good. The fellow in charge of the kitchen would usually be dati. However, I was at 2 tiny bases/posts, in Lebanon in 1992 over Pesah 1995 (see above). At the little base in Lebanon (just over the border), when I got there, the fellow in charge of the kitchen (he doubled as the cook) was on leave & everybody was, more or less, fending/cooking for themselves. I didn’t eat anything cooked until he came back & took charge. We rekashered some stuff. At the tiny post next to Ramot, we got a hot lunch brought to us from a nearby (big) base every day (in little foil trays, like TV dinners). They were OK. At the post, we had a huge insulated cooler that we used as a fridge. For breakfast & dinner we were on our own. I was the only frum guy there & saw that I couldn’t rely on the kashrut of the few pots & pans there (the other guys were mixing fleishig & milchig) so aside from the hot lunch we got, I ate only cold food for breakfast & dinner. I got so sick of that that I made soup for myself in our coffeepot (a good medic will always improvise!).
Shabbat was OK. We could usually scrape up a minyan on Friday evenings but except for the time I was with the Nahal Haredi, we never had one for shacharit or minha. I had no qualms about going out on motorized patrol on Shabbat because I knew what we were doing was pikuach nefesh shel mamash.
In 2003 (my last real stint of reserve duty; an exercise we were supposed to have last year was cancelled), as we were riding around with schoolkids, we’d stop to pick up/let off kids at the yishuv of Rotem (it might’ve been Hemdat) way up the Jordan Valley. The yishuv is perched high atop the escarpment overlooking the Valley (the road to it is off the Alon Road, not the Jordan Valley road) & had a spectacular view. As you enter the small yishiv, there’s a sign in Hebrew & English citing Calev from Bamidbar 13:30, “We should go up at once and possess it for we are well able to do so.” I thought what a pity it was that this sentiment is not more widely shared; it might go a long way towards resolving some of our problems.
I remember all the books I read. One of the first things I would do when I got a call-up order for any given year was to get a sefer kodesh & a book to take with me. I read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, a history of the Boer War (DW is originally from Cape Town), a history of Carthage, the Fellowship of the Ring in Hebrew, a history of the NILI spies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nili), Bram Stoker’s Dracula (which I re-read; I reread it every few years; Stephen King wishes he could write half as scary a book!), etc.
So, after getting my discharge certificate at my depot earlier this year, I walked over to the base shul. I need to say minha because it was late enough in the day that if I left right away & drove home, it would be too late when I got home. But before I said the actual minha prayers, I walked up to the aron kodesh & took hold of the parochet and kissed it and held it to my face and I cried as I thanked Hashem for affording me the privilege of serving in the IDF, of doing ordinary things and having ordinary experiences, of being just one of the guys. I thanked Him that I had never had to aim a weapon at anyone, much less fire one (except on the shooting range). I thanked Him that I never had to put an IV into anyone except in exercises and that I never had to anything more serious than take out splinters, give out Tylenol & refer soldiers to this or that doctor. I thanked Him for keeping me & my family safe & whole. I thanked Him that I was fortunate enough to have never done anything as an Israeli soldier that I should be ashamed of or regret. After thanking Him a good bit & having a good cry doing so (I was so overcome by emotion), I stepped back & actually said minha. I also said the prayers for the welfare & well-being of my fellow soldiers (http://www.ou.org/yerushalayim/prayers2.htm), the memorial prayer for the soldiers who fell (http://www.ou.org/resources/kelmalei.htm) and the prayer for my country (http://www.ou.org/resources/prayerisrael.jpg). And then I walked out of the base, got into the Mazda & came home, ending a journey that began back in February 1991. I don’t regret any of it.
I do get to keep my uniform, boots, etc. I want to wear them to my 25th high school reunion in Pittsburgh next year just for the heck of it & to show everyone that I made good & and that I’m very proud of having served in the IDF.
In 1999, I mentioned that I voted at a mobile IDF voting booth. Of course, that was the year that Ehud Barak & the Labor Party clobberred Bibi & the Likud. A few days after the election was the State Cup (soccer) championship game between Betar Yerushalayim and Hapoel Tel Aviv. Betar is very much a Likud team; Hapoel Tel Aviv is identified with Labor. I (the American oleh) got a fascinating lesson is Israeli sociology/anthropology not by watching the game but by watching my fellow (native Israeli) reservists watch the game. The Likudniks desperately wanted Betar to win & thus salvage their badly wounded pride. The Labor supporters (who were still jubilant over the election results & were on a heckuva roll) just wanted Hapoel Tel Aviv to finish Betar off and put the icing on the cake. When Hapoel won, the Labor supporters were beyond elated & the Likudniks were beyond depressed.
Twice when I was in the Jordan Valley, I was at a base overlooking the Adam bridge (used only for commercial trucks; tourists use other crossngs). This is where the Jordan River stopped flowing when we crossed into Eretz Yisrael under Yehoshua (although we crossed much further south, near Jericho); see Yehoshua 3:16. I asked the Jordan Valley Brigade rav if I could make the bracha “Praised are You Hashem our G-d, King of the Universe, Who Performed a Miracle for us in This Place.” He said yes but I would have go down to the river bank itself & not just look at it from a distance. I never got down there & thus never got a chance to make that bracha.
Every time I did reserve duty, I would get asked what I called “the question” by my fellow reservists: “You’re not Russian...You’re not Ethiopian. What are you doing here?” I’d explain to them why I made aliyah & that I didn’t want to live anywhere else. They were always appreciative & respectful in response.
I’m a bechor. Since I became frum, I have never fasted on erev Pesah, I always go to a siyum. In 1995, when I got called up a few days before Pesah (I got the call-up order a few months in advance), I wondered what to do, especially if I didn’t get out for Leil Seder (I did). I asked my friend (the one who is now the orthodox rav in Auckland, New Zealand) what I could do, since I assumed that there wouldn’t be a siyum where I was. He looked up in Igrot Moshe where Rav Feinstein z"l said that a bechor could learn a book of Nach, with the commentaries of the rishonim (i.e. noy an anthologized commentary), finish the book on erev Pesah mrning & thereby become discharged from his obligation to fast. So I found an edition of Yehoshua with the Mikraot Gedolot (Rashi, Radak, Ralbag, Metzudat David/Zion, etc.) but in the square Hebrew script, not Rashi script. I bought it & started learning it before I went it & finished the last perek on the morning of erev Pesah. I figured that I couldn’t stop with Yehoshua & so I went on to Shoftim. In the past 10 years, I have since learned Shmuel I & II, Melachim I & II, Divrei Yamim I & II, Ezra & Nehemiah. I’m now making my way slowly through Daniel. (I read on the bus to work, on the bus home from work, while I was in for reserve duty, etc.)
I’ve come to the conclusion that sleeping bags are unBiblical. IDF soldiers (reservists, conscripts, everybody) sleep in sleeping bags, which we (usually) place either on foam mattresses on metal bedframes or on cots. As I burrowed into my sleeping bag as far as I could one year, it hit me what a lonely thing a sleeping bag is. It is designed to keep in & retain one’s bodily warmth. But it does a pale job compared to curling up next to one’s spouse. I thought about Kohelet 4:11, “Again, if two lie together, then they have warmth; but how can one be warm alone?” There is no (spiritual) warmth in sleeping bags; they are lonely things & are unBiblical!
Being woken up by an excited 3-year-old enthusiastically jumping on you, shouting, “Abba’s home from the army!”, is one of life’s real pleasures.
