Week 2

Throughout last week, the question on everyone’s mind was, are you going to the Gibbush? During the second week (the first full week), there’s the option to do Gibbush Yechatiot, an additional gibbush once you’ve already been accepted to tzanchanim to try and get placed in an even more elite unit like sayeret matkal, duvdevan, maglan, etc. I thought about doing it for a while, but Tzanchanim has been my dream and I’m very happy to stay here. Plus, since I’m older, if I did succeed in the Gibbush, it would mean extending my service from a year and a half to 3 years. Almost everyone who’s in tzanchanim is driven and wants to be the best soldier they can be (90% of the draftees went to the Gibbush), so the mefakdim asked me over and over again if I was sure I didn’t want to do the gibbush.

Since it’s been incredibly hot, the Gibbush was to start during the night and would be conducted mainly throughout the night.  Sunday we woke up and then right after lunch were given 7 hours to sleep. For those of us gibbush “refuseniks” it was free time.

So for those of us who didn’t go to the Gibbush, what did we do? The army hates idle time and is allergic to free time, so they hit us with my new least favorite string of Hebrew words “Avodat Rasar”. Its mindless, meaningless labor, that’s said to beautify the base, which is hard to do because of how stupid and seemingly unnecessary it is.


Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday we picked weeds. In the 100° heat, we hacked at weeds with shovels. It was awful, draining, work for works sake, but it was an introduction to doing things that aren’t pleasant. I got blisters on my feet and a “V Kravi” almost immediately (the sunburn in the shape of a V on your chest where your collar opens)

Theres a lot of things in the Army that are really annoying, and you really don’t want to do. But that’s exactly why they do it.

A lot of times, when you ask soldiers about the army, theyll tell you there’s a lot of things that are stupid, and they do for no reason. ככה, that’s just how it is.

But after going through perhaps the greatest example of that, you realize it’s all to build mental resilience. You’re forced to do things that you don’t want to do and trudge through them. A great skill for a soldier.

On Wednesday, I got “betim” for the morning, meaning I got to sleep.
I went to the Chopel (the medic) the night before and told him I’d only been sleeping four and a half/five hours every single night, and I had a headache and a cold and coughing, and my throat hurt the entire, you know, past four or five days.
He told me to sleep the next day, but I told him, I didn’t want the whole day. I want to do the work. I slept in the morning, felt incredibly refreshed and then went back to work.

  At the end of the Third day of avodat rasar, we went back out, thinking we’d be going to pull more weeds out. Instead, the mefakdim sat us down ( in a ח of course) and asked us to volunteer stories about our reasons for doing combat. What was our why.
These “kids” spoke about how October 7th alrered them. How it changed their overall mindset towards Israel and changed what they wanted to get out of their army service. It made me think of my reasons and although there are hundreds (and I plan on writing them all up here eventually) one of the big ones is that post October 7th. I’ve thought a lot about the Holocaust.  Thinking about what I would have done had I been there?
The army is my answer. Exactly this. This is what I wish I would have done, and this is what I’m doing  Joining the fighting force to defend the Jewish people. To never let it happen again. 

I’m very happy that I’m here. It’s been an incredibly hard week. I know next week is going be harder and the week after that even harder, but at least it will be meaningful, at least we’ll be doing things that have some sort of relevance to actual combat.

In that vein, I feel like a lot of people, myself included, haven’t started really thinking about this as training for combat.  It’s feeling a lot like camp and we’re excited about individual things that will go on during training, without being able to zoom out and understand why were doing them. For avodat rasar, all the conversations were about how annoying it was and in bunk conversations no one was making the connection that it’s something that will help with your mindset as a soldier. That it’s building us up and strengthening our resilience.  The parachute jump will be fun and its cool that next week we get our guns and learn about them, but is anyone processing why were learning about our guns. Why were even getting guns. Im not sure. Or maybe people do think about it but they’d rather not speak like that. Theyd rather training be compartmentalized. 

I got out for shabbat felt that excitement of being a chayal on the outside, back in the real world in uniform.

You really have to be mindful of time throughout your service. During your one hour of break, you’re incredibly mindful of how you spend time on your phone, what’s worthwhile and not. I’d heard back from one lone soldier house that I wouldn’t be able to get in due to my service being shorter, and so during the hour breaks, I’d been figuring out alternative options and setting up interviews. On Friday I interviewed in Jerusalem, went to pack up my apartment in Herzliya, went to the beach, and then to Modiin for shabbat by family. A busy day.

Waiting for me in Herzliya was a special order I’d made. I custom designed and printed a pocket version of the letters of Yoni Netanyahu. His writing and way of thinking, both about his army service and the world, was incredibly inspiring to me when I read it this past year. I knew I wanted to keep his mindset, words of encouragement, and army philosophy close by throughout my service.

Overall the week was hard, it was challenging, but there’s a great feeling of accomplishment in setting out to do things you don’t want to and finishing them with a smile.