Becoming a Soldier While Staying Human 28/1/09

Last night David and I had the incredible pleasure of standing in for Yoni’s parents at his unit’s Parent’s Night. Yoni is a lone soldier and one of our best friends. We have in many ways “adopted” him and are always thrilled to be able to be there for him in any way we can while he goes through so much and his family is so far away. Aside from the great experience of simply being there for Yoni, last night was a very inspiring evening and really got me thinking.

Yoni is a squad commander (I think that’s the translation…basically it’s the lowest level commander that belongs to each unit.) He has a small group of soldiers under his personal command and he is their link to the officers, the person with whom they come into contact the most, and the first person they go to with their problems. It was so nice to get to see him with his soldiers and to meet his officers and all of the people he spends all day every day with.

The evening started out with food (more munchies than dinner but whatever) and schmoozing. Then the commanding officer gave a nice speech and handed out certifications of recognition to soldiers and commanders who are excelling. After commending the soldiers, the commanding officer honored a few parents who have gone above and beyond to make sure that everything the unit needs is taken care of. They planned a Chanukkah Party for the unit and spoiled them like crazy apparently.

The end of the evening was a concert. One of the soldiers mothers used to be in a famous old school Israeli band (Gevatron) and organized to have a famous Mizrachi (the nasal whiney music that sounds like its in Arabic) singer come and perform for the soldiers and their families. The soldiers pretty quickly jumped out of their seats and went down to dance. It was so fun and funny watching them dance together. These awkward boys who have been in the army only 6 months were jumping around and having fun together, and their parents got to see it. The evening made me do a lot of thinking…

I have always wondered how Israeli society can exist as such a militarily centered society and still be so normal. (Israel has plenty of other problems, but I don’t think they come from the army exclusively.)The goal of basic and advanced training is to take boys and break them so they can be reshaped into men, into soldiers. I have many friends who are soldiers and it has always fascinated me how they seem to snap into and out of their army personas. David is not a combat soldier and while he has a bit of the same schizophrenia like personality change his are less extreme. Last night I got an interesting glimpse into the world that produces killing machines (for all intents and purposes) that can still go home to their families on the weekends and be the same person they were when they left. Watching the boys, and they are very very much still children, letting loose and dancing and smiling and having fun made me want to cry. Watching them dance with their units and officers and grow close to them was heartwarming. I couldn’t help but think that in the next war these boys would be fighting alongside these friends and putting their lives on the line for each other and for all of the rest of us. The importance of the trust and love and bonds between these boys as they grow into men was not lost on me. I don’t think it was lost on the parents present either.

Brothers in Arms I think is a great term to describe the phenomenon. The soldiers can stay human because the bonds built between them and their comrades are human. Together with their officers they are building a supportive family. They are working very hard to train for a very hard job that is for the benefit of us all. They can stay human because their task is a just task. Protecting the Jewish Nation is one of the most just tasks any Jew can take on. They go into battle with their heads held high because they know they are protecting themselves, their brothers, and all of their loved ones back at home. The path is not an easy one, and each one of those soldiers would rather be traveling the world or starting college. They understand the need for them and the importance of their mission. They have volunteered to be where they are because as long as we live in a place that needs protecting there will be people volunteering to protect us.

I don’t know how I’m going to feel as the years go by and my children enter the army. I maintain no illusions that by the time I have children and they are old enough to go into the army there will be no need for an army. Israel will always have to fight for its existence. It is depressing, but it is what I believe. At least right now I feel good knowing that the army they will be going into will at least try to build them into better and stronger people who understand the importance of their mission and who can hold their heads high while accomplishing it.

I Have Friends In Hebrew!!! 28/1/09

I have reached one of the most important milestones that a new immigrant to any place can reach. I have friends in Hebrew. They are real friends and not just people that I smile at during class while I sit alone too afraid and uncomfortably to really talk to. We hang out outside of class. We talk on the phone. We share things. We are real friends- and our only common language is not my mother tongue. It is relatively easy to reach a level of fluency where casual conversation with random people is possible or where grocery shopping isn’t a nightmare or where the bus drivers know what you are asking them. The next big step is being able to understand most of what you see or hear or read. That comes with a bit more effort and makes life so much easier. But to bridge the final gap that is more mental and cultural than anything else is where the real challenge lies.

Bar Ilan has a very large Anglo population. If I wanted, I could make a group of English speaking friends and only speak Hebrew in my actual classes. I speak English at home with David so there was no opportunity for me to practice before school started. Fortunately, I am in a department with no other native English speakers. There are some who were born here whose parents are American and who speak English fluently but they are Israeli’s and I didn’t realize they spoke English until months into the program. I entered a situation where it was either speak Hebrew or be lonely. I decided to just suck it up and speak Hebrew. It is such an amazing feeling when I realize that I spend entire days conversing and learning in the language that I have spent so much time and effort trying to learn. (Tip for potential Olim, Uplan is not a burden, it is the key to successful and easy absorption and it is a mistake to put it off.) I feel like I have really achieved something and I am so excited. My friends didn’t blink twice when they heard my accent or my sometimes halted speech. They just continued to talk to me as if nothing was strange. They correct me now and again for my benefit, but for the most part we have a completely normal relationship. It just makes me so happy and proud of myself. I no longer feel even a little bit left out of the world that I live in and now I really truly feel at home.

The only downside is that I am starting to lose my English. A friend told me that he heard that you can’t really learn a new language completely until you forget your mother tongue. Only then can you start to re-learn both languages at a truly fluent level. Well, I am at the stage of forgetting. Sometimes I can only think of a word in Hebrew and forget the English completely. The worst is when I know what I want to say but I can’t think of the exact word in either language. Then I feel completely lost. I am trying to keep up my reading in English but it only helps a little. David is useless in this matter because his English is much worse than mine and it is steadily declining the more he is in the army and has no opportunity to use English ever. Today I was giving a presentation on a paper I had written in Hebrew, but to be cute I wanted to say part of it in English since I had written about the US. In the middle I couldn’t think of a term and switched automatically back into Hebrew. It was really scary. I know that its just part of the normal process, but I hope that along with my gains in my new language my losses from my old won’t be too great.

New Year

**Disclaimer: I’m in bed sick with a sinus infection gone bad. I apologize in advance if some of the things I write don’t make complete sense. My brain is functioning on cold meds… but I couldn’t sit here anymore and not write anything.**

I just want to start out by stressing that David and I are both safe and sound. He is very busy in the army, but due to the nature of his job he is not and will not be fighting in any front lines. His unit is working in shifts so he is even able to come home relatively often to catch up on sleep and see me. We live in a city near Tel Aviv that is (for now at least) out of the range of the rockets coming in from Gaza.

It’s been a strange and surreal week and transition into the new year. It is surreal mostly because I am so far away from it all. I live too far away from Gaza to hear anything but the occasional jet flying overhead from one of the air force bases in the area. For all intents and purposes my life is going on completely normally. The main connection that I have to the war is the radio. They are announcing whenever there are sirens sounding in communities in the south. My only real picture of what it is like there is to read the news and to listen to the frequency of the sirens. It was the same way during the Second Lebanon War. I was in Jerusalem, and if I hadn’t been an informed citizen or hadn’t had a cousin fighting up there I would have had no idea that a war was on.

I’m not really sure what it is really that I am feeling or what it is that I mean to say. I pray and I hope with all of my being that this government doesn’t make the same mistakes it made two years ago. I hope we finish this fight and leave when we are ready and have fully achieved our goals to bring real security to the South. Last time, the government agreed on a cease-fire that brought us nothing because Hezbollah is still rearming and gathering strength on our Northern Border and UNIFIL is doing nothing to stop them. I hope that our soldiers are not going in and risking their lives for nothing. I am very scared for them. At this point in my life almost all of my friends are in the army. Most of them I know are not in Gaza itself, but there are many that I am not sure where they are or what they are doing. The scariest thing, I think is not knowing. I’ve been sitting at home (sick) for the last almost week and have been doing nothing but scouring the news for more and more information. Especially now that the ground incursion has started I listen to the news with bated breath and am relieved every time there is no report of new injuries.

It’s scary and upsetting the thought that we’re at war, but if we really can bring real quiet and security to the entire Southern part of the country then it is all worth it. We deserve the same right to self-defense that every other sovereign nation in the world deserves. I am proud that we are exercising it and pray the world will allow us to defend ourselves. The New Year passed here with little to no notice. Hopefully it will bring with it a new reality. Hopefully Israel can reassert its deterrence capability. Hopefully we can rid our borders of terrorists who’s goal is to destroy us.