"I feel more like a gardener than a paratrooper"

And ain’t that the truth.  A buddy of mine from South Africa made that observant claim as we worked all day along the base’s fence, picking weeds and turning the ground into a sort of mini-deforestation plot.  Not exactly the most exciting work.

To start off, this was my first week as a tzanchan, a paratrooper.  For the next eight months or so, instead of going north as I’ve done for the past three months, I will be traveling south to Beersheva.  There, many soldiers from Tzanchanim, Nahal and other units gather in the last major city before the Negev Desert to be transported by bus to their respective training bases.  The place was a zoo, with hundreds of soldiers finding their units, being shepherded to buses, and then waiting in a queue to leave.  After a short wait, we drove the half hour or so to בא''ח צנחנים  Bach Tzanchanim, the training base.  Don’t bother looking for it or asking me where it is; it’s, rightly so, nestled amongst a landscape of hills, away from the civilian world.  The view certainly has changed since Mikveh.

I’ll speak more about daily life and the base in my next post.  This was an interesting week, one that stands by itself.  It was the first week of training for the IDF’s March draft.  The purpose of this week was to host gibbushim for Special Forces.  Each unit (Tzanchanim, Nahal, Golani, Givati, Totchanim, Sheriyon, etc.) has sayerot, or elite units.  The gibbush is an intense, multi-day tryout to be accepted into the sayeret.  Tzanchanim’s sayerot are Palsar (Reconnaisance), Pulchan (Engineering and Demolitions), and you can get into two very elite and secretive units from Tzanchanim’s sayeret gibbush: Maglan or Duvdevan.  For more information on these units, click here.

I elected not to do the gibbush.  Why?  For a number of reasons.  First, I would not do sayeret anyway; it requires a three year commitment, which is no issue for Israelis who serve three years anyway, but my service expires in a year from June and, as I stand right now, I do not intend to sign on for more time.  With that, the sole purpose of going through the hellish (and I do mean hellish) three-day physical battle would be for the experience, to challenge myself and test my limits.  Of course, I’ve heard of and now seen soldiers getting injured, limping, not being able to move, whole body parts scraped and bruised because of the gibbush.  It is a completely voluntary tryout.  About 450 to 500 people went the first day and between 170 and 180 soldiers survived.  In all, do I wish I did it, even despite the certain physical and mental exhaustion and pain I was sure to experience, without any goal at the end of it?  Yes.  Of course I say that now, when the option of another gibbush is out of the question.  But, if you’re reading this and are facing a gibbush sayeret and are not sure whether or not to do it, I say go for it.  What do you have to lose?  The angel on one shoulder told me to listen to my own advice of saying “why not?” when faced with a decision.  The devil on my other shoulder reminded me that this gibbush, much more so than the one to get into Tzanchanim, would require incredible mental fortitude and as I would just do the gibbush for the purpose of finishing it, it is likely that I would, in the word’s of my father, “crap out” before the end.  What a sinister thing to do, to plant an idea like that in my head and psyche myself out for something I’ve planned on doing for a few weeks.  Alas, such is life—live and learn!

With a lot of soldiers with nothing to do, the base quickly set us to doing work.  The gibbush started on Tuesday morning.  Those who were not in it (either from not starting or not completing), spent the entirety of the next three days doing maintenance work around the compound.  I fixed distance signs on the firing ranges, sorted all manners trash, chopped weeds and other brush, dug a cable trench, swept sidewalks, collected empty ammo caches, and other intensive work that truly put my Latin Honors education to its most rigorous test yet. 

Even as I bent down to swing my military shovel into the soft, damp earth, uprooting the two hundred and forty-eighth weed, I tried to envision myself as one of the early Jewish, Zionist settlers, building this country literally from the ground up; turning a sparsely populated and barren land into a fruitful place flowing with milk and honey.  I was a father, toiling amidst the difficult terrain of Gush Etzion, battling earthen mounds filled with rocks and boulders, intense winters and Arab bandits, willing and working for a future for my family.  I was a son, learning the principles of Judaism and the meaning of this land for my people, going outside to play during a break and wanting to get my hands dirty, to feel the ground, hold a fistful in my hand and let it sprinkle through my fingertips, creating a waterfall of holy soil, beginning to understand my people’s connection with this country.  I was a brother, defending this land that my family had worked for generations, feeling it incumbent upon myself to beat my sword into a plowshare, setting aside the arms of iron and steel for the arms of wood and human muscle and sinew, working by the sweat of my brow and not by the blood of my enemy.  I was….simply an untrained paratrooper killing time.

So the introduction to Tzanchanim was a little less than glorious.  Well, actually the first day was exciting.  In the afternoon, all of the newly drafted soldiers met in the base’s basketball court and we heard from a number of the bigwigs on base.  The Hebrew was fast, inarticulate aaaaaaand put me to sleep.  But then we watched an awesome four-minute video about all the cool things Tzanchanim does during its training, so that made it all worthwhile, haha!

The next day we were again ushered into the basketball court, but this time to be “processed.”  We met with a Mishakit Tash, all of the lone soldiers received informational pamphlets about our rights and benefits (of course mine was in Hebrew, gonna have to get an English one this week), received vouchers for running shoes, met briefly with the base’s doctor, and received military tzit-tzit if we wanted.  What’s tzit-tzit?  It’s a four cornered garment or shirt with strings hanging off each corner.  It is a commandment to wear and if you see a Jew with two or four random strings hanging out of his suit jacket, then you know he’s wearing it to fulfill a commandment.  I am yet to wear one for personal reasons which I do not care to get into right now, but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised (and certainly a bit shocked) by how many kippahs I see on base.  At Mikveh, I’d say about 5% of the soldiers wore kippahs and about twice that many prayed.  At this Tzanchanim base, probably 25% wear kippahs and 30%-35% pray.  My numbers might be off a bit, but it certainly seems like a lot of people, including commanders, don a kippah and daven (Yiddish for ‘pray’).

Back home, even though I lived in a town and surrounding area that was heavily populated by Jews, it was certainly an identity crisis (although that might be too strong of a word) to be a Jew in a non-Jewish world.  Then when I started to become more observant, I felt like “that” Jew amongst my Jewish friends at school.  Then at Mikveh, I was the “religious one” in a Jewish army; an odd-thing I thought, to still feel self-conscious about wanting to wear a kippah and pray even in a Jewish army for the State of Israel.  Now, I certainly feel more at ease, finding myself among other kippah-wearing, schul-going (synagogue) Yids (again Yiddish, for Jew).  Can you tell by now that I’m Ashkenazi?

One thing I’ve noticed a lot about myself in the military is that I dream every night.  Well, after doing some research, I learned that everyone dreams every night.  But I also always seem to remember my dreams in the morning.  At no other point in my life have I experienced this.  I’m actually excited at times to go to sleep to see what I will dream about.  I know dreams are your mind’s way of helping sort through issues in your life.  But why do I suddenly always remember them—vividly?  I just spent the last ten minutes poring through endless pages on the best scholarly source I ever used during my four years at college: Google.  Want to know my expert conclusion?  If you read it enough times, the word ‘dream’ starts to look really weird.

But back to other, more serious, matters.  Tomorrow I go to check out a kibbutz with the intent to move in next weekend.  I’ll certainly miss Tel Aviv and David, Amy and the kids.  But I’ve wanted to have my own space for a while now.  I’ll talk more about the kibbutz once I’ve been there and made a decision.

Fifty rockets were fired from Gaza over the past week.  That’s more than a quarter that was fired all of last year.  In addition, a bomb exploded near the Central Bus Station in Jerusalem, wounding many and killing one British tourist.  If you read about these events in the news, you will undoubtedly see Beersheva be mentioned, as that is a favorite location for the militant jack@$$es that run the Gaza Strip like to fire their rockets: straight at the largest population center within range.  But please don’t worry about me, I’m safe on base.  Instead, worry (and/or pray) for the residents of Beeersheva, Ashdod, Ashkelon and Jerusalem.  They are the ones who had school canceled on Thursday and Friday for fear of continued rocket attacks.  They’re the ones who have thirty seconds to run to a bomb shelter.  They are the civilians whose lives are trivialized by the international community when the UN continues to lambaste Israel when it decides to defend its right to live in peace and security.  Did anyone even notice that Syrian leader Assad killed fifty-five of his own people over the past two days when they held peaceful anti-government demonstrations?  Such is the place we live and the times we live in.

Despite the terrorist attacks and the fear, Israel held the first Jerusalem marathon yesterday, with over 10,000 runners competing.  Go Israel.

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