Week 9

שבוע הגנ”ם – הגנת מחנה
“Defending the camp”. We’d all been anticipating this week for some time. We’d heard caution about how annoying and aggravating it is. It’s a week of doing shmirot, kitchen duty, avodat rasar, etc.
Truth is, this week was one of the most relaxed, easygoing weeks we’ve had. As soon as I got back to base on Friday, I was told to put on full gear; I was first in the guard duty rotation. During this guard duty, you’re not allowed to sit, read, listen to music (no way that’s even possible at this stage of training since we don’t have phones), or walk around. You just stand there for 2 hours.

I thought, hummed and whistled some favorite songs, and stretched my legs. In a way it’s kind of nice; there are no mefakdim shouting commands at you, no sprinting back and forth on a timed schedule. You’re able to decompress from the craziness of life on base. I had another shift that night and, after the relative ease of the first, anticipated it without any hesitations.

On Shabbat, our Machlaka had Mitbach (kitchen) duty. Since we can’t clean or cook dishes on Shabbat, during the night and day, it was just serving the food to the entire base. As soon as Shabbat was over, we spent 3 hours cleaning the entire kitchen and cafeteria. Looking back, those 3 hours were a nice way to ease us into Sunday’s job: kitchen duty.

From 6 AM to 10 PM on Sunday, we were in the kitchen. I was in the meat section, cooking dishes and bringing ingredients back and forth throughout the facility. Other people had dish cleaning duty, cafeteria cleaning duty, vegetable chopping, meat prepping, etc. It was a long, tiresome day but again, since the mefakdim aren’t really present and you’re not operating on “stopwatch time”, it went by pretty smoothly. There’s also something deeply gratifying about working with your hands and staying continuously busy throughout the day. A nice sense of immediate accomplishment working on thousands of little tasks throughout the day. We walked back to our Pluga at 10 and went on a 4.5 km run.

Something important to keep in mind about Hagnam: the regular rules of allotted sleep hours, prayer times, meal times etc. dont apply. You’re not guaranteed anything. On top of that, I’m not really able to sleep so well when I know I have something important to wake up for, like a flight. On Sunday night I went to bed after the run at around 11:30 and, after tossing and turning for a few hours, woke up at 3:15 for a 4 AM Shmira. The person doing guard duty of the armory in our pluga does the wakeups. He does it so early because we need to walk to the front of the base 30 minutes before the start of our slot for the Mefakdim to check that our magazines and water bottles are with us and full. It was an easy 2 hour shmira and, luckily enough, I was able to nap for 45 minutes after before we were woken up again for the start of the day.

In the morning, after breakfast, we were run around and yelled at by the mefakdim for doing something or other incorrectly (probably all a show) and then I went to another shmira. I had a Hebrew lesson in the afternoon with the Mashakit Ivrit; the other chayelim bodedim were on guard duty/kitchen duty so I had a solo lesson. We just spoke and listened to Hebrew songs.

That night, Chag started and we ate meals in the Sukkah. Aside from meals and davening with the Lulav, it’s hard to appreciate Chag in the army. It doesn’t stay top-of-mind. I rushed to eat the first night meal since I had shmira again at 8, this time with someone else. It was great; having another person with you for Shmira helps pass the time incredibly well. Also, those two hours of forced Hebrew conversation were like a month of Ulpan. Not only from a language perspective, but also in terms of learning about Israeli culture. I was placed with someone who, luckily, unlike most of his fellow TikTok generation, is cultured and a deep thinker. We had loads to discuss.

We spoke about religious journeys and being Dati in the army, our shared love of music, how all of the army feels like a show and doesn’t feel real yet, and how childhood in Israel prepares you for the army in a fundamentally different way than my experience as a lone soldier. In Israel you grow up with an acute awareness of the army’s presence and of the fact that your father, older brother, neighbor, and everyone around you is serving or has served in the army. He said that he, and everyone in this country, has daydreams in class when they’re 6 years old about what they would do if a terrorist broke into their classroom. How would they defend their class and be a hero. Since it’s not a far-fetched reality, kids grow up with those thoughts, normalize their consciousness to war and terror and I guess become more ready for drafting and war through their upbringing.

Tuesday Chag was pretty restful; I napped and finished my book. After Chag, we had a workout, 4k run, and then went to the kitchen to help another machlaka for 2 hours. We went to bed around 1. The following day we had kitchen duty again all day; kitchen duty starts 6, so I only got around 4 1/2 hours of sleep. A pretty tired week overall.

Luckily, for this day of kitchen duty, I slipped a small book into my pocket. For whatever reason, the person in charge of the meat section, disappeared for 2 hours (he later told me he fell asleep accidentally) so I snuck to the bathroom and got to read for a bit. We came back to the pluga around 9 and my name was called along with 4 other chayalim. We were told to go to the gun cleaning area: Naknash. There, we were told that we would be the “Kalaim” of the unit: sharpshooters. I’m over the moon. I really didn’t want to get the heavy negev because of lower back issues and I know the Kalah is the best assignment – everyone wants it. We gave in our guns – we’ll be getting new ones – and rejoined the machlaka.

On Thursday, the rest of the Machlaka did shmirot, but since I gave in my gun and therefore couldn’t defend a base, I was on kitchen duty again until 2:30. I rejoined the Machlaka and went with the pluga to watch “We Will Dance Again”, the Paramount documentary on the Nova Massacre. This was after the deal had been signed and, before the movie started, the Mefaked Machlaka told us all that regardless of our thoughts on the deal or our politics, we should all be thrilled that the hostages are coming home.

The movie was incredibly powerful and devastating. I’d seen clips here and there of the terror attack and massacre but never in such detail or with the stories that accompanied them. It was heartwrenching and hard to watch, but I’m grateful the army showed it to us. It strengthened my resolve for drafting and my desire for being a part of the IDF. To ensure that nothing that barbaric and heinous ever happens in Israel again. To defend this country and nation that I love. I felt all my reasons for drafting surge back to me and felt incredibly grateful that I was sitting on an IDF base, in uniform while watching the movie. Training to be a soldier. It’s a great feeling; knowing that I’m doing the absolute right thing and that I had the conviction to follow through on a life-altering decision.
(I’ll have to write a much longer blog post on my decision to draft)

We had a workout, Machlaka wide conversation about the week (which we have at the end of every week), and packed to leave for Shabbat the next morning.

On Friday, I met up with Liav, a friend from Yeshiva and roommate in college, and bumped into another Orayta friend.

Jerusalem feels brighter, the sky bluer, the streets calmer and happier now that the war is over and the hostages are coming home.

Am Yisrael Chai