Up Close and Personal with the IDF
Madelyn Hoffman
May 8, 2003 - Jerusalem

For two weeks, I was a volunteer with a program that supports Israel and 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 with Volunteers for Israel®. 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, 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, toiletries, and even (gasp!) jewelry.

Each day we walked so far back and forth, under blazing skies, in head to toe army uniforms—to mess hall, to work site, to lunch, to work, and back again—that our faces tanned from sun reflecting off asphalt.

At first it was impossible to believe that the jobs we were given at the Base could be meant for anyone other than Israeli AWOLs. We were told, however, that Sar-El volunteers save the Israeli government money they would otherwise have to pay civilians to do the jobs we did, and that volunteers bring valuable moral support from abroad to IDF soldiers. Sar El also lightens the load of non-combat reservists who would otherwise have to be called away from their families, jobs, harvests, or educations to do the jobs we did.

After a while, however, though we all did come to help, we really didn’t care whether our assignments were 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 started feeling younger, and friskier. Analogies like boarding school, college dorm, and slumber party began to abound. In retrospect, I think we were getting a microscopic taste of what the first settlers experienced as they moved from intellectual or shtetl environments to the deliberately physical work of literally building the State. It was initially mindless, but then, eventually, heady. As we met other Sar-El volunteers we found this impression to be fairly common. We also learned from them of 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 made us want to come back. Maya kept us laughing through blisters, headaches, infirmary visits, weird fitting uniforms, and evening program. 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.

Our work days ended by 4:00 or earlier, at which time, we would limp back to the bunk, nap, shower, “dine” at the base dining hall, and have an evening program run by our extraordinary young Sar-El madricha, Maya. Free time after that was whatever we could stay awake for. Maya and her fellow army guides also took us on a great midweek trip and organized weekend tours or booked Sar-El discounted accommodations for volunteers who wanted to spend weekends on their own. We also observed Yom Ha Shoah, Yom Ha Zikaron and Yom Ha Azma-ut. (Holocaust, Memorial and Independence Day) ceremonies with Israeli soldiers on our base, a second base, and at the Soldiers' Resort in Ashkelon.

Perhaps the world seemed far away because we watched so little TV. We typically got the news through our madricha, Maya, each morning at flag raising. Our group even went on a tiyul (trip) to Tel Aviv one day after the suicide bomb there; and though we stayed away from the neighborhood of the deaths, I saw no hint of the prior day’s event in parts of the city we did visit.

It’s uncanny. The country seemed so relaxed. It’s not like everyone was sitting around waiting for the next bus to explode. You forget about danger. What must it be like then, I wonder, to be suddenly bereaved, or to be unexpectedly traumatized in a place like this? Does one feel doubly traumatized--from pure shock? Do the bereaved feel even more isolated because life barely skips a beat for everyone else?

For here is the paradox: Despite a week bracketed by national holidays of remembrance for those lost in the Holocaust and fallen in national wars, Israel, did not look to me like a country in mourning. (A resident of Manhattan, I feel qualified, unfortunately, to make such comparisons.) Though I know that loss touches every Israeli and runs, inseparably, through the culture, the Israelis I met and observed appeared neither disassociated, depressed, nor hyper-alert. Though the Israelis were sad at times, appropriately, they weren’t despondent, and they weren’t numb.

I also found Israel to be a profoundly cosmopolitan place. I came to help, fully prepared to feel tense or claustrophobic, an intruder even in a society preoccupied with daily threats. My experience was the opposite.
Israel, in fact, did a lot more for me than I could ever do for her. Israel made New York City seem like the epicenter of world tension. Israel and Sar El forced me, (a trauma specialist, who helped people cope after 9/11…) to slow down again, live in the moment, and pay attention once more to the sights, sounds and the people around me.

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 stonewall, 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.

I sit writing on the porch of the YMCA, across from the King David Hotel, looking beyond at the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. I look around at the startling display of history and life. At 55, Israel is no longer a dusty, sleepy country, barely touched by the West. It has adapted to or in some cases even outpaced Western technology, and it is apace with fashion, music, television, sports, even fast foods. Yet it remains unmistakably distinct - and on this 55th anniversary of its birth, stunningly alive.

After this extraordinary time in Israel with Sar-El, I see that this nation has not only survived, it has thrived; and it is no dream. I feel it in my very bones. Am Yisrael Chai.

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

On Yom-HaShoa (Holocaust Day) ceremony