Blue and White and Olive Green

By Janna Walsh

Each of the times I have traveled to Israel, I’ve had a completely different experience.  The first time, with a group for those considering aliyah, had a practical orientation.  We visited supermarkets, absorption centers, ulpanim, and several ministries of thus and such. My trip last winter, a Hadassah mission, was an intellectual experience.  In less than a week, we heard more than 20 speakers:  military briefings, members of the Knesset, terror victims, and others who educated us about the matsav (situation) two years into the current intifada.  Now, for the past three weeks, as a volunteer in the army, I have been immersed in an up-close and personal view of Israeli life.

The one thing all of these visits had in common was that each time Israel grabbed me by the heartstrings and did not readily let go.  From my first view of the Kotel more than 10 years ago to the words of the young security guard thanking me for my volunteer service as I stood in the interminable baggage X-ray line at Ben Gurion airport last Sunday, this land keeps embedding itself ever more deeply into my consciousness. 

However, this particular trip was by far the most compelling:  Israel may have had a big piece of my heart and my dollars for these past years, but on this visit, I was also able to offer the work of my hands, doing real and valuable service side-by-side with ZaHaL soldiers.

Sar-El is an organization administered by the Israeli army; every year several thousand people from all over the world come to work, for a week or a month or even longer, on military bases scattered around the country.  They come from Russia, France, South Africa, Australia, and the US, to refurbish gas masks, test communications equipment, pack intelligence maps, do kitchen duty, and clean and check medical supplies.  For more than 20 years, Sar-El volunteers have performed these menial tasks so that regular soldiers and reservists can spend their time doing the higher-level jobs they are trained for.

On my base we spent our days testing, scrubbing, sterilizing, packaging, labeling, and filling orders for medical equipment, supplies, and medicines for use by the medical corps throughout the country.  This medical supply center was a sub-base on a much larger military installation near Tel Aviv. 

We worked in warehouses, supervised by civilian employees of the army, alongside soldiers and reservists, for a regular Israeli workweek, Sunday through Thursday, 8 to 4. We lived in a small barracks dedicated to the volunteers, with our own mo’adon, or community room (complete with TV for watching CNN and Russian soap operas), a little patio area, separate rooms for men and women (with potentially as many as 8 to a room), and showers and toilets in small trailers down at the end of our complex. We wore rather ancient army-issued boots and olive-drab fatigues—only our shoulder patches and caps (instead of colored berets) identified us as volunteers.  We ate our meals in the mess hall with the soldiers—the food was not very good, but filling—and we were sometimes invited to military functions, such as a retirement party for reservists completing their millu’im (reserve duty), or a Chanukkah party on another base.  Living and working conditions were spartan at best even in good weather, less pleasant in a cold January rain.

So why would I, or anyone else, travel 5700 miles to live and work this way?  Let me tell you just some of the reasons:

• The knowledge that the work I was doing was literally helping to keep the army on its feet.  In my “real” life as a consultant, the mental work I do takes a very long road indeed before it benefits anyone directly; at my base, I was scraping Israeli mud from hand suction pumps that had been used—and would be used again—by medical corpsmen somewhere in the field, possibly to save a soldier’s or a child’s life.
• The appreciation of the soldiers and the Israeli people for our efforts.  The military commanders both of Sar-El and of our base came to thank us individually.  Israeli soldiers and civilians alike with whom I spoke repeatedly expressed their appreciation for our support by visiting and working in the country.  (They also universally thought we were crazy.)
• The opportunity to meet Israelis one-on-one, and experience in the most personal way their incredible warmth, caring, and resiliency.  One way to really get to know someone is to work directly with that person.  My boss at the base became a friend, as did a few of the soldiers—I may keep in touch with Efi, Williams, Alon, our madrichot, and the others by e-mail for now, but I know I have someone to call whenever I return.
• The experience also yielded at least a handful of true new friends from the States and in the Tel Aviv area, and many more acquaintances from around the world, both other volunteers from Sar-El and people whom I met on my weekend travels off the base. Since my return we’ve shared stories and photos, discussed plans for our next trips, and even talked a little about Israeli politics—my biggest frustration was that this is not permitted while serving in the army!
• Finally, I am simply gratified that I was able to be of service to my “other” country.  At our base, our volunteer service was so important that the medical supply system literally could not function without us.  As a token of appreciation for the volunteers, each morning at the base flag-raising ceremony, one of the Sar-El people was chosen to actually hoist the blue and white Magen David.  It has been many years since I raised the Stars and Stripes as a child at camp, but I could not have been more proud than when I was saluting the flag of Israel flanked by ZaHaL soldiers.

Although I’m not quite ready to make aliyah just now, Sar-El gave me a “next-best” experience of making a genuine connection with the Israeli people.  In an extremely compressed form, I’ve lived in the country, I’ve done army service, and I’ve met people in real-life situations, not just as a tourist.  If each of my journeys has tightened the bond, this one has immeasurably deepened and strengthened it.  Of course I’ll return to Israel as a tourist and as a supporter, but I’ll also return to serve again as a volunteer next year. And maybe, after a few more such trips, I’ll return as a citizen.  

Janna Walsh
Richboro, PA, USA
January, 2004