On December 8 I started a three week tour of duty as a volunteer in a program sponsored by the Israel Defense Forces on a large military base near Tel Aviv called Tel HaShomer. Our jobs on the base were to help Israel get ready for the upcoming war, in particular, Saddam's missiles.

We slept in barracks with other volunteers but all other activities were along-side Israeli soldiers: we wore uniforms, ate awful food with them, got to make friends with them and joked around with them. On most days after flag raising, from 8 until 4 pm, I was a grunt shlepping heavy boxes of supplies, moving heavy ammunition boxes (I don't know how much they weigh, but a little metal box of shells for an Uzi felt like a ton after a few hours), mopping up the floor of the supply room erev shabbos, getting coffee for a no-nonsense Jewish Iraqi female master sergeant, sorting dirty uniforms, shredding obsolete military maps of Syria and the Golan, laminating instructions for a new respirator for field units, checking in soldiers after guard duty by taking their helmuts and magazine clips, painting walls, hauling huge bags of smelly trash to the dumpsters, and excessing obsolete computer equipment. By the way, I can now maneuver one of those hydraulic industrial strength hand trucks that carry pallets as well as the best of them.

On some days or after our regular work day, I volunteered to work an extra four hours with the bus loads of young soldiers who were brought to our base daily to prepare thousands and thousands of emergency kits which Israel is now distributing all throughout the country. My job was to sit at a table with five or six Israeli teenagers (e.g., soldiers) and break down boxes of 100 Cipro pills (the antibiotic for anthrax) into individual doses of 15 which we put in little plastic bags. My "specialty" was to work on the little bags for ages zero to three, which required special labeling.

My other volunteer friends from Holland, South Africa, New Zealand, England, Norway and New Jersey did jobs which were only slightly more "glamorous": they got to assemble the part of the emergency kit having to do with the clinical looking atropine injectors which is supposed to neutralize the effects of poison gas once it has entered a person's body. It is supposed to be injected by the person him/herself into his/her own leg.

The Lt. Col. in charge of the whole project who became my friend, recognized that the work was mindless so the kids ( e.g., soldiers) were allowed to blare popular Israeli music on the radio, take frequent smoke breaks, and chatter away with their friends at the table about their boy/girl friends, plans for the weekend, etc. They were having a ball and with the music and the chatter, the atmosphere was quite festive.

I spent about a month in Israel in which magical things seemed to happen every day, but this experience on the base with the kids was perhaps the richest. They were interested in me: why was I there? What did we think about the upcoming war? Were the American people behind President Bush's war on terror? Who are the popular Pop stars now? How much money could I make as a lawyer in America? Are the Jewish people of America behind Israel? Do they even care? How did I feel about doing this kind of menial work since I was an attorney in America? When the boys found out I was from Sacramento, they immediately started naming ALL the Sacramento Kings and asked if I thought the Kings would go all the way this year.

Under the volunteer program, we got all the weekends off (their weekend starts on Thursday night) for travel to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or any where else in the country as long as we were back on the job by 10:00 am on Sunday morning. As I think about being part of the scene of crowding back at the security gates of the base with hundreds of other Israeli soldiers trying to be on time for work after the end of the weekend-- I get goose bumps. To think that I had the privilege of serving the Jewish people in this way! Some of the volunteers have done the program ten and twenty times! Some do it for months at a time.

For all the pressure Israelis are getting from crazed Arabs who try by the tens every day to sneak inside Israel with bombs strapped to their waistes to kill or maim Jewish people, to the lunatic Saddam Hussein himself, one would think Israelis were wringing their hands in fear imagining a terrorist behind every bus stop. My experience in Israel this December could not be further from that image. As usual, the people of Israel are buoyant, upbeat and living life to the fullest. The malls in Jerusalem as well as the buses are packed with people. The Old City in Jerusalem is filled with Jews enjoying shabbes, felafel, and when shabbos ends the lights of havdallah candles can be seen flickering in every dark stone alley ways of the Jewish Quarter and in all the windows.

Am Yisroael Chai!!
Steve

Steve Mopsick volunteered during December 2002