High Holidays in the Holy Land

The backdrop to everything I write here is a feeling of excitement throughout Israel.  The words that I type to narrate and explain the past two weeks of my life are meaningless compared to what is currently taking place in this country.  My own attempt to masquerade as an Israeli soldier is put to shame by the reality and truth of what is about to occur: Gilad Shalit, held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip for five years, without a visit from any aid organization, is finally coming home!  Why must I mention the "truth"?  Because of the cost to bring home one Jewish soldier: 1,027 terrorists.  Not soldiers.  Terrorists, a third of whom are serving one or more life sentences.  And this has been the policy of the Israeli government since its independence over sixty years ago; Israel will go to whatever length it needs to bring its soldiers, dead or alive, back home (the only exception is Ron Arad, a pilot shot down in the 1980s, whose whereabouts are unknown).  Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal have made it clear that one Jewish life is worth more than a thousand Palestinians lives.  Gilad will return home and never don the Tzahal uniform ever again.  The Palestinian terrorists will undoubtedly take violent action against Israel.  In no way is this trade "fair" or "just."  But it is the way it is.  It is the policy of Israel, as a Jewish state.  It's a, pardon my language, shitty calculus.  But this is what must be done.  Because we're Jews.

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Last time I wrote an entry, I was on a yom siddurim.  That notwithstanding, I just finished closing twenty-four days on base.  Three straight weekends.  Two high holidays.  It should be twenty-eight days but thankfully Sukkot fell in the middle of this week and they let everyone go home.  No one else in the entire base for all of my training closed as much in one stretch.  Such is the army at times.

The day after the yom siddurim, Jesse, Shmuel and myself met up with my citah at a tiny reserve base in the middle of the West Bank.  We were located just outside Hebron to guard settlements for Rosh Hashanah.  Yes, settlements.  That dark, combative word.  The supposed obstacle to any peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  I was there, front row, between the Jews living their, practicing their faith and celebrating the new year, and the ring of Arab villages around us.

Ok, so it really wasn't as glorified as that may sound.  The first yishuv (settlement) I guarded had literally twenty-five families.  The "town" consisted of a dozen or so houses that would not have looked out of place in any American trailer park.  Each yishuv certainly has a synagogue.  And what surprised me, was that every yishuv I guarded had a very nice park for children.  I've learned that in Jewish law and history, if you are going to build a town, you must build a school.  If not, then the town is forsaken and should be destroyed.  This is the kind of emphasis Judaism places on education.  And for the even younger individuals of the town, they build a beautiful park.

That same night, I also guarded at a second yishuv, this one even smaller with just eleven families.  Eleven!  They barely have enough individuals to make a minyon (quorum) for prayer.  And when the families come to the temple for services, the men are all packing.  They'll have a rifle slung over their shoulder or a pistol under their shirt.  These people live in the reality that what they are doing is dangerous.  It's an incredibly sad thing: to live on land that is yours and yet fear for your life and the life of your family.  The amount of firepower that was in this village surprised me and made me think that the patrols that me, my commander and a few other soldiers were conducting were a frivolous waste of time.  But still, aside from the cold, the boredom, and the desire to be in Jerusalem for Rosh Hashanah, it was fulfilling to be protecting Jews on our land.

The weekend was uneventful and passed quickly enough.  Then we returned to base on Sunday.  Monday, however, was a great day to be a lone soldier; we had a yom kef, a fun day.  We had a similar one a few months ago, but this time it was for all of the lone soldiers in all of Tzahal, as opposed to just an alternative for lone soldiers who had no parents to come to the base for parents day.  This time, there were hundred of soldiers, we were on a beach, I got a couple massages, played some football in the water, ate great food.  It was a great day.

We returned that night and had a physical test: pushups, sit-ups and running two kilometers.  Did the max in both and ran a decent 7:57 2k.  The next day or two was spent cleaning up our living quarters and returning equipment.  Nothing special.  We had an inspection by an officer on base of our rooms and then on Wednesday evening, had a masa, our last one before the final one in a few days.

Here's the email I sent my family from my Blackberry after the masa:

"Its 7 in the morning on thursday.  Yesterday, I had a pretty normal day: a small shooting test, a run through of my ceremony in two weeks, and preparation for a masa, the last one before the masa kumta for the red beret (kumta) of tzanchanim.


The masa started at 730 in the evening...and we just got back a little while ago, at 6.  Count it: 10.5 hours, 48 kilometers.  How long is a marathon in kilometers?  About 42?  Yeah, that's what I thought.


The last 6 was carrying a heavy guy, weight 110kilograms.  Yeah, that's 242 pounds.  We're warriors.


We got back to the plugah and the mem pay (company commander, top dog in the unit) said a few words and then called on me to stand before all 100 or so soldiers for the honor of rallying them up and lifting the stretchers over their heads.


I think we're going to bed in half an hour.


All in a days work!


Love all!


Daniel"


After the masa, we received company gun straps.  It has our logo, gdud number and name, and our draft date.  One of the final pieces to becoming an IDF soldier.

It hurt to walk the next day.  But you recover and staying another weekend for Yom Kippur on base also helps cut down on the amount of walking needed.  This time, just my citah closed for the holiest day in the Jewish year.  It was an easy fast, probably considering how used I am to having an irregular eating schedule from so many days in the shetach.

On Sunday, all three plugahs went to a different training base to get prepared for our upcoming operational deployments.  We had a few hours of lessons and a morning training in the shetach.  Then life sucked for a bit.  While my entire plugah went back to base on Monday evening for a barbecue and sport day on Tuesday and then leaving in the afternoon, me and six others went to jump a fifth time.  Remember how I got split up last month at jump school?  Came back to bite me in the you know what.

We went to Tel Nof on Monday evening and spent the next morning running through training exercises again, things I wouldn't care to do ever again in my life.  Then that afternoon, we set off for the last jump, one that is different than all the others.

This final jump was in a different location.  We weren't to jump on the soft sandy dunes near the Mediterranean; instead, we drove two hours south to the Judean or northern Negev desert.  We had our equipment already prepared in the sack we would dangle from our harness.  We arrived at the base and the first thing I noticed was the wind.  It wasn't just a breeze, it was windy, which makes it much worse when you're in the air.  But nothing to do about it, although one Israeli did ask if we were going to still jump despite the conditions.

On the plane, I was nervous.  I had lost the groove and rhythm of the four previous jumps because now there was a month gap between them and this last one.  The plane also noticeably rocked back and forth as we neared the jump zone.  I was to be the last guy in the first jump group, but then a commander joined the twelve of us and I was pushed to thirteen...but still in the first group.  I did not like this.  I did not want to be about to jump and then the light turn back to red and be pulled in.  But there was nothing for me to do.  I said a quiet prayer and tried not to think about jumping into the blustery wind that filled the cabin.

We all stood up as the plane approached the site.  Commanders checked our equipment, the lights in the cabin went from yellow to red, and the red door light turned on.  Less than a minute.  Then green.  Jump jump jump jump jump...it continued as the guys were sucked out the door.  I stayed as close to the guy in front of me as I could, hoping to just get it over with.  I was still freaking out a bit.  But then I saw the outside and suddenly all of my nerves left me and I was pumped to jump.  And then I'm in the door.  My left leg forward.  My right leg is swinging forward, literally outside the plane, and from the corner of my eye I see the green door light turn back red.  I look forward, pretending not to notice, hoping against hope that the commanders didn't notice and could just let me jump....but no!  My right leg is literally outside the airplane when I feel hands tug me back inside, nearly knocking me off my feet.

Thus I was destined to be first in the next group.  That was ok.  It wasn't ideal--my nerves started to come back--but before I knew it I was back in the door, waiting, and waiting, and waiting, seeing the ground below and the lights in the distance.  But mainly, despite the full moon, from the perspective of the open doorway of a plane, things were black and indistinguishable.  My left hand was outside the plane, rubbing against the cold metal and my right gripped my equipment bag.  The light turned green and I was ready to jump.  But nothing.  Literally three or four seconds passed before I felt a hand hit me on the shoulder and push me out the door.  And I was gone, being whipped behind the plane.

I tried to look up at my parachute but couldn't lift my head.  My rope was tangled!  I prepared to pull my reserve chute but felt myself spinning around as the cords untangled themselves.  And I was smooth sailing (or falling) the rest of the way.  Until the ground came upon me faster than before, and I hit it hard.  My left leg is still a bit sore.  After that, I gathered my chute, put on my combat vest, and trekked off to the rendezvous point.  When the entire jump group had gathered, we set off across the vast jump zone and to a waiting bus, five kilometers.  It was a hard walk.  But it was over.

Went to bed late, woke up early and left for Tel Aviv.

"Closing 21"

...sounds forbidding, doesn't it?  Ok, maybe not to someone unfamiliar with the term or its circumstances.  Alas, allow me to enlighten you, as it is not something you want to hear in the army.  It means you are on base for three straight weeks, "closing Shabbat for twenty-one days."  But "closing twenty-one" isn't so bad.  The hardest thing is to think about home.  If that's not an option for three weeks, then there's no need to worry yourself and the time goes faster.  In addition, as my friend Shmaya from New York put it, "you're on base, the first of the month comes around, and next time you go home, you have a lot more money in the bank and no time to spend it!"

These were going to be three tough weeks.  First off, it was coming right after my regilah (break) week.  In addition, these were going to be three weeks in the shetach (field).  And it was the start of imun mitkadem, advanced training.

Indicators of experience:
Watch cover
received after the 6k masa

I had almost no trouble getting back into the swing of things after my week of rest and relaxation with my friends at the beaches and clubs of Tel Aviv.  That Sunday we had our first krav maga session.  It's about time we learned some close-hand combat!  My Mem Mem (platoon commander) had commented that it was unfortunate we don't learn more krav maga, but the reality and time restraints of our training don't allow for the proper time required for its training.  This session we learned how to fight with our guns, much like our last session at Mikveh Alon.  After it, we finished packing our bags for the shetach and went to bed.

A few hours later, or at three or four in the morning, we woke, boarded a bus with our equipment, and drove off to the shetach for Shavuah Citah (Squad Week).  This week was to learn how to attack a hill as a squad.  For some reason, something that even my officer didn't quite know why, but I brought my MAG and all its equipment.  I had the gun strapped around my shoulders and the heavy vest on my back climbing up and down hills, providing covering fire and then running to catch up with my squad as they advanced.  The worst part?  The "covering fire" was just me shouting "MAG-a, MAG-a, MAG-a" over and over and over.  No actual bullets were fired on my part.  Wasn't exactly the most thrilling time for me in the shetach.

We did our daytime exercises, had lessons all day about the different specialty weapons in a squad, then had our nighttime exercises, and returned to base at three in the morning.  Hour free time before bed.  Over twenty-four hours awake.

We came back because Monday was a fast during the day.  It's the Seventeenth of Tammuz, a daytime fast to remember when the walls of Jerusalem were breached before the destruction of the Second Temple.  We woke late and then I met with the Mishakit Aliyah with the other lone soldiers to review for another test on our training.  The fast ended that evening and we returned to the shetach.   We slept, woke, did our daytime drills, slept during the middle of the day, and then watched a helicopter shoot up a few barrels with a Vulcan cannon.  My entire plugah (company) gathered on a hillside and waited as night descended to watch the reservists practice their drills.  It was pretty cool, if overhyped.  You could barely see the helicopter.  You heard the cannon fire and saw sparks shoot up a few hundred meters away from it.  It shot three times.  We did our nighttime drills and then returned to base.

Or rather, to the kitchen.  Again, not fun work being in the kitchen, but there are times that it beats being in the shetach!

For the weekend, my machlekah (platoon) went to Hebron for guard duty.  No one really gets excited about the prospect of a long weekend standing up and missing out on a relaxing Shabbat back on base.  For me, at least this was different than the last time I was in the city of Judaism's second holiest site.  We woke early and packed up to go.  This time, Kfir, another infantry unit, was on duty in Hebron.  The machlekah was split up and I was sent to a base with about forty of us.  I started guard duty at four in the afternoon and didn't end until ten.  Standing.

So where was I guarding?  Specifically?  Let's just say, from this photo from almost exactly a year ago, you can almost see where I was.  Off to the right is a street, or more like a dirt path, that leads to an Arab section of the city.  About fifty meters up that path is where I stood.  My surroundings looked like a scene in the video game "Assassin's Creed," a game that takes place in the Holy Land during Medieval times.  I'm completely serious.  I stood on a platform ten feet above the road, across from a house.  Really it was just a makeshift metallic slab that constituted a door and a tangle of stairs that disappeared into a construction of brick, wood and mud that called a house.  In addition, they had a horse and cart.

There were little kids in the area.  Either they walked through or played in the turn in the road, or peered out at me from behind green-barred windows.  (Why do I mention they're green?  Because I think they're intentionally that color as it is the color of Islam.  Hence the Arab section.)  I'm dressed in full combat gear, complete with a bullet proof vest filled with ceramic plates.  Heavy and gets hot.  Also difficult to bend over to pick up your water.  But you feel like you're doing something legit(imate).

And I was doing something important.  Around seven at night, people, meaning Jews, starting walking down the path towards the Tomb of the Patriarchs for Shabbat.  I was standing, protecting my people as they went to practice our faith.  Isn't that why I'm here?  Hell yeah it is.  It was tough standing for six hours.  It was tough to see a two-year old Palestinian girl throw a rock at me.  But it was great for the young and old, the men and women to take the turn in the road, look up at me in my uniform, wave or give a slight salute and greet me with a "Shabbat Shalom!"  An ego trip?  Ok, maybe a slight one.  Fulfilling?  Definitely.

Tzanchanim tag
received after 7+1 masa

The ten or so of us who were on duty for that shift were picked up and returned to the Kfir base at the end of the evening.  Then we had a Shabbat meal with the base.  It's cool to have one on an operational base; it's what military service is really like.  But the next morning, woke up for a seven to eleven shift, then a quick afternoon break and back again from five to eight.  I was located at a closer location to the Tomb for the morning shift and was able to have short conversations with the Jews as they passed.  I was able to converse pretty easily in Hebrew.  I always made sure to say something if I heard English.  There was a group of guys from Brooklyn who I got to know that morning and we had a nice conversation about the army, America, politics, Judaism in the evening.  I also received quite a few invites for Shabbat and even for places to live.  Jews helping Jews is a beautiful thing.

(For me, in Hebron, for the first time, the Islamic call to prayer became a noisome cacophony of sound.  I was saddened and surprised to feel this way.  I've heard the call numerous times before and always thought it a beautiful thing about Islam.  In fact, the Arabic that i sounded from the tops of the minarets strikes at the beginnings of my interest in the Middle East.  For me, songs and sounds, both in Hebrew and Arabic, of this region are so full of yearning; for truth, for understanding, for reason.  It transports my mind to a much different realm, in time and place, to the beginning of beginnings, to where answers can be found to some of the most fundamental aspects and questions of life.  It makes me realize how old this place is, how many centuries people have lived here and throughout the wars, conquests, and disputes, still live everyday.

The sound is of yearning.  It was this sound that probably had the biggest impact on bringing me back to Judaism.  When I first heard the song "Yedid Nefesh" at the Western Wall a year and a half ago on Birthright, the sense of yearning and simple desire to live that the vocals arose within me made me think of my people being loaded into box cars, about them forming lines and being told who will live and who will die, and primarily, of walking out into a forest to dig their own grave, be shot, and fall in...all because they are Jewish.  How can I not want to fight back?

But I digress.  The call to prayer those two days in Hebron all jumbled together to hurt my ears.  Maybe all the mosques are competing for air space.  It seems like businessmen know no boundaries.  The commercialization of religion?  Topic for another time and place.)

One week down.

The start of the next week was a time of catch-up for me.  Back during Pesach, I got extra time off and missed throwing grenades.  About two dozen of us in the plugah were yet to learn to throw and Sunday was the day to finally catch up.  We again put on the protective vest under our combat vests.  Climbed up a hill and practiced with a rock and dummy grenade before the real thing.  The whole while, I had a live grenade in a pocket on my vest directly over my heart.  Honestly, it was a little freaky.  The guns and everything don't bother me.  This highly explosive devise with a kill radius of eight meters and can wound up to fifteen meters made me a bit nervous.  I pulled the grenade out of my vest and pulled the pin.  Thrust my arm behind me and threw it.  I ducked behind the bunker.  I heard the lever fly off with a surprisingly forceful noise and counted for four seconds.  Then BOOM, 1,024 pieces of shrapnel flying out in every direction.  Even from a distance at the bottom of the hill, you see the violent explosion and then hear the noise.  It's quite incredible how powerful something the size of a baseball can be.  It also made reality for me a bit more real.  War has got to be a terrifyingly hellish time.  Your world explodes into a violent fury of noise and steel.

But for now, I'm still in training.  And I'm relatively safe from everything.  Sure the grenade made me nervous at first, but I approached it like a roller coaster: I'm somewhat scared of heights, but if I'm strapped in, I know that countless people have already done what I'm doing without any harm and I know I'll get through it with no problem.

Discete (dog tag) cover
received after 10+2 masa

After the grenade, I rejoined my plugah to do some shooting exercises.  Run two hundred meters and shoot at a target fifty meters away with five bullets, all in two minutes.  Shoot a target two hundred and fifty meters away.  Shoot at fifty standing, then then kneeling, then prone.  Fun but surprisingly very difficult.  In addition, we did another buchan maslul, the obstacle course.  I improved my time from 8:30 to 8:13.  I'm happy with that time, but will probably do it again.  Looking to get under 8:00.

The shetach experience that week was learning to fight in an urban environment.  It was fun but very hot.  The IDF had built a group of a few dozen square, cement blocks that mimicked buildings and rooms.  We learned how to enter through the door as a unit of two or four, advance into more rooms, walk up and down stairs, and how to climb over a wall with the squad while advancing in a village.  Essentially, I put my back against the wall and bend my knees.  The soldiers climb onto my thighs, then my shoulders, then over the wall.  It builds and tires the legs.

We did countless drills peering around corners, into buildings, entering buildings and clearing rooms.  It was again a little freaky doing the drills with live ammunition.  Each machlekah had a special room to fire in.  The walls were padded with fiberglass and plenty of other thick material.  But the quarters were really small, maybe fifteen feet by fifteen feet.  The first soldier peers around the doorway, spots the terrorists, lets off a few shots, then they both enter and shoot the back wall, spraying their fire from corner to corner.  We certainly wear earplugs.  The room smells of gun powder and you can see the dust kicked up by our boots and bullets lazily waft around the beam of sunlight from a small ventilation hole in the roof, providing the only source of light.  At night, vision was essentially nil.

We finished the shetach after two nights, three days, and came back to base.  One of the machlekahs went to Ein Gedi for guard duty while mine and another stayed on base for guard duty and kitchen work all of Shabbat.  It was really not the quiet, relaxing Saturday that I desperately needed and wanted.  Instead, kitchen work means long days on your feet and guard duty means odd shift hours and an irregular sleeping schedule.  We were on this rotation until Tuesday.  It was a tough last twenty-four hours for me.  Sometime on Monday, word got around that we were going to close another twenty-one starting the following week.  In addition, I had been getting fed up with how completely crappy the jobniks who work in the kitchen as their military service treat us.  We work all week in the field or on base, sweating, bleeding and not sleeping, and then we come to work in the kitchen and these guys expect us to worship the ground they walk on.  Most of them are there because they were injured early on in their kravi service and their just finishing out their three year service in the kitchen.  They probably hate their lives, even though they get a week on and week off rotation.  Sometimes I feel bad for them, but when they yell at us to work and then they go play on their iPhones for hours, I don't care for them.

Two weeks down.

Tuesday evening was the beginning of Citah Mitkadem, Advanced Squad training in the field.  Supposedly it is one of the hardest weeks of training.  To make it a little easier, that afternoon, the entire plugah gathered for a brief ceremony where we broke distance with all of our commanders and officers.  Finally, the mental relief that I wrote about last time was here.  The first two weeks we were still in Tironut (Basic Training).  Now, with calling everyone by their first name and other informalities, the mental stress relaxes, only to be replaced by more physical difficulties.

The beginning of the field featured a short masa (hike): 5+5 (five walking, then five more carrying a stretcher).  And we did it with 35-40% of our body weight on our backs.  We were weighed earlier in the day and then added our equipment for a final count.  I weigh 87kg, and then added the heavy water bag and weighed 118kg.  Never before have I ever weighed 87kg/191lbs.  I've only ever reached about 185, and that's after lifting a lot of weights.  It's my legs, they're getting stronger from all the walking.

And this masa proved that.  It was hard, surprisingly so, despite it's relatively short distance.  At the end of it, we were expecting a 'layla lavan' (white night), where you stay up all night.  Instead, thankfully, they let us go to sleep.  But it's not fun having your uniform soaking wet and trying to sleep outside.  In fact, one of the most difficult things about the shetach is that you sweat so much during the day that when night falls, you start to freeze at night.  And we had received new combat vests the week before, and they cover the entire chest and stomach, which makes breathing and ventilation a little more difficult.

Infantry pin
received after Masa Sammal

Anyway, this was a week (or really a day and a half, which was enough) where my Mefaked didn't even know what the schedule was.  We would receive our orders through the radio and carry them out.  Food would be dropped off at different locations and we had to hike there to get it.  And by hike, I mean carry someone on the stretcher up and down hills, with the weight on our backs, not knowing exactly where we were going, and sometimes our Mefaked also not knowing.

Similar to Citah Week, we also did exercises battling up hills against cardboard enemy targets.  Before one of these exercises at night, one of the guys in my citah got sick and had to leave.  It was a little scary because we had been warned and heard about guys in other units getting heatstroke.  We were sure to drink plenty of water throughout the day as a precaution.  My friend was evacuated by jeep, but we carried on until the next day.  The second morning we woke up and immediately put our packs on our bag, put a heavy guy on the stretcher and followed off after our Mefaked....for over an hour and fifteen minutes, about four kilometers.  It was one of the hardest things I ever did.  There were about six or seven of us carrying the stretcher the entire time.  A lot of time carrying and not much switching.

But then the hike finally, mercifully, ended and we boarded a bus that picked us up to bring us back to base.  The end of the week--the three weeks.  We had a short run that evening and went to bed early.

The other week, the August draftees came to base.  A lot of the Israelis were really stoked that they we are the big guys on campus and not complete novices anymore.  That's definitely not true.  I was personally excited to see them because it showed how far we've come in just four months.  I think back to what we've accomplished, been through and what the new guys will have to endure.  It's just another time marker.  In country for nine months; in the IDF for seven and a half months.

Done with the twenty-one.

On Sunday, we train with helicopters!

All now permanent fixtures
on the uniform, with Shimon

Israel Defense Force's Tironut/Basic Training? Check

Demonstrating the MAG

I am done with basic training in the IDF!  Wow that feels great to say.  I have a full week ahead of me of relaxation, called 'regilah', a break soldiers are supposed to get about once every four months.  This is my first one since December.  December!  Seven months!  It is much needed, especially after the last two weeks of training, which turned out to be anything but a cakewalk.

The first of my last two weeks was another one in the 'shetach', in the field.  It's late June and the weather in the Judean desert has been heating up for weeks.  Israel maintains a heat index for the country; if it's too hot, soldiers (and people in general) are told not to be outdoors.  As will be explained, it makes for a very interesting training schedule.

We all knew that we had a week of field training ahead of us as we pulled into our base Sunday morning.  We just didn't know exactly when that week would begin.  The day was spent preparing our equipment and as night descended, it still did not look like we were to be leaving anytime soon.  We went on a few kilometer run around base, given an hour's break and sent to bed.  Then, at three thirty in the morning, we were woken up, ordered into our uniforms, grab all our gear and load a bus to take us into the shetach.  Our week had begun.

This week was called חוליה 'huliah' week.  It built on our previous shetach week; last time we learned to operate in two-man units, now we learned to operate as part of a four-man unit.  And these units of four in the larger citah (squad) are going to be our permanent units for the rest of training and operational status.  Each unit has a commander and then one or two specialty weapons, such as a sharpshooter, grenade launcher, rocket launcher, Negev or MAG.  As the MAGist of the machlekah (platoon), I am the specialist in my huliah.

So what do we do throughout the day?  Well, the 'day' has become a rather interesting concept.  I don't know exactly where to begin to describe a typical shetach day, but bear with me.  We wake up at four in the morning after sleeping in or on a sleeping bag for two hours.  If we need to move camps, we pack up our gear and walk the few kilometers to the next platoon's encampment, and they also rotate camps.  The morning is spent preparing the assigned hill for the 'targilim' (practices) for that day.  Since that only requires a few individuals and the officer, everyone else does 'yevishim.'  (See the video at the end of this post.)  These are 'dry' drills where our commanders yell the distance of the enemy and we jump into the proper firing position.  Then they shout that we have a problem with our magazine, gun, bullet, something.  We crawl.  We roll.  We don't stop.  And with the MAG, it's just all the more hard because of the weight of the weapon.  Yes, I had the MAG with me the entire week, although I never fired it once.

Once finished setting up our training course on the hill, the officer explained the drills and safety measures, then the rest of the morning was spent rotating huliahs into the 'retuv' or 'wet' area, meaning live rounds are used in our work to capture the hill as a four-man unit.  It's fun to begin to imagine what it's like to operate as a team with a common goal and purpose in mind.  It's exciting to feel a part of this military, knowing that it is comprised of your friends with faces and personalities and lives, not anonymous and distant individuals that you may hear about on the news back home.

It takes most of the morning for all of the huliahs to get their training in on the hill and we eat lunch from our field rations and then are sent to bed.  Yes, you did read that correctly.  Around one or two in the afternoon, the platoon gathers underneath a large tarp that provides (some) shade and we sleep for about six or seven hours.  In reality, it's never that long.  There always has to be two people awake to guard us while we sleep, which we rotate every twenty minutes, and you're sleeping on a thin mat on rocks and hard ground, and the sun shines brightly through the tarp, and the heat, and the flies....not a lot of fun.  But there is certainly a difference between one o'clock heat and seven o'clock heat.  You go to sleep sweltering and wake up somewhat cool.

Then the sun begins to set around seven thirty or eight and we do the 'rituv' drills again but at night.  This goes until two in the morning and we sleep (or nap) until four and do it all over again.

By Wednesday, we knew that the week was ending and that it was likely we were to have a masa (hike) that evening.  The other gduds (battalions) in Tzanchanim had completed their masa Sammal, the Sergeant's masa.  It is supposed to be one of the hardest masas because, as I've heard, the Sammals will kill themselves just to kill us.  They're in charge of discipline and their masa will reflect that.  Of course, a lot depends on the Sammal himself, if he's in shape, has the endurance, the will, etc., to put us through punishment and hell.

It quickly became no big secret that we were to have our masa Sammal from the shetach that Wednesday evening.  This was our first time going on a masa straight from the shetach as opposed to from base; it just provided an extra element to deal with.  All of the machlekahs gathered in the central encampment as, amazingly, we had a decent dinner brought in from base.  I didn't know if I was to bring my MAG along for this masa, and thankfully was eventually told to leave it aside and just carry my M-16.

We started the masa well after midnight.  As the third machlekah, we were last in line to begin.  Ahead of us, I could hear gun shots and the thunder of boots and shouts as the others began.  I looked at my friends in line and smiled, excited with the anticipation.  Eventually, only we were left.  Our Sammal appeared at the head of our two lines and spoke a few words that were difficult for me to discern.  But I caught the gist: no one stops.  Then he quickly turned, loaded his rifle, and took off at a dead sprint, firing shots into the air.  We didn't hesitate: we all let out our own "Rebel yell" and ran after him.

It was a tough masa.  Every so often, the Sammal would sprint for a hundred meters and we would all have to keep pace.  It was pitch black outside and earlier in the week I had lost my contacts, so I was wearing glasses, which kept fogging up.  After about fifty minutes, we had a ten minute break.  Six kilometers down.  A fellow lone soldier who was carrying one of the three water packs for the machlekah was having difficulty with it and I took it off his shoulders.  Add about fifteen kilograms of weight.  A plus, however, for me to have the water is that now I am at the head of the column.  I have long legs and am generally able to keep up with the Sammal, the Mem Mem, or whomever is leading the masa.  I don't have to run every few feet, which is a terrible drain.  As our break ended, we reformed our lines, and again the Sammal let out a yell, fired and ran.  And I ran with him, for the entire hundred or so meters.  I looked behind me and there was no one around us.  He eventually stopped running and told me to stop yelling.

The terrain was tough, with the dirt and gravel road winding up and down, potholes and tire tracks pockmarking the path the entire way.  I had a friend behind me the entire time who would help push me every time we ran if I slowed down at all or failed to keep pace.  People were tripping and falling.  And one time I did too.  I went down with a bang and struggled to get back on my feet because of the weight of the water.  My knee hurt a lot but there was no stopping.  We kept going.  After another kilometer or two, the Sammal got on his stomach and started to crawl.  It wasn't for long, only about twenty meters.  I think I did a quarter of the distance.  The weight of the water shifted terribly every time I moved one side of my body.  By time I got going, the Sammal was back on his feet and sprinting.  I needed to get back to the front of the line.

We had another rest after an hour.  We opened the three stretchers and put sandbags on them.  I tried to check my knee but didn't feel anything.  The water was starting to break my back, but there were only about three kilometers left, I couldn't give it up now!  The base, the end of the masa, and the end of the shetach week were all in sight!  Just a little more effort and we would be done.

And the the last few kilometers was a piece of cake.  The Sammal still ran every time he heard people talking in the column, and we went up steep hills and down steeper ones.  But we sprinted the last couple hundred meters in the base to our quarters.  It wasn't punishment sprinting; it was an adrenaline-filled energized run to the finish of a tough week and the completion of another landmark.  It was 3:30 in the morning.  13+3: thirteen kilometers plus three with the stretchers.

We stretched and were awarded our infantry corps pins, another piece of hardware to denote your time in service.  I finally inspected my knee and saw that my pants were torn and there was blood on them and running down my leg.  After showering, I went to see the company medic and he said I would probably need stitches but would have to wait to speak to the doctor.  Went to bed at 4:30 am.

Conveniently, the doctor the next day said that I probably did need stitches (note the past tense) but since it was six hours after cutting myself, it was too late for sutures.  Instead, she just bandaged the gaping hole on my knee.  It still didn't change the fact that no less than a few layers of skin were missing.  With it, I received bettim, medical leave from physical activity.  I needed it; I couldn't bend my knee and putting pressure from standing for a while made my leg ache and my cut burn.

The next day was Friday, and Shabbat in the evening.  We closed and then started the new week.  This was to be our last week in basic training, and spent doing more work in the kitchen, guard duty, and other cleaning work around the base.  To be honest, all I can remember from this week are two things: my Yom Siddurim and the Mem Mem masa.

On July 4th I got a Yom Siddurim, a day to take care of personal items.  Lone soldier are entitled to one a month and they offered to give it to me on the 4th, which I was willing to take.  I went back to my kibbutz to put contacts back in, returned to Tel Aviv and pick up my mom's Blackberry that finally arrived, and talked with my family for a few hours on the phone.  Had a beer in the evening on the beach and went to bed.

I returned to base at noon, barely had enough time to grab a small bite to eat from the cafeteria, and went to my plugah.  We organized all our equipment in preparation for advanced training.  We had a quick dinner around six thirty and prepared for our masa.  This time I would be with the MAG.

Before each masa, the medic checks every soldier for his pulse and asks how he's feeling.  After inspecting my knee, he told me I was not to do the masa.  The scabbing had just started, which kept a lot of the wound exposed, and my swelling had not gone done.  I pressed him that I was prepared to go with everyone and do it.  At my insistence, he inclined.

I'm not gonna lie: this was by far the hardest masa.  I replaced a 3.5kg weapon with a 10.85kg one.  But it's not just the weight itself that makes the MAG difficult.  The Negev is a light machine gun that weighs  about seven and a half kilograms, but its much more compact, about the same length as the M16.  The MAG, by comparison, is 1.2 meters in length, and the weight is not distributed evenly.  Thus, it is cumbersome and difficult to carry.

The first six kilometers was...ROUGH.  I honestly thought that I might not make it the entire masa, which was to be a total of twenty-one kilometers, the last three with stretchers.  We had fifteen kilometers to go and I was already sweating like a pig, my arms ached and my back was tired.  I couldn't keep pace with the Mem Mem even though I was at the head of the column.  I had to run every few feet.  I had been holding the gun against my chest, resting it on the top of my magazine clips.  While it takes the strain off my back temporarily, it was not working for the masa.  At the break, a commander helped me tie the legs down so they wouldn't flop around.  Then I decided to just let the gun hang and try to let the strap hang around my shoulders.  That, and as we started walking, I began to sing songs to myself.  And boy did it help the time pass.  Without even concentrating I was able to keep up, thanks to "American Pie", "Kol Ha'olam kulo", Shinedown, and other songs and artists.

The rest of the masa was certainly hard, but not as difficult as it at first seemed.  I survived the next few hours and dozen plus kilometers.  The last six were the hardest.  My feet started to hurt.  My legs got tired.  We had stretchers and not everyone helped out carrying them.  It was rough.  But we eventually finished and the we assembled behind the plugah building, still holding the stretchers at our shoulders.  The Mem Mem called me to the front to do the honors of ending the masa.  I stood before everyone, held my MAG above my head, and shouted, "Machlekah shalosh! Alei! Alei! Alei!" At each shout, the group raised the stretchers above their heads in a last effort of adrenaline.  The masa was over.

Lone soldiers after the Mem Mem masa.
Our shirts were at one point the same color as our pants.

We had a nice barbecue for the end of basic training ready for us at the end of the masa.  It was after midnight.  The masa took four hours.  We were tired, hungry, sweaty and now cold.  Still, we had a great meal and awards were given for the best soldiers in the machlekahs and the plugah.  Finally, an hour break and went to bed around two.

Woke up at five to work in the kitchen for the day.  Long day.  We worked half the next day in the kitchen as well.  That evening, Thursday, we had a fitness test of pushups, situps and a two kilometer run.  I banged out the maximum pushups and situps (75 and 86, respectively) and ran 8:13.  My knee was really bothering me from the masa, still recovering.  This was actually the second fitness exercise that we need to pass basic training.  The other is called the "bulkan maslul", an obstacle course.  It combines a 600 meter run, obstacle course, then another 500 meter run.  A total of 2k, but the course includes climbing over a wall, tire runs, climbing a rope, crawling, and negotiating other obstacles.  I did it all in 8:30, the second best time in the machlekah.  Most people had to do it one or two more times to pass.

Thursday night, to end basic training, was our "misdar" Mem Pay.   The entire day was spent organizing our equipment on our beds in preparation for an inspection by the company commander.  That evening, he spent a good twenty minutes questioning random soldiers in my squad about the different specialty weapons, had me answer about the MAG, and explained why this is this way and that is that way.  Overall, it was an official inspection, and so another very military-esque thing, which is fun and exciting.

The week ended, I'm at my kibbutz but planning on returning to Tel Aviv for the week to be with friends.  I had planned on going to Eilat, but doesn't look like that is going to happen.  We'll see.  There are some people I want to meet up with in Jerusalem.  Pretty much going to take advantage of the time off to relax, relax, and relax.

(This video is on YouTube.  At 2:10 is a clip of the MAGists practicing 'yevishim' drills, I'm at the end on the right.  Then I have a cameo at 3:07 and 3:14.  Most of it is pictures of 'pakal' week, when we learned our new weapons.  Towards the end are pictures of the 'bulkan maslul.')

Helmet for my pillow: my first week in the field

My body aches.  Every part of it is cut up, scratched, bruised and beaten.  I just finished a week training in the shetach (field) (for glossary of Israeli military jargon, click here).  This was nothing like my few days in the field during my service at Mikveh Alon.  Or rather, Mikveh was nothing like this.  Actually, Mikveh was really nothing like anything.  Even the Tzanchanim gibbush (tryout) was absolutely nothing like the past five days.  I was warned beforehand that this past week would probably be the hardest of my training, not necessarily just the physical aspect, but being our first field experience would make the week a trying experience, to say the least.  But from the beginning...

In the Diaspora (outside Israel), Jews observe two days of holiday at the beginning and end of Pesach.  As an American, I, and other lone soldiers, was able to return to base on Wednesday, a day later than the Israelis.  What was the first thing I did for my first day back on base?  Initially, we learned about chemical, biological and atomic weapons and attacks.  We learned how to use a gas mask in the event of such an attack.  And then we did a little more than that.

The entire plugah gathered just outside the base's fence near a tent filled with a form of tear gas.  Every few minutes, a soldier or two would be seen scrambling out, clawing at the ground, coughing, slobbering, trying to regain control over himself.  Just being within twenty meters of the tent made my eyes sting and start to tear.  A few soldiers at a time were ordered to put on their masks.  First, however, I had to take out my contacts and since glasses don't fit inside the mask, I pretty much did this exercise blind.  Then, with a partner, our Sammel (sergeant) tells us to do ten pushups, then run to a pole and back, then some more pushups.  The point?  To get us out of breath and panicked.  I was certainly already there.  For one thing, I literally could not breathe with the mask on.  Secondly, I knew I was going into a tent filled with tear gas.  

I pulled aside the flap and stepped inside.  The gas that filled the tent and the few Mefakeds (commanders) in full chemical protection regalia made the scene very eerie, like something out of X-Files.  My Mefaked turned to me and knocked me on the arm a few times, trying to pump me up.  He told me to just start talking in English, tell him a lesson about anything in English.  I could only think of one thing: the Cubs.  After a minute, in which, surprisingly, I found it relatively easy to breathe, he told me to take my mask off.  Now, I hear that the Commanders then ask for you to repeat your personal number.  I didn't get that far.  I ripped the mask off and the gas rushed to my face, my eyes, inside my mouth.  I couldn't hear or see anything; I didn't want to be in there.  My Mefaked tried to grab my shoulders and keep me inside but I shoved him off and stumbled outside, falling on my hands and knees, eyes streaming tears, nose running, saliva drooling from my mouth.

It took my a good twenty minutes to recover from the intense gas concentration.  The smell of the gas stayed with me for the rest of the day, it was in the fabric of my clothes, in my hair, in everything I did and everywhere I went.  It was not a fun experience, but it was certainly pretty cool.  I would probably do it again, but just one more time.  It's just another thing that you can do in the army but never outside.

That night we had another masa (hike).  These six kilometers were harder than the previous four kilometer masa, not because of the extra two kilometers, but because I was in front of the unlucky guy who had to carry the twenty or so liters of water on his back.  He was struggling.  The entire three kilometers on the way back, I told him to hold onto the back of my combat vest for support.  I was practically carrying him the entire way.  But he's a trooper and made it through.  For completing the masa, everyone in my plugah received watch covers with our draft, plugah and Tzanchanim logo on it.  It's one of the pieces of swag every soldier looks forward to receiving to prove he's less and less of a rookie; it indicates experience.

Thursday and Friday were two very forgettable days doing kitchen duty or practicing marching for hours.  But again Friday night came and the formalities between soldiers and commanders went.  After services and before dinner, our plugah, as usual, formed a chet outside the dining hall, getting ready to go in.  Some guys started singing what has become our plugah's anthem: כל העולם כולו/Kol Ha'olam Kulo/The Whole Wide World.  (Please, click here to hear it.)  This is one of my favorite songs: it's short, simple, and has a great message:

כל העולם כולו         Kol ha'olam kulo               The whole world
גשר צר מאוד           Gesher tzar me'od             is a very narrow bridge

והעיקר                  Veha'ikar                         And the main thing to recall
לא לפחד כלל           Lo lefached klal                is not to be afraid at all

And people get riled up when they sing it (click here).  This time, we start singing and before we know the commanders are egging us on and have brought out a Tzanchanim flag and they give me an Israeli one.  And we're all jumping up and down in a huge dog pile, like a football team getting pumped up before a game.  The scene is a crazy frenzy.  Another gdud comes by, and we go back and forth, shouting all our songs at each other.  A friend picks me up on his shoulders and I'm waving the Israeli flag furiously back and forth, shouting at the top of my lungs words I don't know to a song I've never heard.  It was a great time.  Finally, a pep rally that means something.

Shabbat came and went.  And then a hell storm came, and didn't leave for five days.

All day Sunday was spent preparing for the upcoming week in the field.  That evening, the entire plugah gathered in a large chet to be inspected by the MemPay (company Commander).  He came around and would speak a few words to a couple soldiers.  He stopped when he saw me and asked how everything was.  I replied 'it's all good, but I can't feel my left arm.'  And that was certainly true: the bag's straps are bly (ruined) so they don't hang on the shoulders properly, thus putting undue pressure where the padding ends, and cutting off circulation.  Within minutes of putting the bag on my back, I couldn't feel my arm.  The MemPay moved on, spoke a few words to the entire plugah, emphasizing the difficulty of the week ahead, and offering encouragement to each soldier.

So, what exactly is shavuah sadehoute (week in the field)?  It is...

• carrying over 45kg of weight on your back for kilometers at a time
• not changing uniforms for the entire week, and never taking your boots off except to change your socks one time
• after wearing your combat vest every minute of every day, even to sleep, having it start to feel constricting 
• being woken up after sleeping for ten minutes by rifle fire and your commanders screaming at you to get your packs ready to leave camp and hike to a random spot on a mountain, dig yourself a hole, and sleep in it with three other guys
• getting the worst, coldest, most sleepless nights of sleep of your life
• trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in, even with the canteens in your combat vest digging into your kidneys
• using your helmet for a pillow, and shifting it's position every thirty seconds to make something that can stop a bullet a suitable substitute for a soft pillow (I feel a link is necessary here, to a book I read when I was younger about a Marine's experience in the Pacific during WWII, from which I took the title for this post)
• not taking your contacts out from Sunday night to Thursday night, not brushing your teeth and certainly not showering
• being able to identify the six or seven different types of foliage of the Judean Desert by how much pain they inflict on your body when you crawl through or over them
• having foreign bugs crawling over your clothes and packs, and starting to say 'hi' to them
• suddenly appreciating the thick leather of your boots when dozens of thorns penetrate the soft fabric of your running shoes as you go for a 4k run, the last 2k carrying someone on a stretcher
• crawling 200 meters up a mountain to get to your breakfast
• realizing that nighttime crawling is better than crawling during the day because at night you can't see the rocks, thorns, spikes, roots, depressions, inclines that will hurt you, make you cut, bleed and bruise 
• learning different troop formations while on patrol, learning hand signals, how to conceal one's self, how to build a firing post, how to capture a hill, how to cross a road, how to determine your direction...all in Hebrew
• suddenly fearing the sight of your Sammel because you know he will make you do things you don't want to do, like crawl for hours up and down a mountain
• having a friend tell you that his machlekah's Mefakeds laughed at my citah for how hard my Mefaked was making us work compared to the rest of the plugah
• learning how to operate at night, with strict silence observance, donning camoflauge face paint, keeping tighter formations
• fourteen people getting ten to twelve minutes to ration food from a box, with always four people on guard duty
• being paired up with another soldier so you share a personal bag, sleep together, and if one went off to relieve himself, the other had to follow
• hiking kilometers a day, sometimes just for the sake of hiking, going up mountains and down mountains
• learning how to handle hiking with heavy load on your back, learning to cope with weight, learning to put the pain and discomfort out of your mind and focus on something, anything, maybe the mission, the country/desert, a song lyric, trying to grasp how it is you came to be doing this, anything
• after being asked where would be be right now if you weren't here, responding, 'איפושו יש בירות קרות ובחורות יפות/Anywhere there's cold beer and beautiful girls'
• being conditioned to the point that whenever a Commander picks up a stone, you automatically spring from the lulled slumber you've drifted off to into a crouched position, ready to sprint if he tosses the rock and shouts "'Aza" to mimic a grenade
• learning to pick up your wounded buddy from the ground and carry him up a mountain, which, let me tell you, you won't be able to do your first dozen times
• being on a patrol or hike, and ordered to jump into schiva (prone) position, try to find a comfortable place for your elbows amid the thorns, reorganizing rocks so they don't stab you in the groin, stay there for fifteen minutes, then get back up, all with over 40kg of weight on your back
• being outside, in the beautiful land of my people, with my military gear, praying with other soldiers
• always sweating, constantly, and consequently being freezing at night, but knowing that at any given hour, you will be doing physical work again that'll get your body temperature back up
• trying to climb a mountain with your partner during the day to steal a Commander's hat, or at night to grab a stick light; doing it stealthily, crawling slowly, not attracting attention
• laughing when your Commander tells you on the last night at 8:30 to go to sleep, knowing that it's crap and he will 'unexpectedly' wake you up within minutes, which happens and you have to carry all the citah's gear, hike a few kilometers, and gather with the rest of the plugah for the beginning of a physical test on what we learned during the week
• waiting almost two hours because we are the last numbered citah in the plugah, grabbing some shut-eye, and then starting to hike at 2:00 in the morning
• two hours of constant physical work: crawling, trying to navigate walking up, down and across steep mountain sides, only seeing dark and light shades, not knowing what you are stepping on, not caring, constantly twisting your ankles, keeping your gun cradled in your arms high up on your chest, which provides the best support for your back with the heavy weight, but does not provide the best balance
• sprinting the last few hundred meters as you walk into the base at 3:00 in the morning, full of energy and excitement for completing the test
• taking off all the gear, resting, stretching, being given an hour's free time before bed
• stripping down and getting in line for the shower when all of the Sammels and Mefakeds in the plugah suddenly run crazy all over the building, gas masks on their hands, brandishing sticks, beating walls, poles, beds, people, tell us to get the hell out of the bathrooms, the bedrooms, get our gear on and be downstairs with our masks
• wearing the masks and carrying the stretcher with sandbags to the gate of the base, then hiking back into the field, and up into some woods behind the base, finishing there at 5:15 to sleep as a citah under the pine trees
• waking up at 6:00 for morning prayer, eating breakfast, falling into an uncomfortable sleep for a few hours, then eating lunch and returning to base at 2:00 in the afternoon, finally ending the week

But our work didn't end.  All I wanted to do at that point was take off my clothes and jump into a nice long, cool shower.  That wouldn't happen for another five hours.  Over that period, we had to organize all our equipment, return items, take stock of what we lost, what's broken, put everything away properly in our lockers and bags, thoroughly clean our guns (even though we didn't shoot even one bullet), have our feet, legs and arms inspected by a doctor, and, of course, each citah in the plugah went on a four kilometer jog around the base.  (I mean, why not, right?  It's not like we were just on our feet for 20 hours a head the past five days.)  Finally, we were given an hour to calm down, shower and change.

Throughout the week, I was constantly pulling tiny thorns, some no longer than a few centimeters, out of my clothing.  I could feel them scraping against my body, against my arms, my elbows, back, legs, ankles, some even poked through my boxers!  Every time we sat down in the field or jumped into schiva, whenever we stood up, we would quickly brush off any twigs or anything in our uniforms and equipment.  During our lessons, I would found myself absentmindedly feeling around my clothing and my skin for thorns.  Not until I got into the shower did I realize how much damage the week had done to my body.  I found bruises high up on my legs, a line of cuts around my ankles where the boots end, splinters galore on my palms, and raised welts from thorns or bug bites all over my legs and arms.

Fortunately, I didn't have any serious problems during the week.  My feet weren't overly cut up; some people had popped blisters, skin peeling on their heels or Achilles' tendons, or other serious issues.  About halfway through the week, standing up and sitting down started to become a struggle.  Late Wednesday, my feet began to let me know they didn't want to keep moving.  On Thursday, simply moving any part of my body brought pain and discomfort.

After the jog and shower, my citah gathered to discuss the week in a sort of end-of-the-week therapeutic review session.  Then we had a half hour before dinner.  What better to do than let the Sammel have his way with us and make us do countless pushups.  But it was ok, but the dinner experience was nothing short of spectacular.

Special for my plugah, our Rassap (a position under the Rassar [Master Sergeant]) had managed to host a nice meal outside our building.  There were long tables with red and white table cloths.  It was like a Shabbat meal, with better-than-usual food: hummus, pitah, different kinds of meat, juice and pop.  Oh, and did I have pop.  For some reason, I was absolutely craving the sugar and carbonation; I easily drank at least a liter.  And then, just like on Shabbat, we started singing our gdud's songs.  Quickly, one of the commanders rushed in to shut us up.  "Stop that singing!" he yelled at us with a serious face.  "What do you think you are doing?  If you are going to sing, I want the entire base to hear you!"  We laughed and gladly shouted at the top of our lungs.  Again we sang Kol Ha'olam Kulo, among other anthems, which I am still learning.  It was a great end to the week!

This was certainly a very trying week.  It was the hardest in Tzanchanim, the hardest in the army, and probably the hardest in my life.  I learned a lot of things, but perhaps the most important weren't about where to stand in formation, or how to capture a hill, or how to stay quiet at night.  Yes those are all very critical, but I can and will learn them anyway; in fact, they are all things I can learn in a classroom.  Instead, what I gained most from this week was a better sense of what my body is capable of: how much weight I can carry, how I can press on when I don't want to, how I can split hikes up into ups and downs of mountains.

There were plenty of times when I was like: I don't know why I'm not sitting comfortably in some library right now study for a law school final exam.  But you don't focus on that.  You focus on the guy in front of you and the mission at hand.  I'm no longer fearful that my back won't be able to handle over 100lbs of weight.  Suddenly, the masas of the future, with its increased distance, don't seem as daunting.  I can do this.

It quickly became mentally difficult to constantly wear my combat vest, constantly sweat, constantly be in discomfort from the heat or the cool evenings.  But there were those times during dusk, when the sun was setting and the temperature cooled, the light was less glaring and you could look at a mountain top and see the silhouette of Israeli soldiers practicing formations, just like in the propaganda pictures and videos you've seen dozens of times.  Then you think that those same soldiers are looking back at you and thinking the same thing about you and your group of guys.  And the world makes sense.

From beneath the cows to above the clouds

I dropped to the ground, covering my head with my hands as my unit began to count the seconds until the light stick "grenade" would explode. The mefakedets were screaming to get down and lie still. After our counting, the MemMem yelled to start crawling, forward towards the front of the two lines. It was a free-for-all; if you were faster than the guy ahead of you, you tried to maneuver around him without having his boots kick you in the face. You didn't pay attention to what you were crawling over (mud, rocks, cow shit); you just focus on getting to the front as fast as possible, ignoring the pounding of your heart, muscles screaming for relief, and stones cutting into your knees. What were we doing in the middle of the night, slogging through a heavily muddied path, through cow fields, carried people on stretchers? It's called a 'masa', a hike led by a commander intended to practice and simulate patrols, complete with springing into different firing positions, shouting orders, and running. The night was cloudy and I had no idea if I was about to step onto somewhat solid ground or plunge my boot into a foot of water. I had my head down, looking at the guy's boots in front of me. I knew if we were about to sprint based on the sound of the soldiers ahead of me; the quickened pace sounded like an oncoming rush of water. In total, we hiked about six or eight kilometers. That's not significant distance by any stretch of the imagination, but what made it difficult were the conditions. And personally, I had also just completed a two hour shmirah shift.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was going to spend two straight weeks on base. It was time for my plugot to do shmirah, or guard duty. After a month with no guns, we went to the armory on Tuesday to receive our weapons. For the next week, the guns were not to leave our side. What's more, we had to always have our combat vests on, complete with two filled canteens and three magazines, each with twenty-nine rounds. Yes, I was packin' heat all week: eighty-seven 5.56 caliber bullets, ready to be locked and loaded if I noticed something suspicious while on guard duty. Every day, the MemMem spoke to my machlekah about guard duty: protocols, tips, sanctions, etc. In total, I pulled six, two-hour guard shifts. Twice I was the solo guard for the armory, another two times I was by myself at a post overlooking a valley, and another two times I was with another soldier at the "bunker", an isolated location on top of another hill, protecting Mikveh Alon's ammunition cache. Shmirah is good and bad. At some times I feel very proud to be protecting something, even if it is only Mikveh Alon (I swear, if Israel's enemies ever find it necessary to launch an assault on Mikveh, then Israel is already lost). It is also probably the only opportunity to be alone and have time to think. But the bunker is a great place, too. Its isolation makes it easy to see if a commander is coming to check on you, but, as in my case, I was paired with Russians both times and for two hours we spoke Hebrew. Shmirah, in general, is boring. It's also a huge pain in the @$$ getting up at 3:30, after four hours of sleep, to be ready for guard duty from 4-6 in the morning. After one of these shifts, I got back to my room at 6:15, we were to get up at 7:15. I just took off my vest, laid my gun down on my bed, sat down, leaning against the wall, and closed my eyes for an hour.

So what's the protocol if someone suspicious shows up at our guard post? If we don't recognize the person, we first ask, in Hebrew, "who is it?" If there's no response, or the individual appears to be a threat (pulls a weapon, starts running towards you, or, frankly, is Arab), we shout "stop!" in every language we know. They taught us how to stay "Stop or I'll shoot" in Arabic. The next step is to cock our gun twice, although without it loaded. Hopefully, the sound itself will frighten the individual. If that doesn't work, then we can load our guns with a magazine. Then we're allowed to shoot two warning shots into the air. If still that doesn't work, then we can shoot the threat in the legs. Thankfully, I never saw anyone I didn't know and never had to go through those steps.

For the two hour shift, we're only allowed to sit for the last ten minutes of each hour. The rest of the time I either stand in place or pace back and forth, counting the number of tiles on the ground, cows in the fields, or street lights in nearby towns. It is an automatic Shabbat (meaning you stay on base for the weekend) if you're caught sleeping, sitting, smoking, eating, or drinking (anything but water) during your shift. A friend had given me a candy bar before my first shift when I was solo at the armory. After the first hour I was bored of pacing back and forth and was starting to get really tired, so I made it a challenge to secretly open the candy bar with one hand in my pocket and break off small bites. The whole operation took a good twenty-five minutes. Quality use of time.

Throughout the day we had our normal Hebrew classes. Soldiers would leave in the middle of the day to report for shmirah duty. That's why we had to have our vests on at all times. One afternoon, after our MemMem gave us our daily shmirah briefing, the siren sounded. If that happens, we have exactly seven minutes to get from wherever we are (even if we're sleeping) to a predesignated spot and form a chet with the machlekah. After the formation, with our helmets on and canteens filled, we were told to run to the perimeter of the base. We spring to our designated spot, shouting war cries and running over people who are too slow; our excitement in pretending to be doing something important is evident. I run to some brush and lay down in prone position, aiming my gun at some random things in the distance. The drill was fun, if pointless. We were told we did a good job, and that was it.

The day after our nighttime masa, we had a competition between the nine tzevets in the plugot. This was one of the highlights of the week. First we had a "jeep" run: one soldier wrapped his arms around two others and draped his legs over the shoulders of a third. We sprinted about fifty meters, then had to answer a question in Hebrew from a mefakedet. Then we were to run to the next location around a bend. We started at a full on sprint, then realized it was a good quarter mile away. Most of us made it huffing and puffing. After another question, we had to crawl fifty meters over hard pavement, littered with rocks. I still have scabs on my hands, two weeks later, from the cuts. People's knees were bruised for days. Crawling isn't supposed to be as "bloody" as it was for us, but because we have no training, we just do whatever it takes to get to the finish line. Then we had to consume a can of beans, write "tzevet 3" with sticks, and spring to the flag for the final leg. In total, the competition was about twelve minutes, but it was fun. I always enjoy getting my blood pumping with competition and sport. We haven't had much of it over the past two months, so this was really enjoyable.

Finally, on Tuesday morning of the second week, we woke up at 2:30 AM for the masa of the MemPay, the officer in charge of the whole plugot. This turned out to be the easiest thing. We were bused about forty-five minutes to a random spot in the road, formed our two lines, and starting marching....on the road. In total, we walked about two kilometers, sometimes running, but never dropping down to a firing position and never crawling. At the end, we finished on top of a mountain overlooking the Kinneret, a lake in the north and Israel's main source of freshwater. The MemPay talked about the area, we grabbed some photos, then had a ceremony in the parking lot with the higher ups of the base present. It was nice, but unnecessary to wake up that early just to see the sunrise.

At the beginning of the two weeks, I was excited to do shmirah and spend my first Shabbat on base. A lot of guys were apprehensive about the two weeks without a break. The truth is, during kravi service, it is common to spend two to three weeks at a time on base. And Shabbat was fun. We had a great Friday night meal, and Saturday (aside from waking up at four for shmirah) was a lazy day. No one could order us to do anything. If we wanted to sleep, we could. If we wanted to exercise, it was no problem. Some people watched movies on their iPods, I read a book ("Brotherhood of Warriors" by Aaron Cohen, it's about Cohen's experience as an American in the IDF [sound familiar] in the mid-90s when he was a part of Duvdevan, an elite unit charged with infiltrating the West Bank), or we just talked about nothing. When Sunday and Monday rolled around, I felt completely at ease on base, as if we had not already spent seven or eight days there. It became routine. So long as you're with your friends, life becomes a whole lot easier.

Finally, after our week of shmirah ended, we left our base to go to Jerusalem. On Wednesday, we boarded a bus and drove to Har Hertzl, Israel's Arlington Cemetery. I was there a year ago on Birthright, but this time was completely different for me. I looked at the graves and the most off-putting thing about the place, is that most of the soldiers who lay forever on that hillside were between 18 and 23 years of age. When I say most, I mean if there's a row of ten graves, seven will be in their late teens or early twenties. One guy was born three weeks before me and was killed in action in 2006 in Lebanon. I remember a year ago thinking about the young age of the soldiers. I now thought....well, I'll keep that to myself.

Next we went to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum. Again, this was my third time within a year. But it's always an important place to go to if in Israel. If you haven't been to a Holocaust museum, please find one to visit. There's a great one in Washington, DC, and one recently opened near my town in northern Chicago. Yad Vashem, and my tour guide, really hammered home the point that the Nazis made the Jews out to be non-human, something aside from humanity. I could talk for hours about the museum and the Holocaust, but suffice it to say, as I've mentioned before, it reinvigorates me with a renewed sense of purpose in my service.

Afterwards, we went to Gush Etzion, an area in the Judean hills in the West Bank. The story behind Gush Etzion, briefly, is this: during the aliyahs of the early 20th century, many Jews wanted to settle this land that is believed to have been a passageway for Abraham and Isaac before they reached Mt. Moriah for the binding; King David slew Goliath in these hills; and other biblical stories. The climate was difficult, the soil rocky, and the surrounding people hostile. During the War of Independence, one day before the State of Israel was created, all the defenders of Gush Etzion were massacred by the Jordanian legions. The children of these Jews, having been evacuated weeks earlier, grew up and vowed to one day resettle the land. That opportunity came in 1967 when Israel reclaimed control of Judea and Samaria. Now, there are a few thriving communities in the area and a yeshiva for the study of Torah. It is a great testament to the will of the Jewish people to reclaim their land, a story of yearning and a hope fulfilled.

The next day, we were given a "tour" of Jerusalem's Old City, courtesy of our mefakedets. Hardy the best tour of anything I've ever received. I've lost a lot of respect for my mefakedet. At the yeshiva, my tzevet sat in a chet and our mefakedet asked us about our day, what we thought of Har Hertzl, Yad Vashem, Gush Etzion, etc. I told them, point-blank, "I feel like I'm on Birthright" not in the freakin' IDF. I'm sorry, but I don't really care to talk about what it was like to see twenty year olds buried in the ground with an eighteen year old girl who doesn't know anything about me, what I'm thinking, or who I am. What a load of crap this place and these people can be at times.

But on a high note, we were given time to ourselves at the Kotel, the Western Wall. And as the sun was setting, my entire plugot formed a big chet on the plaza in front of the Wall. We're about 100 soldiers, plus thirty or so commanders; needless to say, we took up a considerable area. We're standing with our berets on, at attention in formation, tourists stopping to take pictures or video, wondering what was going on. We all shout responsively in unison at the appropriate times, creating a small, thunderous echo off the surrounding buildings. The MemPay spoke some words, which I couldn't hear, but at the end of the ceremony, we were each given a military-issued Tanach, a book of the Torah, Prophets and Writings, essentially Judaism's entire Written Law. And its pretty awesome because it has the IDF insignia on its cover. This is just another example how I can be face-down, crawling through cow droppings one day, and standing in formation, in front of the eyes of Jerusalem, receiving an IDF edition Tanach.

Finally, that night, I ate dinner with another soldier with a family who lived in the area. Before we left base, the HaSammelot asked us who would want to eat dinner with a family who wants to get to know lone soldiers for Thursday night. I volunteered, and it was great. I got a great meal, spoke Hebrew the whole time, and now have some people who were genuinely interested in helping make my life here easier. Israelis can be incredible people.

A lot happened over the past two weeks. I'll leave the heavy thoughts, feelings, and emotions for next week. I'll just say that now it's getting to crunch time to deciding whether I want to go to the Tzanchanim gibbush, try to get into Nahal with my medical profile, or go to Totchanim (Artillery). The HaSammelot gave us a presentation about each of these units before we went to Jerusalem. I think we're going to learn more this week, but that is still to be determined. And I feel completely out of world events. Apparently the Arab world is on fire. We'll see what that means for Israel in the comings weeks. 'Til next time, you stay classy!

PS- if you want to get a quick look into what my life is like, check this out:http://www.jpost.com/VideoArticles/Video/Article.aspx?id=207527