TEL AVIV - We start our days raising the Israeli flag at a military post.  Then comes seven hours of light warehousing and equipment assembly work broken by a kosher lunch at an army mess hall.  Finally, an evening program conducted by a pretty young army corporal called a "madricha."

For most of us from Pittsburgh, it's a peerless way to enjoy Israel.  "Better than being a tourist," said one of our group.

We are here for three weeks in March as enlistees in Sar-El, the National Project for Volunteers in Israel. Our group is the largest to have come here so far from the Pittsburgh area. We are six men and five women, mostly retired, though volunteers from 18 to 80 in reasonable health are welcomed.  Sar-El has hosted more than 100,000 people from many countries since 1982.  Many of us have come before as individuals, but we're the first to travel from Pittsburgh as a unit.

We serve for the typical Israeli work week - Sunday through Thursday - at a military post about 45 minutes from Tel Aviv.  This base specializes in inspecting, assembling and repacking medical equipment for Israel's defense forces scattered throughout the country.

Dr. Alvin Bodek found nothing incongruous about wheeling cartons of medical instruments and surgical dressings around a warehouse following his retirement several years ago as a practicing physician.  "It's a meaningful, gratifying privilege to be able to serve," he said.

Sar-El's unpaid volunteers enable Israel's real soldiers to take on other duties while supplementing the paid work of the IDF's backup civilians.  The Pittsburghers have mingled with volunteers from Scandinavia, Australia, Canada and other countries -- all here with the same purpose.

"We feel we're part of our own homeland by contributing one of the most important things in life -- ourselves," said Alexandra Klinger of Shippenville, Clarion County.

Anna Adler of Shadyside, a travel agent, called the service "heartwarming" in a way unlike conventional tourism. Joe Titlebaum, who has a married daughter in Israel, said he "never fails to get at adrenaline rush visiting Israel, but it's great to give back a little to this country."

It's not all work, though.

On one day, the Pittsburghers filed into a bus to the small city of Zichron-Yaacov, which is perched on hilltops in the lower Galilee overlooking the blue Mediterranean Sea and a checkerboard of banana plantations and fish farms on the beaches below. The community of less than 10,000 was assisted at birth by the barons Hirsch and Rothschild in the late 19th century. There's an ambiance of arts, shopping and restaurants in the sunny Florida-like weather of spring. Visits to a military hospital and Israel's superb naval museum at Haifa rounded out the surprising day.

Volunteers Myron and Marion Taube -- he's a retired English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, she an accountant -- had expected to serve two weeks, "but we love it so much working with the Israeli soldiers we're staying for three," she said.

Myron Taube's capable hands -- he's an inveterate gardener and tinkerer at this Squirrel Hill home -- helped assemble defibrillator kits.

The Pittsburgh group also included Jeanne Bair of Munhall and her daughter Candace, who've become experts in repackaging medical gear here.

Jeanne Bair said more Pittsburghers wanted to join, but the group's prearranged dates, March 6 to 25, were not feasible for everybody.

Sar-El volunteers are responsible for their own costs of getting here, mostly air fare, plus the expenses of weekend tourism.  Otherwise, they have free room and board on military posts like any soldier, sleeping in separate men's and women's barracks, eating in mess halls with the uniformed troops. They are issued pre-used, but clean, army "fatigue" uniforms, and switch back to civilian clothes for evening programs and off-post activities. Several go off on weekends to visit friends and relatives who live in the country.

Some of the experience is sobering though never unsafe.

At one evening program a retired general in the army told the visiting Pittsburghers that he has serious doubts about long-term peace with the Arabs due to a "love of death" inculcated by radical Islamist teaching.

Several volunteers also received anecdotal impressions that tourism by American Jews remains in serious decline. Ironically, Christians from the United States and other countries are enthusiastically visiting, and even volunteering, here.

"There's no better way of learning what the soldiers go through, and how they cope, than by being here, rooming and board with them," said Herb Flash of Point Breeze, a retired pharmacist.

Dave Lambert, an Oakland printing consultant, noticed an Arab girl in headdress and flowing robes playing a guitar for small change on the streets and was impressed to hear an Israeli woman remark compassionately that "she, too, has to make a living."