[Travelogue] En Medias Res
moocowinthecity -= En Medias Res =-
Many weeks ago now I went to meet a friend for the first time. Another friend of mine in Portland, Oregon – Itai – introduced the two of us to each other. If I had never met Itai, I would have most likely never been introduced to Jerusalem and Israel…and I don’t know if I would have ever come to discover Israel for myself on the first thirty day trip that I took to the country (the same trip that sparked the Travelogues that I now write). The friend I was introduced to is Aleks. He wanted to come to my kibbutz for the weekend (he’s was studying on the same ulpan I did when I arrived in Israel…he was even working with the same cows that I worked with!).
I told him that, in all honesty, there is nothing to do on my kibbutz on the weekend (except for dodge qassam rockets). Instead I suggested that we go to Jerusalem for Shabbat at the Kotel (the Western/Wailing Wall). I have been to Shabbat in Jerusalem many times before, though never at the Kotel…and I thought it was about time that I make an appearance and properly welcome the Sabbath Queen.
We decided to stay at Heritage House, a free religious hostel in the heart of the Old City (I stayed there during my pre-aliyah trip). After dropping off our bags and after I was able to jump out of my uniform into civilian wear and he was able to change, we made our way down the main road to the Kotel.
When we got to the stairs, I couldn’t believe what I saw – the stairs were teeming with people. A group of girls were singing and people were joining in…the only thing I could think of as their voices reached the heavens was Miriam leading the women to the water…dancing. ..people weren’t walking…everyone was dancing! Even if they were dancing slowly, they were dancing nonetheless. ..it was a sea of people making their way down the stairs to the Kotel. I turned to my friend and told him to say hello to his extended, global family, apparently they all decided to show up. We waved hi.
As we finally started to make our way down the stairs we began to dance with everyone. We made our way through security and entered. We rushed to ritually wash our hands at the fountains. Three times each hand – to make sure they were ritually pure – and then we continued to dance down to the wall itself…our bodies moving us. I was wearing jeans, converse sneakers, a t-shirt and a jacket and my very obvious tattoos. I don’t own much more than jeans and a few t-shirts outside of things that are green with “Tzahal” (IDF in Hebrew) imprinted on them these days. My friend was similarly dressed. No one thought anything of it. Not a single comment, not a single evil eye.
So here we were…
We had our Kippot on
…now what?
Somewhere in the middle of the men’s section a haredi – very religious – man (he was wearing a tall black fur hat and a black coat, and he had pais, the long curls of hair by his ears, though I’m not sure what sect he was, but he was definitely haredi) was shouting “Minyan! Minyan!” (requesting the minimum number of male Jews required to have a prayer service) so we walked up to him and we said “we’d love to…but we’ve never prayed with someone who’s haredi before…we don’t know how you pray” he asked us what our first language was (he could tell that we had accents). We had refused to speak in anything other than Hebrew that weekend and outside of once or twice – primarily to tourists – we did a good job of it. We told him English. He asked us where we were from and we told him – it turns out he’s from Upstate New York. He said not to worry, he’d show us.
He got out two prayer books, and we waited for a few more people to arrive…and then we started to pray, and all around us voices were singing…people rocking back and forth, myself included, because your body moves to the beat of the prayer…like when camels move across the desert and flow like a ribbon, there’s a beat that everyone just picks up on and you can’t help but to move.
If the sound of re-constructionist, reform, conservative, orthodox and haredi singing together in what ultimately turns into a cannon of Lecha Dodi as we all started Kabbalat Shabbat – the prayer service invented by our mystics in Sfat – just a few moments apart from each other does not move HaShem (God) and lift the angels and please them all, I don’t know what will – I’m still walking on the clouds hoping this feeling lasts until the next Shabbat when I am able to return to the Kotel.
And we prayed together, this haredi man turning the pages for us and pointing to where we were if we got confused, and while I might not have known the order or why we turned pages back and forth and I still don’t think reading as fast as possible is the best way of doing things, I certainly knew the prayers because they are the same ones I learned growing up at my synagogue back on Long Island…and then something happened that I have been praying will happen at temples and synagogues throughout the world, who adhere to such rigid rules and all too often quiet the laughter of children:
Everyone who I was praying with, primarily old men with long beards, started clapping…they were clapping out to the Lord, and singing…clapping and singing LOUDLY!!! We were uninhibitedly rejoicing in what Shabbat has to offer us…every embroidery of Jews dancing, every tapestry, every applique, every tallis border of Jews dancing in circles flashed before my eyes as I clapped and prayed and sang out, as it is written in the book of Psalms 47:1 “Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy” with the Hebrew jumping off the pages of the prayer books and the texts just swirling around us, wrapping us in the warmth of Shabbat in front of where the Second Temple once stood, at the wall that was held up by angels because it was built by the hands of the poor not by the wealth of the rich, and this – we’re told – pleased the Lord.
CLAPPING! Singing! Swaying! You’d think we were at a rock concert! Nothing else mattered because Shabbat was finally here! In the Midrash it is written that the Land of Israel is situated in the center of the world, and Jerusalem is in the center of the Land of Israel, and the Holy Temple is in the center of Jerusalem… and if anyone comes on a Friday night and sees the moving masses of skin colors that traverses the pallet of colors that comprise the human flesh then they will know that there have been few truer words ever spoken…perhaps only one phrase: “Shema Yisrael…” “Hear oh Israel…”
After we finished praying and we shook hands with those who prayed with us, Aleks and I made our way to a rooftop that I know of. This particular rooftop happens to be where all of the quarters in the Old City intersect and we shared fresh vegetables from the shook (the market) that we purchased earlier in the day and we looked out over the Temple Mount and we enjoyed the night sky of Jerusalem… the real Jerusalem, the Jerusalem you don’t see on television.. .Jerusalem, the City of Peace.
-= Non-Commissioned Officers/Specialist s Course =-
On Thursday, January 7, 2010 I received a call from my commander letting me know that I was being sent on the Non-Commissioned Officers/Specialist s course for Foreign Relations. This would be a six week intensive course to make NCOs out of us (never mind that I’ve been doing the job for a little more than a year and a half, I would finally be getting the title that goes along with it).
We would be traveling throughout the country, spending more than 86 hours a week in a classroom, learning navigation in the mountains by being dropped off with nothing more than a compass and a map, among many, many other things.
The course – like so many in the Israel Defense Forces – was comprised primarily of female soldiers. With me there were five other guys. We slept in our own quarters in what looked like a hunting shack on the outskirts of the base.
After check-in on the first day we were sent to clean up our quarters. After we cleaned the room we were waiting for the Company Sergeant Major to come in and tell us that we’re the most worthless crew he’s ever dealt with before and that he can’t believe how dirty the room is and…I can do this speech verbatim…it’ s the same on every course…which is a problem for those of us who have a sense of humor and have a problem with institutionalized absurdity.
Anyway, we were waiting around and I decided it was now or never. I turned to the five other men I’d be living with, and having made a decision to do things differently than I did in basic training (older and wiser now) I said “I’m a pretty direct kind of guy, so we’re going to address this now. I’m gay…does anyone here have a problem with that?”
They all said no. One of the other soldier’s father is gay and he grew up partly in San Francisco and partly in Israel, and almost all of them had a gay friend or two, so it wasn’t new to them.
So why does it matter?
When I hid my sexual orientation (and by rote of that, lied daily) during basic training and my first army course it took a serious toll on me during the first three months of my service. People don’t realize how often things come up where sexuality plays a large roll…because when you get a bunch of guys together, sex comes up…often.
What do people think we talk about? Soldiers hanging around waiting for a commander to show up aren’t taking about the weather or politics…I hate to spoil it for you, but I can assure you that the conversations we have in the bunkers are just above the level of ‘carnal pleasure that would make Hugh Hefner blush’ and well below ‘deep philosophy’ and are nowhere near as wholesome as a conversation about our Grandmother’ s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies and last week’s Friends of the Library meeting on Nancy Drew, as some would have you think. I know, I’ve been in bunkers with enough soldiers to have some kind of authority on it.
And it’s not like you can’t say anything when one of the guys you’re serving with ribs you in the chest and asks “so who’d you take home last weekend on leave?”…there’ s a level of awkwardness when you have to reply “Joe…sephine. ..”
But here in Israel, we serve in a people’s army…and that means that the outlook is very different. I was on guard duty two weekends ago and there are certain questions I get at least once a week (being a twenty-five year old immigrant in the army is interesting to someone who’s eighteen).
“So why didn’t you join the US Army?” this eighteen year old asked me as we made our way to the mess hall to have a Shabbat dinner. “I can’t, I’m gay” I told him and he started to laugh until I looked at him with a serious face. “What!? Wait…seriously. ..!?” he was shocked. “Yeah, there’s a rule called don’t ask, don’t tell, but if they find out or you admit it, you’re out” he stared at me for a few moments, not saying anything and then said what every other Israeli has ever told me when they find out about it: “Wow…I’d expect that in Iran, not America.”
Coming out of the closet on the first day of my specialists course didn’t create a rift or destroy solidarity, rather it allowed me to tear down a wall that would have kept six of the most amazing guys I have ever met out of my life, because they wouldn’t get to see who I am with my friends, what I do on the weekends…they wouldn’t have gotten to know me.
Today, the guys that I did my specialists course with are as close to me as brothers: we showered together, worked out together, learned together, held each other when someone was crying…and despite claims from the US Army that it destroys solidarity, the only thing that I can tell you is that when I hid who I was, I never felt like I was part of my crew and my crew didn’t think that I was part of them and it wasn’t fair to them, because they couldn’t figure out why there was a perceptible distance between me and them and why it wasn’t an “us”.
What we learned on the course is confidential. ..something we can only share with ourselves, behind closed doors and something we can’t talk about outside of the confines of a military base. What we learned about ourselves, however, is something that we’re all still coming to terms with.
On February 18, 2010 we joined a small, elite section of the army. We are now some of the few who are tasked with the job of being the voice of Israel on the borders, with the United Nations and in front of the World Armies. We are also the ones, after numerous drills during the course, charged with carrying out evacuations of foreigners and foreign forces during times of war.
As we were asked to approach our commanders, our commanders went down the formation and placed our pins on our uniforms – this pins show that we were all now NCO/Specialists for Foreign Relations (every NCO course has a different pin). We were then called up one by one to accept our certificates from two Colonels and a Brigadier General.
As I shook the hand of one of the Colonels, someone who I had an incredibly intense meeting with during the course, he looked me in the eye and said “Kol HaKavod” – all the respect.
-=Moving out of the Kibbutz=-
After finishing course I returned to the kibbutz to more problems. Mice had moved into my room, there was water damage, I once again lost most of my belongings, and the frustration of living five kilometers from civilization, one kilometer from the Gaza strip, on a kibbutz where no breakfast was served, dinner only twice a week, where soldiers were treated more like renters than soldiers finally took it’s toll on me and despite my true love for the kibbutznicks there, and my love of kibbutzim in general, I had had enough.
I went to base and put in a request to move to an apartment funded by the Friends of the IDF and in two weeks my application was approved and I moved into a gorgeous apartment in a high rise building in the coastal city of Ashdod. Walking distance from malls, shops, grocery stores, minutes from the beach and rapid transportation.
The apartment itself is huge, the floors are tile, and the balcony overlooks the city. The city itself is incredibly clean, the people friendly and quiet.
I can’t tell you what the roommates are like, since I’ve only met two of them…and at that, I’ve only met each of them only once. I’ve been so busy I’ve only slept there twice…though I’m looking forward to enjoying it a few weeks from now!
I’ll be living here for roughly the next year, until I finish out my army service or become a contracted soldier or officer – I still haven’t quite decided on the next few years of my life.
“Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.”
– Victor Hugo
On April 18, 2010 a sound was heard echoing from the mountains up north through the deserts down south. Two whole minutes go by and not a movement is seen, not another noise is heard. People stop in the street, traffic comes to an absolute stand still. Grown men fall to their knees in public and weep uncontrollably and are unable to be consoled.
The noise pulsates and moves through your bones and I stand with my fellow soldiers on a line of attention as the senior officers salute; the siren eventually turns into a wail the longer it goes on until it eventually fades, taking a last breath as it is absorbed by the hills and mountains and hearts of those who bear it.
This is the voice of dead soldiers; male and female and canine, our brave brothers, sisters and four legged companions who walked with and without uniform into combat, and stood on the front lines making the ultimate sacrifice. This is their voice screaming up from the battlefields where they fell, it is the voice of children so incredibly young screaming “remember me” and for those who hear the siren it is as if their hands are clawing up from the dirt, and make no mistake, they clutch at you, you feel heavier.
The common mistake that those in the army are somehow pro-war or anti-peace can be dispelled by the tear drops that can be counted on their uniform’s shoulders from holding one another as we try to remain standing.
Yom HaZikaron, or memorial day, is spent solemnly throughout the country.
However, like most things in the Jewish tradition it’s bittersweet. As nightfall comes sadness gives way to light…because as night falls we enter into a great celebration, the modern rebirth of the State of Israel as memorial candles are exchanged for blue and white flags and parties break out in the streets and spontaneous celebrations of life can be heard from every area of the country.
Children look at their mothers and fathers with almost a sense of awe and their grandparents in astonishment – you were in the Hagana? Palmach? You plowed the fields that we pass by on the way to school!? Grandma brought bullets into the Old City of Jerusalem in her hand-basket (my commanders grandmother did).
There are lots of things that are special about Israel, one of them is that things here work out. Every expression of sorrow is followed by a celebration of joy…it is not by chance that our memorial day ends on the night that our independence day begins. A day when you wake up and you find something destroyed you can be sure that something will be created in the evening…even if it’s an incredibly long day or an incredibly long night.
-= Hakpatsa! =-
It was cold, so painfully cold as only the desert in Israel can obstinately get – Israelis are stubborn, you have to be to make the desert bloom, because the dessert is stubborn too. I was on guard duty, dark bags lined my eyes and my feet were bleeding into my boots – literally – and my fleece was just warm enough to ensure that my teeth only chattered occasionally. I was on patrol alone on base when the call came through the radio, crackling through and breaking the stillness of the night air.
“HAKPATSA, HAKPATSA, HAKPATSA” – my worst nightmare, a dream I’ve woken up from at least a hundred times since joining the army, the IDF Ground Forces Command was under attack. We’re a base of specialists, we’re not a base of combat soldiers…our commanders are worried when we use a stapler…not totally unwarranted, mind you: my first week on base I accidentally stabbed myself in the leg with a fork and knife while simultaneously dropping a bowl on the floor of my office.
“PATROL, PATROL, COME IN PATROL” I grabbed the radio out of my vest nearly dropping it as the adrenaline surged through my body and I ignored the nausea that came with it “PATROL HERE, CONTINUE” “SECURE THE COMMANDERS OFFICE, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO” was the order that came back as I started to run to where *the* commander of the IDF Ground Forces, the Major General, works. He was there working late with his staff…of all nights.
“WINGS OF STEEL ARE ON THE WAY, COUNT DOWN IN SIXTY SECONDS, REPEAT SIXTY SECONDS PATROL, SECURE THE OFFICE”
My feet running and jumping over every area of the base that I stay at more than my own home, the offices of my friends and those who are like brothers and sisters to me flying by. As I run I extend my collapsible M16. Everything I learned in Basic Training is playing like a movie behind my eyes, every lesson that a 21 year old girl, an immigrant from Ethiopia taught me coming back to me in an instant. As I approach the office I start to crouch and touch the ground every three steps to make sure that I keep my head down, remembering what a family friend once told her daughter to tell my mother to tell me – he was a Sergeant in the US Marine Corps “keep your head down”…and he’s right.
My breathing is incredibly heavy and seconds are feeling like hours until I hear the aircraft coming in for a landing. I look around and run, there’s no time for second thoughts, I slide to the door of his office and do some quick reconnaissance before I pound on it, my M16 held tightly, finger on the trigger.
I call in “PATROL TO SECURITY, OFFICE SECURE, OFFICE SECURE, READY FOR EVAC, READY FOR EVAC” and the nearly three seconds it took for an answer was enough for me to relive Kindergarten through High School Graduation (which seemed strange, since I didn’t attend High School Graduation) “PATROL, CLEAR FOR EVAC, GO, GO, GO”
“SIR, AFTER ME” – the only time a senior office will ever let a Corporal proceed him into a dangerous situation, In the IDF officers stand in front of their soldiers and the older soldiers stand in front of the younger ones and every soldier stands in front of a child.
I can’t look into the faces of his staff…these are my friends, these are the soldiers who I work with on a daily basis, but I can’t look into their eyes as we run to the helipad I scream to remind them to keep their heads down. My vision outlined by the straps of my bullet proof helmet shows me that this flying fortress is letting down it’s drawbridge.
One by one we seem to throw them onto this monstrosity with wings as I hear shots in the background – one of the other patrols has engaged the enemy, a story they’ll tell at the bar…please God let them be able to tell it at the bar…
The door slams shut and this hunk of metal lifts up as if it were nothing “PATROL TO SECURITY, ON WINGS OF STEEL, ON WINGS OF STEEL, CLEAR, CLEAR, CLEAR'” and I want to heave as I swallow down bile “SECURITY TO PATROL RENDEZVOUS, RENDEZVOUS” and I begin to run again, amazed that I can run with a weapons vest, close to five hundred rounds of bullets and a full load of gear but that only hours earlier I tripped up the stairs going into my office and face planted onto my office floor.
The wetness of the desert is making my skin feel clammy, a word I still can’t quite get the Israelis to grasp and I see the rendezvous point and look side to side like crossing the street and as soon as I’m sure I recognize the commanders face to make sure that it isn’t a Trojan Horse I make my move and run to them as we circle up, standing in a ring facing outward, back to back.
The radio crackles through “RENDEZVOUS, RENDEZVOUS, SITUATION REPORT” as we count down our numbers to make sure that everyone is accounted for “COMMANDER TO SECURITY, SITUATION GOOD, ALL PRESENT” “SECURITY TO COMMANDER, PRACTICE OVER, GOOD JOB RAPID RESPONDERS”
Every soldier is a gunner.
-=Information Security=-
After I returned from the course in February I was moved to a different area in the same branch. While I still hold the concurrent positions of Staff Linguist, English Teacher, Base Security & Rapid Responder I would now be serving in the Overseas Office and be in training to take over as the Deputy Commander of the Overseas Office. This new job also includes with it the concurrent position of being the Staff Information Security Officer.
On April 25, 2010 I took the one day seminar course as the prerequisite course for entering the position and tomorrow I go to base to receive my temporary transfer orders.
From May 23, 2010 to June 3, 2010 I’ll be on an Information Security Specialists Course courtesy of the Intelligence Corps. I am incredibly excited. What this means for you, however, is that I’ll be out of reach for two weeks.
-= Three Stripes =-
On May 2, 2010 after a weekend of guard duty (which I seem to be doing an awful lot of), with dark bags under my eyes and my hair just a little farther back on my head, I received my promotion – early – to Sergeant. My uniform now has three stripes on it and I make an extra shekel and a half (or something like that) to the tune of about 185.00USD a month…being a soldier is a labor of love.
I was presented with a photo album that had two pictures in it. The cover of the album has a photo of me taken at around 06:30hrs in my office when one of my fellow soldiers thought that it was important for the historical record to prove that I’m not a morning person. The other photo, on the inside underneath the inscription to me, is a photo of a sign that I have hanging on my front door. The sign has my last name in Hebrew and a cow on it.
My commander told me it was time to start keeping a real photo album of my army photos and to stop keeping them only on my thumb drive. I look forward to filling it up.
-= Friends of the IDF =-
The Friends of the IDF provide soldiers with the things we need that the army (either through unwillingness or bureaucracy) can’t or won’t provide us.
I had put in a request for plane tickets to return to Long Island to see my family and friends (as well as to attend what will no doubt be the wedding of the year). I wasn’t expecting them to cover the cost of the ticket. Actually, I was expecting them to reject my application outright.
In Israel, if you’re a man and you’re not a combat soldier, you’re considered the lowest man on the totem pole (doesn’t matter what your job in the army is).
I was shocked to find that the Friends of the IDF not only agreed to help me, but that they agreed to cover the cost of the ticket in full. I went to go to their offices in Tel Aviv to take care of the necessary paperwork and when we finished the young woman across from me handed me an extra envelope.
I asked her what it was, and she told me that it was a 100 Shekel gift card to the bookstore so I could buy a book to read on the plane. I was in shock. I thanked her and she looked at me funny and said “No…thank YOU.”
I picked up my tickets later that day and the day after I picked up a book in Hebrew to read on the plane (a mystery novel). While I was at their offices I also wrote a thank you card and they took my photo to enclose in it, so I could thank the family that donated a round trip ticket to a soldier who they’ve never met.
From June 27 through July 26, 2010 I’ll be in the United States for thirty days of leave before returning to Israel to carry on with my work. Fortunately, the coming year brings with it more trips and far more hiking now that I’ll be settled (at least temporarily) in my new position.
There are a lot of questions about what the immediate future in the army will hold for me. What is not in question is that I’m salivating and chomping at the bit as I get closer and closer to my goal of academic fluency in Hebrew, and closer and closer to my goal of working with some of my people’s most ancient documents.
Until next time,
Peace, Love & Hummus,
Matan
P.S. If you know of anyone who wants to subscribe, please send me their name and email address to matan@nomadmatan. net
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