Getting Off for Pesach

In the Passover story, the Children of Israel do not embrace freedom until they have demonstrated their faith in G-d by dabbing sheep's blood upon the doors of their homes and set out on a perilous journey against the chariots of Pharaoh's army. My exodus from the army, to the tune of the week long break I received for the duration of the Passover holiday, came with a similar background. The day before the holiday, several hours before our officer informed of us our long anticipated vacation, I was stretched out on the ground, bleeding profusely with my arms stretched out to the heavens. The bleeding came in the course of a drill allowing our unit's medics to practice on the rest of the guys. While my history with needles is not pretty, I figured 'tis better to grin and bear it now than go out to battle someday in the future with medics lacking basic vein poking skills.

Following the blood came the perilous journey. And while the details are classified, it was a masa that put our values on our back not unlike the sun-baked matza the Children of Israel carried out of Egypt.

The masa ended near midnight. Minutes later our commander informed us that our regilah, a once every four months week long vacation, would commence on the morrow and last through the end of Pesach. Freedom had arrived.

Bonus
My entire immediate family--parents, siblings, significant others--arrived in Jerusalem for the holiday so the holiday, and my week long vacation, had a very traditional vibe. Except for the family yoga sessions, led by my younger brother, far fitter and in tune with the Asian practice than yours truly. Another less than traditional practice found me in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, shopping for a crucifix. Clad in my kippa, I fended off the shopkeepers offers of a star of David and insisted, in my all but forgotten Arabic, that I was looking for the cross of Jesus, preferably in silver and Roman Catholic! After a long search I was all but ready to purchase a crown of thorns instead when a suitable cross caught my eye and my search was finished. Further adventures would follow with this cross, obtained on behalf of an overseas friend, providing me with a necessary distraction from the training that awaits after this blessed week long break.

The Seder Message: Passover Greetings!

With regards to each and everyone for a meaningful Pesach, let me draw attention to one verse without which no knowledge of the Exodus story can do without.

And Moshe said to G-d, Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should take the Children of Israel out of Egypt?
For I shall be with you, G-d replied, and this will be the sign that I have sent you: when you take the people out of Egypt, you will serve G-d on this very mountain.
Exodus 3:11-12.

Moshe and G-d have a conversation that Esther and Mordechai echo thousands of years later. Hopefully it is a conversation, a message, that still echoes in our own consciousness. For decisive action comes when man acts in partnership with G-d, within the fabric of divine service outlined in the Torah we received at Sinai centuries ago.

With all the details in the Exodus story, it is critical to remember the macro lessons, the basic ideas with which the Seder has the potential to empower and inspire our faith and people for the year ahead.

The Bubble Draws Ever Closer

Nothing save for my own idleness was to blame for any failures to update this blog or keep in touch with friends during three months of basic training. The Nachal Brigade's limited funds, so the rumors say, meant I was out of the army every other shabbat since keeping soldiers on base for the weekend comes with a cost. Every day closed with sha'pash (an acronym known everywhere except Nachal as sha'tash), the hour of free time Israeli soldiers receive before lights out. And the thirty-five minutes allocated for our meals was ample, if illicit, time for sneaking a phone call in the relative privacy of the bathroom.

My current environment is a very different story. Daily grace periods have disappeared with a dozen minutes to eat and five minutes to change and get to asleep having replaced the luxuries of basic. And cellphone use is simply prohibited. The one exception is Friday afternoons, when ten or so minutes are provided before shabbat to place a quick call to home. The first time I was informed about this pre-Shabbat amnesty, it came with a crazy twist: Cellphone time would be preceded by ten minutes of shower time. Considering that since basic training we do not shower during the week and that there are only six shower stalls on our small base, I will leave you to imagine what took place as some seventy young guys tried to wash themselves in the allotted time. Thank G-d there were no cameras around as the most uncensored of spring break videos would have a hard time competing with what took place!

Even my weekends away from the military, infrequent as they now are thanks to a more intensive schedule and the deep purse strings of the IAF, are another story. During basic training seven hours of sleep were provided the night before a shabbat at home. Thursday nights now tend to be all-nighters (Lilah Yavan), though the more intensive weekly schedule means I am worn out either way come the weekend. In Nachal a shabbat at home came with a Sunday morning return time and a rule that soldiers had to arrive home by noon on Friday. Now the deadline to be back on base is Saturday night, cutting into the late night hours I had once reserved for writing to this here blog. And noon on Friday tends to be when we leave our current base, meaning my free weekends mostly consist of a shabbat of rest. Observing shabbat, it hardly need be said, makes plugging away online or by cellphone impossible.

The restrictions of the past few weeks have not come without benefits. With fewer distractions my unit has grown closer. On the personal front, the desires I had throughout basic to remain in touch with friends and the world at large have been dulled. While losing such desires comes with a cost, the current reality makes it far easier to focus on the task at hand. In basic I found it nearly impossible to go to sleep without checking my email via my cellphone. Life is simpler now, the benefit, I suppose, of living life on the edge.

BONUS
When I was in university, a glorious day arrived every spring when one bright morning every co-ed on campus replaced the frumpy sweatshirt/sweatpants she had worn during the winter months for barely-there warm weather fashion. Girls dressed in tank-tops and short skirts was the sign spring had arrived, not to mention that I was no longer in the all-male school environment of my youth!

To my surprise, the IDF has an equivalent moment. It does not involve members of the fairer sex since my past has returned with a vengeance and there is nary a female for miles on my current base. Instead groundhog day in the army came with an intense heat wave that saw everyone replace warm bedtime outfits with birthday suits. While seemingly everyone now sleeps nude to stave off the intense heat, the other big benefit is the reduced turnover time necessary to throw on uniforms during middle of the night emergency wake-ups!.

An unfortunate aside is that after an early March heat wave, the desert nights suddenly got cold again. I had made the mistake of leaving my warm weather clothes at home, an error I now know never to make even in the supposed hottest days of the coming summer.

Advice from the Boss: Mishmat & Aggressiviut

Mishmat and aggressiviut [discipline and aggressiveness], my commander informed me, are my two flaws, two characteristics upon which I must improve. The advice came at the close of a one-on-one meeting with my commanding officer, the twenty-three year old young man most responsible for my wellbeing over the next three years. While keeping his respect is reason enough to take his advice to heart, I also do so because his perception and judgment are wise beyond his years.

Blame Minnesota Nice for my lack of aggression. In my childhood home, politeness is valued over belligerence, with car accidents at times resulting from overly defensive driving! Combat, my commanders never tire of preaching, is no place for politeness. Be an arse, they insist, asking us to adopt the arrogant assertiveness of the Israeli archetype rarely utilized as a role model.

My lack of mishmat, of discipline, is another issue entirely. An undisciplined soldier is like an ugly model, lacking the most basic tools of the trade. My problem is not that I do not appreciate the importance of discipline issues, like ensuring all my buttons are fastened or that my clothes are just right when reporting for a pre-dawn guard duty shift. The problem is that, despite four months of basic, I still do not quite feel like I am a soldier. My day to day perception of where I am remains 'surreal Zionist summer camp' rather than 'top secret commando training facility.' Perhaps my inability to adopt the soldier mentality lies in my preconceived notion of what a military man is like, a mold I subconsciously resist adopting. Instead I keep a foot outside the box, maintaining an observer mentality that filters soldier life through a bifurcated cynical/idealist lens. I suppose the grind that awaits will leave me no choice but to jump in with both feet, and I reckon when that happens the change that friends have told me to expect as a soldier will really begin to take place. Until it does though, I intend to button down on my loose pockets and missing aggression. No reason not to channel my inner arse until the soldier of tomorrow arrives to take his place.

Twas All About the Ma'agal

My first week in my new, pretty much classified, environment was designed around the concept of a strange army acronym known as KaDaR, klitah derech regilah [absorption through the feet]. I think its a roundabout way of saying "endless crawling and related physical punishment in the desert hillsides.' But my Hebrew is shaky so don't quote me.

While I am not allowed to divulge our less than exciting drills, I can share the odder moments. The best two came when two songs were introduced into our training regimen. When the first, the theme song from Rocky, came over our officer's loudspeaker, everyone had to sprint to the top of the nearest hill and, atop the summit, cry out "ADRIAN!" The second song is a Passover classic, Echad Mi Yodea 'Who Knows One.' Each number would send us off on another mad dash, sometimes a sprint, other times crawling, rolling or the like. The holiday--and a rumored week long vacation--could not have seemed any farther away!

Missing Out on Guarding Hebron

My unit has spent two shabbatot on guard duty in Hebron in the last month. I have yet to join them, avoiding both weekends for two very different yet equally disingenuous incidents. While blurring the truth is nothing to be proud of, I would be less than honest if I failed to admit that standing guard in Hebron is something I do not mind missing. Guard duty, of course, is something most any soldier is happy to miss. It is the Hebron location, colored by my past visits to the town, that left me content with having painlessly avoided (for now, anyways!) returning to the town as a soldier in the IDF.

I first visited Hebron for shabbat when I was nineteen and spending the year learning Torah at a yeshiva in Israel. The weekend was Parshat Chayei Sarah, the shabbat every year when huge crowds of religious Jews visit to commemorate the weekly Torah portion's discussion of Abraham purchasing a burial plot in Hebron for his wife Sarah. Later I visited again, to appreciate a shabbat in the Jewish community minus the huge crowds and security of Chayei Sarah weekend.

I came away from both visits awed and yet deeply saddened. On the one hand it is deeply moving to pray by the Me'arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs [lit. Cave of the Double Tombs] where the forerunners of my faith are traditionally buried. I found everything about the thousand year old stone sanctuary that covers the underground burial caves fascinating. The art and cultural details of the sanctuary intrigued me just as much as the political divide that splits the space between Jewish and Muslim worshipers. The mystery of the caves, especially the locked metal grate in the Muslim prayer area that leads down to the caves themselves, awakens my inner Indiana Jones and rekindles pride in the thousand-plus year history of my people. Hebron, with all its ancient and modern ties to Jewish heritage, is a space I cannot imagine not playing a role in the Jewish state I visualize in this land.

And then there was, and remains, the deep sadness. On both visits to the ancient town, residents of the Jewish community brought me into their homes (in both Tel Rumeida and the Avraham Avinu neighborhood) and enlivened my shabbat with rich melodies and warm conversation. Beneath the shabbat civility, however, I encountered a grim hatred for their neighbors. It was a hate that suffused and contaminated the peaceful Shabbat atmosphere. It was a hate with cause, for the stones and bullets that have claimed the lives of Hebron residents have come from their neighbors. My sadness lies in part with the reality that those stones and bullets have not only moved in one direction (in recent years, Arab residents have in fact been the target for most of the stones and bullets fired in Hebron). My sadness grows and swells regardless of who is to blame, and what outrage predates the latest indignation. The grim reality is that otherwise good and sweet people are, by their decision to live in such a dangerous and fundamentalist space, creating an atmosphere--and raising families!--of toxic pride and vengeful hate. If the trade-off for retaining Hebron is losing our people and values to such hate and pride, then it simply is not worth it.

An army is no place to enforce political loyalties and so I would serve wherever I was asked, defending any settlement with the same commitment I would defend my parent's home in Jerusalem. Nevertheless when a double dose of disingenuouty prevents me from six hour guard duty shifts in benighted Hebron, I will readily accept my fate.

BONUS
There were costs to my missing out on Hebron. I was held back from the second assignment as a punishment, the penalty keeping me on base for shabbat so I could stew on my failings while my peers were on the front lines. Missing the first assignment meant I failed to see how the guys in my platoon would react to being in a largely Arab setting for the first time. Leading up to the weekend deployment, many of the guys had noted that they had never crossed the 1967 border, never spent any time in any Arab areas outside Israel proper. Coming from a very different background I did not quite share this fear of the unknown. But I was deeply curious how boys raised far from the seething heart of Israel would react to this first encounter with the Other. Though I missed this first encounter, I have no doubt many more await in the months and years of service to come.

Testing Out of Basic

Basic training, and any course of any length in the IDF, concludes with comprehensive exams testing soldiers grasp of the material. Known as the Bochan 05 (basic training is certified as level 05, with more challenging training courses like special forces identified with higher numbers), the exam stamps a soldier as a trained infantry fighter, a locham in the IDF, with a basic level of combat fitness and a practical grasp of weapon systems, first aid, and how to respond to a NBC (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) crisis.

Passing, rather than receiving a glossy grade, is what counts. This comes as a relief to yours truly because few of the past month's courses have left a deep imprint in my memory. I mostly know what to do when it comes to the hands-on material. But all the Hebrew teaching has left my mind a tad waterlogged so that the minutiae of responding to a nerve attack or operating an old-school military radio set is lost on me. And don't get me started on the tragicomic written test: Save for the queries on Israeli military history, I mostly guessed my way through the multiple choice questions. My test grades, in short, are nothing to write home about.

While my grades on the Bochan 05 were not very pretty, I passed the collection of written and hands-on tests with flying colors. The same could not be said about the Bochan Maslul, the IDF obstacle course that I had yet to complete in the required time when the week began. Twice in the last few weeks my unit had made a go at the course. Both times I was stopped cold by a six foot wall, failing to vault over the stolid barrier as is necessary (as previously noted here). Having failed to crack the required passing time of 10:30 minutes, I knew I had to solve my issues with the wall post-haste.

My commanders were kind enough to supply me with the antidote to my troubles with the wall. Twice over the last week they took me aside and, for over an hour each time, had me practice vaulting over the wall. They fed me advice, shared all the mental tricks they could, and kept me going till I was past collapse, my body like a ragged doll after running and jumping into (few of my practice jumps were successful) the wall dozens of times. The last practice ended without me clearing the wall without help, leaving the question unanswered whether I could tackle the monster the next time I went at the course.

Answered or not, I returned to the course site this week. Helmet secure, gun in place, vest as tight as possible, I told myself the third time would be--had to be--the charm. The course consists of three loops, with the middle section passing through parallel and monkey bars, a rope climb, balance beam, ditches, crawls and more. The very first obstacle is, of course, the wall. And so when I flew over the barrier, clearing the cement bugbear with a good meter to spare, the course was mine. A few stumbles later and I finished in a time of 8:40, only an average time for my unit (three guys in my platoon posted times under 7:30) yet a time that easily passes the requirement.

And so now I am a locham, a fighter, warrior even depending on your choice of translation. My officer told us months ago, on our first week of basic, that training for my unit would only start once we were lohamim (see here). And so now it all begins...

Purim in Green

I went as a soldier for Purim. A popular costume in my neighborhood, considering I spent the holiday on base. Though to be fair, dressing in civilian clothes, and observing Purim on the "outside," would have been far preferable. While the IDF goes to great lengths to respect religious traditions--and while shabbat in the army is rarely a disappointment--holidays in green leave much to be desired. Minor holidays like Purim and Hannukah, lacking any of the restrictions of shabbat or the major holidays (like Pessah or Rosh Hashana), are regular days on base. In other words, the army does not set aside time for a Purim spiel or hamantash baking party. So it is up to religious soldiers to retain the day's spirituality while covering the necessary rituals.

For Purim this means listening to the Megillah, eating a festive meal, charity, and giving another two food items (mish'loah manot). My charity obligation was easy to satisfy en route to base. The Megillah reading was satisfied by rabbis from Habad whom, with the permission of the IDF, had set up a ritual reading station for soldiers at the main transit station in Beersheva. Lunch on base served as both my festive meal and source for mish'loach manot. Following the instructions of an army rabbi, I fulfilled my food giving requirement by giving another guy the plate of food I received at lunch. The halachic logic going that once I receive the food is placed on my plate it becomes my property and hence when I give it to someone else I am truly giving him something of mine rather than simply passing him food owned by the army.

The rest of the day took place nary the sound of a groger or the sight of any costumed Queen Esthers. The one exception came mid-afternoon when a caravan of Habad fellows appeared out of nowhere on my base. As my guys raced in and out of our tent on some aimless task from our commander, the Habad fellows did as well. The difference was they were running through the base placing bags of chocolate and 'Call 1-800-Habad for spiritual help' cards on the beds of every soldier. While I won't be calling the number anytime soon, this year's Purim left me craving some of the holiday's spirituality that I recall from yesteryear.

Is the Army Fun?

Is the army fun?
Question I get asked by friends all the time.

Maybe fun is my friends designated term for inquiring about my well-being. Or maybe they really are curious whether my military experience is full of good times ala summer camp or an all night karaoke parlor in coastal China. Or perhaps the question is their way of expressing the hope that I am still approaching the usual deprivation and all out suckiness of the army with a smile. A smile, of course, because when folks say the challenges in the army are all mental, what they really mean is that they are far easier to overcome if you approach them with a positive spin and twinkle in your eye.

The army is also far easier to tackle if you feel good about the guys by your side. It is hardly a secret that unit cohesion is the sine qua non for a successful military endeavor. Watch or read any military themed work of fiction and the message will be something along the lines of "I do this for the guys by my side." Trust and communication, the basis of any relationship, are also the difference between taking out terrorists in a pre-dawn raid and coming to terms with a friendly-fire tragedy the morning after. In special units like my own, special attention is paid to group cohesion with commanders empowered to kick out soldiers they deem socially delinquent. Feeling upbeat, finishing the course and successfully rubbing out the bad guys, in short, are nearly entirely a reflection of the friendship that exists between the troops.

All of which brings me back to the question friends ask, a question I asked and answered while standing guard in a rainstorm this past Thursday night. The rest of my platoon were off performing a comic skit for the Nachal soldiers we had trained with since early December, a lighthearted way of saying farewell as my unit prepared to depart Nachal with the close of basic training. Someone had to guard our tent while the merrymaking took place. Having not been provided with a role in the skit, I was informed by one of my guys that the least I could do was fill the guard position so one of the folks who had been included in the group activity need not waste his time in the cold. A B.A. in East Asian Studies was hardly necessary to read the casual message my peer(s?) were sending me by failing to include me in the evening's fun and games.

And so I stood all by my lonesome, out in the blistering rain, reflecting on where and why I had failed to bridge the credibility gap with my peers over the course of basic training. Part of me considered reaching back to my experience in university and use my frustration and casual isolation as motivation to work even harder and truly excel in the tests that lay ahead. A wiser voice urged another path, understanding that the path I had chosen in university has a limited lifespan. I also considered that one of my goals in the army was to learn to succeed without succumbing to the isolated workaholic-ism that had governed my school years.

Standing in the cold rain is a good way to come to terms with the obvious. The obvious answer to whether I find the army fun is not yet. Not until I really relate to the guys by my side, not until I see them in a similar light as I would were they twenty of my best buddies from my past will our collective challenges, painful as they may be, pass the fun question with flying colors.