Hello Midrasim, Goodbye Sandals

Enlisting in a modern army like the IDF does not come cheap. There are laundry lists of extra items--from Under-Armour apparel to the latest in Swiss army knife kits-- that sly salesmen and sensible veterans insist are critical for the modern soldier. I am a few months away from deciding what if any of these pricey items I will purchase. But I made my first investment shortly after returning to Israel from Beijing in late July. Today they arrived, a personalized pair of orthotics (midrasim), custom molded to the shape of my feet by a friendly American-Israeli physical therapist named Lisa who doubles as a fellow garin member's distant relative.

Wearing orthotics , Lisa informed me, is a lot like glasses. After my feet get used to them, I will never have a reason to remove them and worsen the posture and leg strength I have developed through wearing them. I was never a big fan of being chained to a pair of specs. But my sore knees need whatever help they can get. So if that means adding a slice of plastic and foam to my feet for the rest of my life, so be it.

The real challenge came later when I discovered that the orthotic do not fit into my pair of Columbia hiking sandals. These sandals have accompanied me on my travels over the last five years, trekking across the temples of Tibet, earthquake ravaged western China, and more ruins and vistas in Ethiopia and the Middle East than I can remember. They have also been my constant companions in more relaxed settings, serving as my go to shoes in Washington and on kibbutz.



Suddenly I was asked to place them aside. To reject two of the most steadfast companions one could ever ask for. They had never failed me. I had failed them.

China Journalizing from a Pillbox in Jabel Juhar

I arrived on kibbutz in early August having dodged a friend's request to stay in Jerusalem and help him open a new chapter in China's relations with Israel and the Jewish world. Sacrifice is part of the reason I will be joining the army come November so I never wavered in my decision to turn him down. My dodge was not, however, a total rejection. From my small room in the Valley of Bet She'an, I have remained a partner in a variety of projects to advance Sino-Israeli ties.

My initial activity was on behalf of the Israel Asia Center, the new advocacy headquarter for all things Asia in Israel (see here for prior note on the Center). The I/A Center had an ambitious plan to throw a grand coming out party in October. Speakers, locations, investors and even a catchy theme--celebrating China and Israel's 60 anniversaries--were all on the drawing board when the event came apart in late August due to differences of opinion amongst the founders of the center. Fortunately, before the sky fell in, I had yet to start working on the written program I was asked to create. So I escaped from the failed initiative with some lessons learned at little cost.

When the event came apart, one of the founders of the I/A Center quickly asked me to assist him in establishing the world's first international journal on the relationship between Asia and the Middle East. In order to give the journal a fighting chance of making it big, it is necessary to persuade a top-flight publishing house like Routledge to get behind the project. And in order to persuade them, a journal needs a killer proposal. Which is how I find myself writing a ten page proposal for an internationally refereed journal with the working title of The Inter Disciplinary Journal of Asian-Middle Eastern Studies, (nicely summarized as JAMES). With the help of friends in Washington and Nanjing--and with one very late night--the proposal was completed a full week before my deadline of Rosh Hashana.

What happens next is up to the publisher. I am confident they will embrace the project, though even if they do not I have already gained a great deal through conversations I had while writing the proposal with critical thinkers on the Sino-Middle East nexus like Ben Simpfendorfer, John Calabrese, John Chen and Aurora Carlson.

I am less sure how my involvement in the journal or other China related initiatives will evolve as my enlistment date approaches. A close friend captured the implausibility of my situation when he wrote "I can't wait to witness you managing the publication of an academic journal from a pillbox in Jabel Juhar....The fact that I can't picture it right now only increases the likelihood that it will happen, given that we are talking about you-know-who! ;)"

Mimi, Michael and the Heroes Among Us

Every one of the sixteen members of my garin has his or her own reason for deciding to move to Israel and join the army. On Wednesday night, September 9, one of the girls shared her reason. Mimi spoke briefly and did not tell many stories. Instead she invited us to watch A Hero in Heaven, a film made about Michael Levin, an American-born volunteer in the Israeli army who was killed three years ago in the fighting in Lebanon at age 22.

Michael was back in the United States, visiting his family in Philadelphia and his friends at Camp Ramah, when the Second Lebanon War began in the summer of 2006. Although his officers insisted he need not return, Michael immediately flew back to Israel to rejoin join his unit shortly before they entered Lebanon. Mimi had only met Michael once or twice during the latter's visit to Camp Ramah. But after Michael was killed in the war, the entire camp mourned his loss. The following summer, Mimi volunteered to organize a day of remembrance for Michael. As she spoke to his closest friends and family, the stories she heard of Michael's courage and love of Israel struck a chord. Back home in Virgina, Mimi informed her parents she wanted to follow in Michael's footsteps. A year later she has made aliyah and is preparing for the army on Tirat Zvi, the same kibbutz Michael called home when he joined the army four years ago.

Michael Levin's death in the Second Lebanon War left a deep impression in the Jewish world. And so while I had never seen the film made about his life, I was familiar with his story. I was especially excited to see the biopic because it reminded me of the exhibit I helped organized in the spring of 2007 about Yotam Gilboa, another young man who was killed defending Israel (see here for my previous note on Yotam). In designing our exhibit to commemorate Yotam, my friends and I sought to convey both our pain and the wonderfully complex friend we lost in the Lebanon War. As I sat down to watch A Hero in Heaven, I was curious to see how the film conveyed the life and loss of Michael Levin.

My conclusion? Disappointing. Not because the movie detracts in any way from my admiration for Michael. God forbid. I was disappointed because, in my opinion, the movie reduces a brave young man who loved Israel into just that and no more. Michael, mutual friends have told me, was as complicated and human as any of us. He often played the joker, and his every decision was not made on the high altar of Zionist reasoning. Michael, in short, was a regular guy. And that is what makes his story so powerful and his example so heroic and inspiring.

After the film I looked around our mo'adon, taking in the many different ages and backgrounds of my garin, and I was inspired to be living together with sixteen Michael. My point is not that any of us should be compared to Michael based purely on our shared decision to move to Israel and join the army. I see sixteen Michaels because, like him, each member of my garin is an individual, as complex as anything. And yet like Michael, we are committed to an uncertain future rife with challenge and sacrifice.

Perhaps my disappointment with the film is in part due to the fact that I am not the intended audience. Towards the end of the film, Michael's mother says that the best way young Jews can honor her son is to embrace their Jewish identity and remain attached to Israel. I could not agree more. But I also cannot say that her words have much of an effect on me, or at least nowhere near the impact they hopefully have on disaffected, young Jewish-American audiences. The reality is that my fellow garin members and I are in a unique place. We have made a decision at odds with most of our peers in America. Watching A Hero in Heaven probably would have been a very different experience two months ago then it is today, as I sit in the very room Michael once occupied, preparing as he did four short years ago to defend the state of Israel.

Postscript

I found Mimi's choice to share the film and her personal story fascinating and inspiring. Hopefully, her courageous example will lead others to open up about their own unique reasons for coming to live and defend Israel.

Meeting the Meat: Tiv Factory Tour

On Wednesday September 9 I finally came face to face with my supposed nemesis on kibbutz, the Tiv meat-packing plant. Established by the same German pioneers who founded Tirat Zvi in 1937, the meat plant is today the largest such factory in Israel. Because I usually criticize the meat industry when asked to explain why I am a vegetarian, most people had laughed and cringed when I told them Tirat Zvi would be my home for the next year. Enjoy the sausages, folks laughed, imagining me spending long afternoons working on a hot dog assembly line.

The reality is that no one in my garin will be working in the meat plant anytime soon. On September 9 we did, however, stand by the hot dog assembly line, part of a two hour tour of the facility. Tiv is not a slaughterhouse, only a packing plant, so the closest we got to the raw product was a vat of pink, toothpaste meat sauce. The smell from the vat was powerful. But the best part was watching them pour the pink goo into a machine that converted the meat into six inch tubes that were then sliced into supermarket salami.



I have been meaning to write a concise statement explaining my reasons for refraining from eating meat and fish. Perhaps this will be the space to do so. So check back later, when time and patience lead me to post said explanation in this column.

All in the Family for a Chayal Boded on Kibbutz

My parents visited kibbutz this past Shabbat, the fifth of September. We ate by my other parents, the kibbutz couple that have "adopted" me as part of a local effort to make my garin members and I feel more at home. Most folks do not sit down with two sets of parents unless a wedding is involved. But as everyone in Israel likes to tell me, when you are a chayal boded, a lone soldier (actually, the term literally translate to lonely soldier!), well, you're special.

Lone Soldiers have a long tradition in the Israeli military. In the modern army, all soldiers whose immediate family are overseas are designated as a chayal boded, bringing a host of minor benefits like increased pay, several weeks off a year to visit family overseas, and the suspicion of your Israeli army peers that you must be plum crazy to have walked away from the good life for the danger and drudgery of army service. What most folks forget is that before the state of Israel was established in 1948, most members of the Haganah, the precursor of the modern Israeli army, were essentially Lone Soldiers. Having left his comfortable life and loving family for an uncertain future in British Mandate Palestine, the typical Haganah member lived on kibbutz while struggling to master the language and customs of his new home. Sounds almost familiar, no?

My own status as a chayal boded is somewhat unusual as my parents spend several months a year living in Israel. Since they are not citizens, their extended visits do not impact my formal classification as a chayal boded. Yet I cannot quite claim to feel the pangs of loneliness from my family when my mother and father are hanging out in an elegant apartment in Jerusalem. Considering that I have lived on my own since age fourteen, when I was first separated from my family in order to attend a Jewish high school in New York, I was probably never going to be a typical chayal boded to begin with. Though perhaps my bodedness, my loneliness factor, refers to my siblings and close friends, most of whom remain firmly planted in the exile, far from the small strip of land I now call home.

Postscript

My host family on kibbutz, Ruti and Moshe, are a lovely couple, parents to four children, the youngest of whom is my age though he now lives in the Golan Heights. Their eldest daughter is a Tirat Zvi local as well, and her three-now four young children ensure that I have oodles of little 'uns in my family tree. After just two weeks with the family, I already have two more little nephews to get to know following the birth of baby boys in successive weeks to two of my 'siblings.' I am not sure if I can claim credit for the flood of familial mazal, we may have to see what lies in store in week number three!

Sharing a shabbat table with my respective parents made for an interesting culture clash. Outside of the obvious difficulty in communicating (both my mothers are multilingual but neither of my fathers are quite expert in the other's native tongue), there was the more subtle different expectation that my parents have for me versus what my adoptive parents have for their twenty-four year old son. I do not mean to suggest, in any way, that my parents expectations for me are better or worse than what may be expected of a young man on kibbutz. Just different. Just one observation, at any rate, from observing city mice and country mice come together over a shabbat table in eastern Israel.

Shmuel b'Shabbat

Shmuel b'Shabbat started the night I arrived on kibbutz. Each member of my garin--the sixteen folks I will be living with on kibbutz as we prepare to enlist in the Israeli army-- was introducing themselves, sharing their name, age and other background bits with the four folks that serve as our staff.

There is Dalia, the overall coordinator whose no-nonsense organizational chops cannot conceal how much she cares for all of us.

Dyna, the grandma with the soul of a child and a scattered story-telling style to rival my own.

Chovav, our ever smiling master of logistics whose four rowdy boys are never far from sight.

And finally, there is Michal, our twenty-one year old soldier-lady (chayelet), tasked with teaching Hebrew and otherwise ensuring that the sixteen members of my garin are ready to enlist come November.


To return to the first night of kibbutz and the bit about my name. So the girl to my left introduces herself as Yael, three months removed from high school in San Diego and ready to defend the state her mother once called home.

And then it was my turn.

Everyone's eyes turn to me. Save for the staff, everyone in the room already knows me from a past seminar or the day they arrived at the airport. Nevertheless, this is the first time I will formally introduce myself to the entire group. And while I have my age and hometown down pat, I do not want to introduce myself as Sammy and forfeit the opportunity to be known by my proper Hebrew name, Shmuel, now that I live in Israel. Sammy is what I have always been called by family and friends. But in the Middle East, Sami is also a popular Arab name. More to the point, I have waited twenty-four years to hear others call me Shmuel, the name my parents gave me when I was eight days old. Now I am in Israel, Hebrew is no longer confined to the synagogue, and my name can become what it was meant to be.

"My name is Shmuel," I said, "and yet also is Sammy."

Confusion.

"That is, both mean something and yet..."

Stop, I told myself, and keep things simple.

"That is, my name is Sammy during the week and Shmuel on Shabbat (Shmuel b'Shabbat)."

Everyone laughed that first time.

And the next time, when we were at attention at Gadna--a five day military preparation program--and I introduced myself to a senior officer as Shmuel b'Shabbat.

And the most recent time, when the guys in my group reviewed what had happened at a simulated gibush (the intensive day/week long tests that screen for admittance into elite units) that the kibbutz organized for us the night of Thursday September 3. We met with the gibush organizers shortly before shabbat. And so to the laughter of my peers, I introduced myself to the two men that had had run us ragged over the previous night as "Shmuel b'od sha'ah v'chetzi" (Shmuel in an hour and a half.) Even Avi, the tougher of the two gibush organizers, cracked a smile.

Silly name games aside, my first shabbat (August 7-8) at Tirat Zvi confirmed my decision to prepare for the army by living together on kibbutz with fifteen of my peers. The benefit of living with a group of similarly motivated volunteers was something I expected. But the strong individuality within our garin comes as a pleasant surprise. There are people I can and do turn to for different needs. Plus, there are opinions I will and do hear that force me to defend and reconsider my own views. And then there are the domesticated peacocks, a story for another time.

Painting the Night White: My First Gibush

"Aliyah!" shouts our commander. "Krav!" I cry back, heaving a 250-pound stretcher into the air with the help of the nine other guys in my garin. "Aliyah!" "Krav!" we shout back. Aliyah! Krav! So ended my first gibush, with my garin voicing our determination to the early morning to "rise to the fight" and overcome whatever challenges await us in the army.

Gibush translates to crystallization, though in Israeli society the term refers to an ideal sense of cohesion viewed as critical to the effectiveness of individuals and groups. The top units in the Israeli army strive for this sense of cohesion and hence gibush has also become the name of the field trials, generally two to five days of intensive physical and mental tests, that decide who is accepted into elite combat units.

On Thursday night, September 3, our staff on kibbutz ran a simulated gibush for the ten guys in my garin. The gibush lasted through the night and hence was titled לילה לבן, or white night. The catchy nickname had an extra dose of irony since all ten guys started the night in spotless white t-shirts. Nine hours later, everyone finished, covered in mud, sweat and cuts and bruises in places we did not know even existed.

The night began simply enough with a few sprints and an awkward exercise that split us into two lines and had us crawling over each other to reach the end of a rock and thorn covered path. Everyone was winded and a little sore when our commander informed us that wild pigs had been spotted near the kibbutz, ambushes had been set in the field, and so we would have to postpone the gibush for another night. Some guys were relieved. Most were convinced that the news was a hoax. Sure enough, when we were twenty yards from our dorm, another commander came out of nowhere and yelled at us to grab our sleeping bags and sprint back to the entrance to the kibbutz! As Tsvi, our West Point trained garin member, later said, the "all night smoker" had only just begun!

For the next six hours we ran and crawled through a thorny and stony field some three miles west of Tirat Zvi. The endless sprints were only interrupted by exhausting periods in matzav sh'tayim (second position), with everyone planted on their fists in push-up position. "!התחיל פאמפינג" (start push-ups!) our commander would shout, "!על אגרופים," and with gritted teeth twenty arms would slowly rise and fall in the dark of the night. "?מי רוצה בירה ,מי רוצה לנוח" our commander repeatedly asked, imploring us to take a break, grab a beer-in a word, quit and end the pain. Twice during the night we were in fact given, what our commander termed, a chance to rest. Ordered not to speak, we were instructed to form a tight circle and sit down on the knees of the person behind us. Not very relaxing, though there was something to wrapping my arms and resting my neck on the sweaty guy in front of me. A moment of cohesion, if nothing else.

Throughout the night, seemingly at random, the commanders would record the top three finishers in a sprint or crawl. I usually finished among the top three in the runs, though my true skill lay in crawling. One guy was even calling me Sammy the Seal by the end of the night. I really cannot quite explain why I move so fast over rocks and thorns, shifting and shuffling my arms and legs over the uneven ground. My only trick is to imagine myself sliding down a waterside, a mental skill that became second nature as the night wore on.
The running and crawling was quickly forgotten when, after a brief rest, we loaded up a stretcher [alunka] with 250 pounds of sandbags and jerrycans. As the early morning call to prayer rang out from a distant mosque, we set off on a brutal six km jog back to kibbutz. Without speaking we quickly paired up and every fifteen seconds, the four guys shouldering the stretcher would rotate out. Thirty seconds under the stretcher quickly became a crushing responsibility. Our commanders made the jog even harder by relentlessly playing with our heads, turning us around in circles and making us climb an especially steep hill several times. We finally reached Tirat Zvi an hour and a half later, only to turn back at the gate and run with the stretcher for another thirty minutes.

And suddenly, we were back in front of our dorm, the sun was up, and with a final shout of Aliyah! Krav! the gibush was over.

Later in the day, after a morning of showers and sleep, we met with the gibush commanders to learn about our performance. After introducing themselves as two local fathers (Amir and Avi) who run actual gibushim for Nachal during their milium (military reserve duty), the commanders applauded all of us on our effort and shared the following advice for future gibushim.

The goal of every gibush, Amir explained, is to quickly push everyone to physical exhaustion so the commanders can then see what the candidates are made of and how they remain focused under constant pressure. The key is to give one-hundred percent all the time, not simply when a commander is looking (especially since at real gibushim, there is always a commander watching!). Amir gave an example from our gibush, when we repeatedly ran an exercise where the commanders kept track of the four people who outran everyone else to a distant stretcher. Two of the strongest guys in our garin finished among the top four every other time. Only I finished amongst the top four every time (actually, every time but the first time when I misunderstood the Hebrew instructions). Amir pointed out that while the two guys were showing some smarts in conserving their strength, that is not what the commanders are looking for. They want a candidate who lays it all on the line. Always.

Amir also used me as an example to make the point that gibush commanders are looking for candidates who להגדיל ראש, who have a 'heads up' attitude, acting above and beyond what is expected based on what they observe taking place. The example came from the first hour of the gibush, when the commander had ordered us to stand on the road and then immediately find a nearby hiding place when any cars passed by. My hiding spot--under a nearby truck--was not what earned the commander's admiration! Instead it was my instinctive move to signal to the other guys that the coast was clear and it was safe to return to the road.

Avi added two final tips for gibushim. Most people, he explained, give up during a gibush out of mental rather than physical exhaustion. They quit at night, during the brief rest periods when their peers will not see them and, more importantly, when
despair overwhelms their determination to continue. While Avi had no surefire suggestion to avoid sharing this fate, Amir recalled that during the most difficult stretches of his army service, he would look at the moon and, like King David in Tehillim, draw strength from its unwavering position in the heavens. Avi's second tip is that in order to maintain mental strength, it is important not to have expectations in the midst of the gibush. One of the purposes of a gibush is to rob candidates of their control, to make them feel unbalanced and stressed. The best response to this pressure is to focus on the present challenge. When ordered to run, just run. When crawling, focus on crawling. A gibush is not the time for daydreams, even if the pain and the darkness began to resemble something out of your worst nightmares.



The commanders did not tell us who would have been selected for an elite unit based on our one night gibush. I came away from the night, however, most impressed with one garin member in particular. Not because of his speed in the sprints or his strength with push-ups. Dan is my man of the match because of his perseverance. He has no interest in elite units and so had little reason to push himself to the breaking point in our simulated gibush. Nevertheless, Dan stayed strong through the night, refusing to quit during one brutal stretch when the commander kept us in matzav shtayim for some twenty minutes and with his eyes on Dan, urged someone, anyone, to quit.

The commanders repeated reference to my good behavior validated my confidence that I am capable of anything the army throws at me. Others may be more physically or linguistically suited for the army. But if the good feeling I had during the final stretcher hike is any indication, there is a mentality--perhaps 'energy level' is the more apt term--I have honed over years of weddings, chagigot and extra-curricular activities that translates well into the team challenge and physical endurance required in the army. Quite a few members of my garin have voiced the opinion that my inquiring mind and comic personality will be my downfall, preventing me from succeeding in the army. They fail to appreciate that, like most folks, I can and do bring a very different mindset depending on the challenge. As Whitman put it, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

Torah b'Avodah? Work on Kibbutz

"Must be tough working in the field in that summer heat," a friend told a few weeks into my arrival at Kibbutz Tirat Zvi. "Though I cannot imagine you, a vegetarian, enjoy working inside the kibbutz's huge refrigerated meat-packing factory."

As tough or unenjoyable as it may be to work in the fields or the factory assembly line, neither is really my concern. The unglamorous reality is that in my first month on kibbutz, I have only had a single opportunity to labor like a kibbutznik of old. And after three hours of folding cardboard boxes in the kibbutz date factory, I was more than ready to hang up my kova tembel.



Oddly enough, the kova tembel, the stereotypical Israeli kibbutz hat, is said to come from the hats worn by the German Templers, a Christian movement active in settling Palestine in the end of the 19th century. As Arabs could not pronounce the letter P, the German hats became known as the Tembel hats, or kova tembel!



Part of the reason I have not bee asked to get my hands dirty is that Tirat Zvi, like most kibbutzim in Israel, no longer resembles the socialist utopias of the past. When Tirat Zvi was established in 1937 as the first member of the Religious Kibbutz Movement, the German and Polish founders envisioned a community that would simultaneously combine and reject the passivity of the European Orthodox Jewish world they had grown up in and the radical secular socialism of the majority of the Zionist pioneers in Palestine. Seventy-two years later, Tirat Zvi still proudly identities as a religous Zionist community. But as of Tuesday September 1, kibbutz members no longer pool their salaries (the new system is akin to the revenue sharing practiced in the NFL), one more step in the gradual privatization of the community.

As the kibbutz privatizes, many of the customs associated with kibbutz life have disappeared (needless to say, kids no longer live separate from their parents as in bygone days). So while a minority of the residents still cultivate Tirat Zvi's date trees and wheat fields, many have outside jobs. Even in the fields and in the famous meat-packing plant, kibbutz members tend to have senior positions, leaving Thai workers or city folk from nearby Bet She'an the labor intensive positions.

The other reason my fellow garin members and I have not been recruited for kibbutz work is that our days are (somewhat) filled with other pursuits. Although my roommate insists that our life on kibbutz resembles lazy days at summer camp, the daily schedule includes four hours of ulpan and frequent activities in the afternoon. Life is not too strenuous, though I find myself quite busy with the extra hours of workouts and various China-related projects I have accepted.

Tzav Rishon into the New Month of September

The end of August closed a chapter in my life. Visiting friends left the country with the end of summer vacation, friends from university tied the knot in distant Long Island, and I remained on my new kibbutz home in Israel. August also signaled the end of my lifelong status as a civilian. Although I do not enlist until November, and will not obtain the free bus rides and other perks of a soldier until late September, on September 1 I signed a raft of forms committing myself to serve in the Israeli army.

The forms were a small part of my tzav rishon, the ‘first orders’ Israeli youth undergo in high school to commence the path to enlistment. Tzav rishon is when future soldiers take the battery of physical and intellectual tests that determine their ka’ba, the all important composite grade that determines what one can do in the military. Ka’ba grades runs from 41 to 56 and to be considered for pilot or officers school, one must score over 52. Rumor has it that a university degree is an automatic five to ten point bonus on the ka’ba, though since the score is never released I may never know what effect if any my BA and nearly completed MA degrees have on my score.

Two other key grades are also decided at tzav rishon. The first is based on a brief Hebrew test administered to Israelis and foreigners alike. For Israelis, the tricky part of the Hebrew exam is when they are asked to explain a series of obscure or advanced terms beyond the ken of the average high school student (like the Hebrew equivalent of ‘soporific’ and other words most of us first encountered in the SATs!). For folks like myself, the Hebrew test is far more significant. A low score dooms one to spend anywhere from three weeks to three months at army ulpan (Hebrew class) in the dreaded confines of Mikve Alon. While I was also asked some tricky terminology, most of my test simply checked my oral ability by asking me to relate a story, talk about my family, etc.

The most famous grade decided at tzav rishon is the profile, the number that indicates whether I have a clean bill of health to proceed to the more physically demanding ranks of the army. Infantry soldiers must earn an 82 or 97, the top two scores on the physical. Tankers can get by with the next score down, a 73. And anyone receiving below a 21 is excused from military service altogether. A high score does not mean one is in great health. As I was to discover after my tzav rishon, a 97 does not even mean one has no physical ailments. All it really means is that the army does not know of any serious problems soldiers may have. In other words, a 97 means that as far as the army is concerned, they can do with me what they want.

Why the profile system assigns such arbitrary numbers as 97, 82 and 21 is the subject of endless rumor. The most reliable story I have heard is that the numbers are based on the old British army. Circumcision, so the story says, took three points off a British soldier’s physical profile. In other words, every Jew who suited up with the British to police Mandate Palestine or to fight the Nazi enemy could at best score a 97. When these veterans established the Israel Defense Force in 1948, 97 remained the top score. Whether this was done in jest or to honor those who served in the Mandate Police force and the Jewish Bridge remains lost in the shroud of time. In any case, the story reminds me of the policy in my high school psychology class that the best grade one could receive was a 97. According to our illustrious instructor, 100 is for God, 99 for the teacher, and 98 was set aside to remind us we could always improve!

My tzav rishon took place at the lis’chat gius [draft office] in Tiberias. After a quick registration, my name was called and I sat down across from a young chayalet [female soldier] to review my basic information and test my oral Hebrew. Our Hebrew teacher and all purpose in-house chayelet, Michal, had prepped us back on kibbutz by sharing a brief list of tricky Hebrew words that tend to appear on the real test. Sure enough, an obscure term for ‘urbanization’ popped up in one of the sentences I was asked to read and explain. When my examiner asked me to provide a real-life example of the term, I shot back with a brief history of the last two decades of Chinese socio-political reform!

Later in the oral exam, I was asked to describe the plot of a book or movie. Back in kibbutz the members of my garin had been informed that we would be asked to share a story about a challenging experience and so everyone had duly prepped some choice anecdotes. My plan was to describe my teddy-bear distributing escapades in earthquake ravaged western China (see here). But when my examiner insisted I stick to her book or movie script, I turned to my tried and true fave and regaled the chayelet with Jim Sheridan’s wonderful 1993 film In the Name of the Father. A true life tale about a young man falsely accused of terrorism and wrongfully incarcerated for decades may not have been the most politic of stories considering the uncomfortable parallels to Israel. But my description impressed the examiner enough that she promised to see the movie by the time I was done. That, and the fact I told the whole tale in Hebrew with nary a stutter, made the loss of my teddy-bear story all worth it.

The toughest part of my tzav rishon came after the Hebrew test when a curt chayelet took my height and weight, handed me a small plastic container and ordered me to come back in a few minutes with a urine sample. Easier said than done. A regrettable visit to the bathroom on my way out of the Hebrew exam left me running on empty. The only solution: knock back four liters of water in five minutes. The deluge helped but what finally pushed me over the edge was the maddening cry of ‘יעלה, צריך פיפי!’ from the nearby Israelis.

I spent the rest of the day making frequent trips to the bathroom. Another fellow in my garin nearly suffered an even more debilitating after effect of our water guzzling when he received an 82 rather than a 97 on his physical profile because he weighed too much. “How much is too much?” my friend asked the Russian doctor charged with determining our profile numbers. “Viz your height, iz two kilos over limit,” answered in the doctor in the nonexistent accent I have assigned him. Two kilos translates to just four pounds. So my friend did what any reasonably motivated individual would do in this harrowing situation. He made a half dozen emergency trips to the restroom, set aside his wallet and phone and timidly returned to the doctor’s scale five minutes later. The needle wavered and then came down exactly two kilos lower than before. 97, baby!

Before I received my own profile, I would have to undergo what my Israeli cousin had warned me was the most terrifying part of the tzav rishon: when a nineteen year old chayelet snaps on a plastic glove, has you drop trousers and roughly checks to see all is where it should be downstairs. I suffered the double misfortune of having a taciturn Russian MD do the job instead of the promised female soldier. And although it was mercifully short, it was not pleasant.

“I no give you profile,” the Russian doctor told me moments later. “You eyes need checkup. Go do checkup.” Just my luck, I could only grumble, to be assigned a random eye exam just as I was on the verge of discovering my profile. My luck took another nosedive when at the glasses store five blocks away, a lady took a quick glance at my eyes and said I likely needed specs. My patience was thinning so I said as I simply as I could that no, she is absolutely wrong. A top optometrist, I continued, had affirmed that I have above average vision (20/15) shortly before my aliyah this summer. After acing the eye chart (made up of numbers rather than the alphabet like in the States), the shopkeeper apologized. I ran back to the draft office, handed in my eye exam, and got the good news that I am 97.

When I was not randomly selected for a two-hour interview, my tzav rishon came to a close with a brief IQ test. While a few of the girls in my garin got ambushed into taking the two hour Hebrew version IQ test, my own test was a tidy thirty minute affair in English. At least, it was supposed to be in English. The reality is that unlike the Hebrew test, which includes sections on math and reading comprehension, the supposedly equivalent English test consists of two straightforward sections testing our spatial reasoning with rotating figures (ala, A is to B as C is to what). Since taking the IQ test in English has no negative effect on the all important ka’ba, any foreign would be well advised to do so. Then again, unless a guy has his heart set on pilot or officer school, the IQ test is rarely critical to cracking even the most elite units in the army.



Six hours after arriving at the lis’chat gius in Tiberias, I was homeward bound. While the day had its moments, the main lesson I took away is that it was largely unnecessary to prepare for the day. The tzav rishon, in short, was a breeze on an otherwise steamy day on the coast of Lake Kinneret.