Up Close and Personal

with

The Israeli Defense Force

Madelyn Hoffman

For two weeks, I’ve been a volunteer in the Israeli army.

Relieved of the responsibility of watching CNN,  reading The Times, deciding what to wear, what to eat, where to work, or with whom to live, I  (more or less)  followed orders, and did what I was told by a female soldier younger than my daughter.

Itching to return to Israel, and eager to contribute, but not as a tourist, I signed up on impulse for Sar-El, or Volunteers for Israel, a  program started in 1982 by the head of the Israeli Paratroop Corps to fill positions left unattended by young soldiers or reservists called to active military service. In doing so I traded in my urban, sedentary, intensely private life of the “mind,” to join twenty five other complete strangers from six countries and seven U.S. states for an outdoor, communal, physically demanding  life on an Israeli army base.

At my assigned base, Tel Ha Shomer, located somewhere west of Tel Aviv, I worked under the supervision of Israeli civilian managers or soldiers.  In small groups of volunteers, we did jobs like shrink wrapping huge crates of army blankets. We swept out warehouses. We broke open tall wooden crates and hauled them into piles. We stacked heavy wooden pegs into crates. We unrolled, inspected, counted, and packed rubber mats used by soldiers on guard duty. We hand picked trash in preparation for base inspection. We took turns cleaning out our clubhouse and the girls’ dorm:  two rooms shared by eleven women--with one shower, one sink, one toilet, one mirror, at least twenty four suitcases, and a unbelievable amount of makeup and toiletries.

Each day we must have walked at least an hour or more back and forth under blazing skies to mess hall, to work site, to lunch, to work, and back again in full army uniform, head to toe.

Though at first it was impossible to believe that the jobs we were doing at Tel Ha Shomer Base were meant for anyone other than Israeli AWOLs, we were told that the work of Sar-El volunteers does save the Israeli government substantial income which would either be paid to civilians to do the base work we did, or would require non-combat reservists to be called away from their families, jobs, harvests, educations, or the Israeli economy in general. 

After a while however, though we all came to help, we really didn’t care whether the work we did was busy work or work that was truly useful to the Israeli army. What was apparent was that it was becoming important to us.  Blisters gave way to calluses, aching muscles strengthened, jet lag abated, faces tanned, pounds began to drop… and so did the years.  We starting feeling younger, and friskier. Analogies like boarding school, college dorm, and slumber party began to abound. In retrospect, I think we were getting some small taste of  what the early settlers might have experienced, coming from intellectual or shtetl environments to the deliberately physical work of literally building the State.  It was initially mindless, then eventually--heady.  As we met other Sar-El volunteers we found this impression to be fairly common. We also learned of other appealing volunteer assignments that seemed more directly related to the support of soldiers at the front:   helmet, antennae, gas mask or tank repair, for example.  Other volunteers work in base laundries, kitchens, or paratroop training schools alongside soldiers, or they even volunteer in hospitals.  There are jobs for every age (from 17 to 70) and ability. 

Regardless of assignment however, the majority of volunteers return multiple times, develop loyalties to the bases where they work, and form close attachments to the Israelis they meet and work with there.      

Our Israeli madricha, Maya, and our work site managers took good care of us. Maya kept us laughing through blisters, headaches, infirmary visits, weird fitting uniforms, and evening programs.  Our managers forced us to take work breaks, brought tea and snacks to the warehouses, encouraged us to take it easy, and looked the other way if  heat, dust, or jet lag got the best of us. I will be forever grateful for the entire afternoon Benny let me sleep when I crashed (for what I thought was to be five minutes) on a stack of dusty rubber mats at the warehouse on my second day at the base.

Perhaps it was the connection we made with our madricha, Maya, and the other young soldiers we befriended that reinforced this sense of new life, and this unexpected potential for sheer goodness in Israel.   Because these young men and women I met through Sar El, and as I traveled through Israel on my own, were not the macho occupiers that three years of Intifada coverage from afar had, frankly, prepared me to encounter.

Sitting solo on a Friday night, at the foot of the Wall, in the crisp Jerusalem air, I feel more quietly at home, more at one with myself than I have at any synagogue, anywhere, in years.  I sit in front of an ancient stone wall, surrounded by women I’ve never met, yet I don’t feel alone.

It feels so natural to be Jewish here.  It’s not something people do.  It’s just what I am.   

Israelis argue, debate, fall down, get up, repair.  And they persist.  They build memorials.  They build malls.  They make war.  They make art.  They make babies.  It feels so normal to be Jewish here.  Hebrew is everywhere.  The letters surround you like artwork.  All the streets are named for Jewish heroes, prophets, teachers.  It is like a biblical diorama.  How can they say we don’t belong here?

There is a saying:  Pick up a handful of soil anywhere in this country and examine it.  Look carefully, and you will see in it traces of Jewish blood. Who can deny Jews a right to live among others in this neighborhood ?

 Israel has moved me to the core.  It is not what I expected.  It is simply what I wished.

Madelyn Hoffman

New York, NY

May, 2003