Welcome Home, Welcome Back

Showing my dad, in his office, pictures of jumping
from a plane.

My brother parked the car a few blocks from the school.  It was the end of the day and the neighborhood buzzed with life as parents picked up their children, school buses rumbled around the streets, and crossing guards made sure the little ones made it safely across the road.  My brother, dad and I walked across the parking lot and towards the front door of the school.  Suddenly, I heard a shout and saw my mother running towards me, arms in the air in preparation for a loving embrace, her face happily contorted in a mix of crying and smiling.  I stopped in my tracks and waited for her to reach me.  As we threw our arms around each other, she rocked slightly as she always does when holding one of her children after a long absence.  Her son had finally come home.

My journey home began nearly two days earlier.  I spent my last day in Tel Aviv running around to finish a few loose ends, had a nice lunch with my friend Big Mike after he just got back from the States, and packed my bag to prepare to leave.  Amy, her girls and I had dinner (David was in Europe on business) and around nine that evening, I got in a cab and sped off to Ben Gurion Airport.

I at once wanted the driver to speed up and slow down: speed up because I was excited to come home and slow down because I wanted to cherish each second I have on my time off.  I get in line at the airport to check my ticket and one of the security agents, who checks everyone's luggage, asked the standard questions: did you pack your bag yourself?  Where are you going?  Etc etc.  Did this all in Hebrew.  Point for me.  Oh you're in the army?  Yes, Tzanchanim.  Nice, so was I.  Another point for me?

Time from entering the airport to being in the terminal: thirty minutes.  Thank you Israeli airport security.  America, get your act together.

I slept on the flight to Newark, called my parents with my old American phone when I landed, then went on the second leg of my journey and landed in Chicago.  I had been in contact with my dad and brother about which baggage claim I was at for them to come pick me up.  When they pulled up in the family's minivan, I thought that someone else might be in the car.  But it couldn't be my mother, because she was at school.  I slide open the side door and there's my grandmother waiting for me!  Such a surprise.  (But, more importantly, Grandma, where's the kugel?)

We drove home, and it didn't really feel weird that I was back in Chicago, in December, thirty degrees outside, with my family.  Israel, the IDF, Shchem...everything seemed so far away.  Although I am simply on a break, my life over there seemed to have ended, been cut off, a clean break.  I was free.

Entering my house again for the first time was...I don't know any word to describe it.  It was a combination of at ease and comfortable, as well as it being eery and off-putting.  I walked into my room, forgetting many of the things that line my bookshelves, desk, cabinets, and being pleasantly surprised at being able to discover these things all over again.  I lingered at my books, recounted my Chicago Cubs bobble heads, and laid back on my bed.  Suddenly, I felt ill.  My head began to spin and my two worlds crashed together.  A wave of thoughts and memories from the army came over me, even as I tried to shut them out and focus on being home in my room.  I knew that my month here will be short.  I could see how I can become very comfortable in this easy lifestyle I will lead for the next four weeks.  And then having to return to the army and the difficult life there, it could be easily the most emotional dive I would ever experience.  For longer than a fleeting moment, I wanted to be back in Israel and forego the entire month.

My mom was supposed to come home from school at four.  I thought it would be nice to go surprise her there.  My grandmother had gone home, so the three of us got in the car and drove off.  It turned out that she also surprised me.  I didn't want to go back to Israel for an entire month.

The past two weeks has gone by fast, as was almost expected.  I had big plans to prepare for: a weeklong trip to Los Angeles and then Las Vegas.  I've picked out some new clothes and shoes for the trip over the holidays.  I had some doctors' appointments as well.  Picked up some contacts that are designed to be slept in, which will be better for the shetach (field) than my current contacts that I'm supposed to take out every night.

I've also kept myself busy spending time with old friends.  Most of them have jobs or are in graduate school in the city.  Three good friends from home all live together in a great apartment, have jobs, girlfriends....pretty much a life.  A college roommate now goes to UC Medical school.  Others may be at home in Chicago but have jobs and careers started.  Everyone is moving on with their lives.  It's a great and hard thing to see.  Makes me want to start getting on with my life as well.  But then they ask me about what I'm doing, how I'm doing, and they say it's great and incredible and all that jazz.  My optometrist even mentioned how he wished he had taken a year off after undergrad to see the world or do something different.  It's great and all, but in the midst of my friends' successes and lives, it's hard to not want to start my own.

And then going out at night in the city made me wish I could do that all the time.  We went to bars and clubs, talking to girls, hitting on them, dancing with them, drinking with them.  All of it much easier to do here in Chicago than in Israel with Israeli girls.  How I wish I could do this every weekend!  One Tuesday evening, my hometown friends, my brother and myself met at a bar on the DePaul college campus in the city for a night of trivia.  This sports bar was packed, at first we sat on couches for an hour before a table opened up.  But the pitchers flowed and the atmosphere was alive that it didn't matter where we sat or what was going on.  Halfway through the evening, my brother and I noticed that this bar on that night seemed to have the highest concentration of average to good-looking girls we had ever seen at one location.  Oh how I want to be there and not have to return to winter training in Israel!

That day, my mother, brother and I had met my dad at a downtown restaurant near his office.  He had invited some people he works with to lunch for my homecoming.  It was a classy meal, with bottles of wine, classy appetizers, interesting and accomplished people, and great Italian food.

I also have had the opportunity to meet with some of the rabbis who mentored me over the past couple years and whom I consider close friends.  I met with R. Zev Alter at his new home and we began a multi-hour discussion on whatever comes to mind.  I then went to JET's Monday evening learning and sat with R. Shalom Garfinkle to learn about Chanukah.  The Festival of Lights started a few days ago.  It's been the one holiday, Jewish or American, that I've been home for in more than a year.

I've been welcomed home and welcomed back.  For Jews, our true home is the Land of Israel.  Rabbis Zev and Shalom each gave me a very sincere and warm 'welcome back', but to say 'welcome home' would belie Israel as our true home.  America, Illinois, Chicago: here still feels like home to me.  Perhaps my soul is at peace and feels at home when I am in Israel.  But my house in Chicago still feels like home to me.  My parents live here ('here'! meaning I'm in the states!), my brother is around, my sister is only two time zones away in Los Angeles, and it is a place my friends always come back to for holidays.

Now, to prepare for a trip out west for me and my brother to visit our sister in Los Angeles, then Las Vegas for New Years!!!

I'm comin' home!!!

Tell the world I'm comin' home!

It's my last day in Israel...for now.  One year, one month and five days.  In a few hours I'll be able to wrap my arms around my parents, my brother, iChat with my sister from only two time zones away as opposed to ten, and bundle up because of the cold.

I'm leaving for the airport around nine tonight, and taking off just after midnight.  This time, I won't be jumping out of the plane.

I have not stopped smiling since Monday morning.  I knew I was gonna be leaving the base in Jerusalem to get a ticket in Tel Aviv, but my pure, unbridled excitement started when my commander, before giving me some last few words to send me on my way, asked me where was all my equipment?  Excuse me?  "Daniel, you're done, you're not coming back here."  Within minutes, I had my personal duffel bag, my large army bag, my combat vest and my sleeping bag all set to go.  I was told to have fun, not drink too much in Vegas, and remember to come back....ok, maybe not all of that was true.  Anyway, I said goodbye to my buddies in my unit and got the hell out of there to Tel Aviv.

(New popular song, been in my head since I first heard it months ago, and on repeat since I got my ticket)

I dropped my stuff off at David and Amy's apartment and went to the office to get my ticket.  I gave the cute girl at the desk my military ID and passport, told her my dates, asked her out that night, and waited for her to get back to me.  Ok ok, so I really didn't ask her out, but I should have, I was flying on Cloud 9 all day!  An hour later, she had heard back from the travel agent and told me my flights: leaving at midnight Wednesday evening!  Literally forty minutes into my break, I'm in the air.  I land in Chicago at noon on Thursday; how awesome is that for timing!  And I return on January 5th, again in the morning.  I got really lucky with the airlines: flying El Al to and from Israel, and then American Airlines from Newark to Chicago.  I know a few buddies who had to fly Ukrainian airlines or somethin' and had a layover in Kiev.  The thought makes me shudder.

(Real nice, acoustic song, from a favorite band in high school)

I was back at the apartment having a beer and catching up on the internet when my commander called and said I had to go back to Shchem that night.  Kinda inconvenient, but it actually turned out to be golden.  I needed to return all of my equipment to the army, that's why I was traveling all over Israel loaded down with bags and equipment.  I heard that turning in equipment could be an all day affair.  I got back at night, talked with some friends I hadn't seen in a while and went to sleep.  By 8:30, I had eaten and was dressed for the day.  By 10:30, I was out of there!  Turning in my gun, my Bet uniforms, sleeping bag, vest, magazines, helmet, jacket, kneepads, and everything else took about two hours.  Bada bing bada boom thank you for playing.  (Maybe you prefer 'wham bam thank you ma'am'?)

(My dad will appreciate this song, always the first one to be played on our family road trips.)

I stopped back in my apartment in Jerusalem, packed a few last things, and came back to Tel Aviv.  I was planning on meeting up last night with Big Mike after he got back from the States, but it didn't work out.  No worries, still nice to be with Amy and the girls (David flew to Rome for business) before I leave for home.  Some symmetry there.  And food.  Drinks.  Company.  A ride to the airport.

My last day in Israel.  I've got next to nothing to do today.  Some last few things in the laundry.  Maybe walk around Tel Aviv for a bit.  And goin to the airport at nine tonight!  Haven't stopped smiling.

(I love the piano part, and my brother hates it, which makes this song a classic.  Is this borderline overkill now?)

(I don't care, because we gotta end with a great one!)

(Ok, maybe one more.  Too much of Chicago to pass up.)

Un-Happy Thanksgiving-- Shavuuuz

My place at my family's Thanksgiving dinner table

I'm shavuz.  It's a simple fact.  No other way to call my run of emotions over the past fortnight.  Literally, shavuz means "broken dick" (shavur zayin), but in slang refers to feeling down or depressed.  There have certainly been hard times over the past year, both mentally and physically, but the past two weeks have gotten to me in a new way.  This isn't going to be a very long post...it also might not be the most spirited.  While I'd like to apologize, this is my experience and my feelings during the course of my service.  I'm trying to smile while writing this, but there is only one thing that brings me out of the depths of my mental darkness.  Read to the end.

After returning to Shchem two Sundays ago, my citah and another left for a base in Jerusalem.  Israel's military is organized into three command areas: Northern Command, Central Command and Southern Command.  We arrived at the Central Command base for the sole purpose of doing guard duty.  And that's what we've done for two straight weeks.  That's all we will do for two straight weeks.  We do arbah-shemoneh, four-eight, shifts: four hours guarding, eight hours free.

But the free time is not free.  We have a schedule.  The same one every day.  In fact, I could probably tell you what everyone is doing right now.  Take today for example.  Aside from the fact that I am sitting in David and Amy's apartment writing this post on my yom siddurim, this day would have been no different than any other days.

I woke up at 2:10 to guard from 2:30 to 6:30, in the morning.  Went to sleep for an hour or less until everyone has to stand at 8:00.  We clean our rooms, brush our teeth, shave and shine our boots until 8:20.  Clean our guns until 8:40.  Eat whatever food was scrounged from the cafeteria (there is no breakfast at this base) until 9:00.  Then we have a lesson of guarding the base.  It's the exact same powerpoint we see everyday at 9am.  Depending on the officer giving the lecture, it will end roughly after half an hour.  Then we put on our vests, helmets, guns and kneepads for our commanders to check that we have full ammunition, water and no problems with our equipment.  Then usually we have down time until 12:00 for lunch.  Yesterday, we did yevishim, dry gun drills, like what we would do back in training.  At 11:45, they tell us we have to stand at 3:30 in workout clothes.  The next few hours are to eat, sleep or go guard if it's your shift.  If I guarded at 2:30 that morning, and our rotation is 4-8, that means I guard again at 2:30 in the afternoon.

While I'm spending the next four hours in a guard booth, the rest of the guys will go for a run, do pushups and situps, or some combination.  Actually, we've also done some krav maga workouts.  It's nothing like the intense training that course krava maga puts you through; instead, its some guy who supposedly was in a top-secret unit showing us some moves, how to take someone down quietly, how to operate in a neighborhood, etc.  It's hard to remember everything, but for the time being it's fun and a change.

Dinner is at 6:00.  When I come down from my guard shift at 6:30, I go straight to the cafeteria.  Everyone stands at about 7:15.  We may have a lesson about some equipment or weapon for a bit.  Then we're done at 9:00 to sleep.  Only to start again the next day.

View after the sunrise

The shifts are not always 4-8.  Sometimes you'll get a 4-12 thrown in, so your guard time changes, which means you'll miss some things on some days (like not getting a full few hours to sleep in the afternoon, or not working out).  Some days we do krav maga and a workout.  Last night, for fun, we watched "G.I. Jane."  It was kinda fun to explain things about the movie to the Israelis.  It was also kinda depressing to see, compared to us, how an intense operational unit works.

So, you can see that the eight hours off are not really free time.  What's worse is that when you're done guarding, you become a part of a response unit.  Three soldiers and a commander make up a rapid response team that is supposed to be able to respond to any crisis on the base within minutes.  There would be random times they would shout for our unit to respond, in the middle of the night, as I'm sitting down to dinner, whenever.

You have to constantly be in your uniform, boots on your feet, kneepads on your legs.  Always.  Even if you go to sleep.  When I get down from guarding at 6:30 and go to bed around 9 or 9:30, I sleep with my boots on.  If I happen to wake up when the next group gets done at 10:30, then I can take my boots off.  But usually I'm not waking up until my 2:30 shift.  Which means I'll constantly be in my uniform and boots.

The four hours guarding lend themselves to a lot of time to think.  I think about whether or not I want to become a sniper, what I want to do after the army, what job I want to look for, how I am going to be sure I get my month off to go home, and why I am here.  It's good to think.  I find it refreshing and valuable self-reflection time.  But when a third of my life is spent in this state, it's overkill and has probably done more to get me down than give me a boost for the future.

And then, finally, my commanders.  We're the only ones here from our unit at this base.  We are fighters now, no longer in training.  Yet we often do the miniscule, tedious tasks as if we are still in training.  My commanders, to say the least, are certainly not leaders.  Sure they are my superiors, in rank not age, but they don't command our respect.  They have strips on their arms or bars on their shoulders, and they think they have a world of experience and advise to offer.  I've known the age difference between me and them for months.  But I was really asking myself, "what the hell am I doing here with a Bachelor's Degree and Latin Honors?"

What made these two weeks real rough was a convergence of various different factors and influences.  For one thing, my time on kav is ending.  In about three months I'll be on the Lebanese border, but I had heard from other soldiers that Shchem is really the place where there is a lot of action.  What have I done?  Guard, guard, and more guarding.  At least at the base near Shchem, in the West Bank, it's a different, somewhat dangerous place, which makes life exciting and interesting.  Here at the base in Jerusalem, while there are Arab houses within a stone's throw of my guard positions, it still doesn't feel like an "outpost" or "frontier," as I talked about in my last post.

In addition, this is a jobnik base.  Everyone here has a desk job.  Literally, the thirteen soldiers and three commanders of my unit are the only kravi soldiers on the base.  We are called the "lochem," warriors or fighters.

While there are jobniks on every base, being on a specifically jobnik base gives me a look into the "other half" of the IDF.  Although they make up the overwhelming number of soldiers (I think around 80%), I start to see how truly not everyone can be a fighter.  It's not fair to ask every young man to sign up for kravi.  While there are certainly jobniks with legitimate reasons why they are not fit for kravi (medical, religious, psychological, moral), many are just lazy guys looking to do two to three years and get out.  I feel a big sense of pride with my red beret and my gun, compared to the rest of the base with their easy lives.  They leave for home every day or every weekend.  They arrive at 10 and leave at 5.  My Facebook status last week as I was guarding the main gate in the afternoon: "Ah yes, the jobniks' daily 5pm exercise: the run to catch the bus to go home...go to your families and dinner tables, to your warm showers and clean beds, I shall be here all night, likely not showering, likely not changing out of my uniform, likely not sleeping, guarding you and yours."  Just being around all jobniks made my life seem so much harder.  I wasn't a very happy camper.

Then, last Thursday was Thanksgiving...and I was depressed.  On that day, I wanted out of the base in Jerusalem, out of the army, out of Israel.  I was with all Israelis, not one American, let alone lone soldier, to commiserate with and complain about not being home.  I missed America and my family.  And not one of the soldiers, friends or commanders I was with could understand.  They just can't.  They can't fathom the life that I and other lone soldiers lead.  It was a rough day, a very rough day.

And the past two weeks have been the same, day in day out.

But I've got great news to look forward to!  One week from today, I'M COMING HOME!!!  For an entire month!