Oh my Gad-na!
So, for those of you not following too closely, I had a mere 38 hours after returning home to Kibbutz Tzuba after visiting Poland (icky, icky place) before I was whisked off again to another experience. This one, however, was a bit more...involved, shall we say.
We travelled to Sde Boker, an Israeli Army base in the Northern Negev Desert, and after a pit stop to load up on shwarma in Beer-Sheva, proceeded to enroll ourselves in a 5-day course known as Gadna. No sooner had we stepped off the bus than we had about a dozen Israeli soldiers screaming at us in Hebrew to separate into groups and don the uniform of the Israeli Army...and thus begun our week of Hell.
There were no single days in this experience, just a blur of running, pushups, and lessons. Our mefakeddet (commander) decided that she liked to see a bunch of American kids sprint everywhere, so we did. A lot. If it took us 12 seconds to get one place, we had only 10 seconds going back. All kinds of fun, let me tell you. Every day we had several lessons dealing with all kinds of things from the basics of Tzahal (the IDF-Israeli Defense Force) to advanced weapons training to what it meant to be a Jew in a Jewish state. We took a 4-km hike in the middle of the desert, then played a game of military-style hide and go seek with camoflage. Also, our commanders gave us a test: two rocks were presented to us, and we were to tell which one was different. One of the rocks, our commander told us, could be found anywhere in the desert. The other rock, she calmly told us...
...was a grenade!!!!!!!!!!
This little game was hilarious for the officers, and we ended up playing it all day long. Our group would be waltzing along, and suddenly hear "Rimon smol!" (grenade on the left!) or "Rimon yamin!" (grenade on the right!), and we had three seconds to dive to the ground and cover ourselves. The consequences were either to not have children or to not have a head (and thusly not have children). Before someone calls the IDF to sue, don't worry. The grenades were never real. And in the end, the game was quite fun, minus an encounter with a yellow scorpion that shook a few of us up a bit.
The big perks of the Gadna experience for me were the fact that not only were we wearing the uniform of the Israeli Army, but we had just come back from Poland and experiencing the Holocaust. And now, we were preparing to fight for our country and for our beliefs---just as the original Zionists did to make the dream of a Jewish State come true. During the obstacle course, I set my tiredness aside, forgot the horrible sleeping conditions and poor hygeine we were under, and put all my energy into doing well. At one point, there was an 8-foot high wall to get over. This was done by getting a running start, jumping as high as possible, and flailing over the other side. The first two tries I think I was a little too enthusiastic, as I found myself on the other side of the wall, on the ground, without even having touched the top...my commander thought it was hilarious.
On the last day, we had the chance to fire 10 rounds from the M-16 A1, the assault rifle used by the Israeli and American armies. After three days of weapons training, I still wasn't too sure about the whole gun thing, since I'm not that into guns. Once I got to the firing range and shot, though, I could see that the guns we were using don't have to be just a method of destroying things---in fact, this country and much of the world wouldn't be around if not for guns. At a distance of 50 meters from a wind-blown paper target, I managed to fire one bullet practically dead center, and after watching the mefakdim (commanders) do a little celebration of another week of Gadna completed, we were ready to hang up our uniforms and go home. Getting back on the bus, I was a bit sad to have to go, but I'm fairly certain now that sometime in the future, the army will see me again as an Israeli citizen, and I too will have to serve my country just as the founders of Israel did.
After a long bus ride back to Tzuba, we had a few hours to sleep and then headed back out, this time to a complex of farms near Tel Aviv. Here, we picked palmellos (a citrus fruit, akin to a grapefruit) for a program called Table to Table. At the beginning of our stay in Israel, we picked onions for those that don't make enough money to buy bread in Israel. Well, the several hundred kilos of palmellos we picked went to the same people, hopefully making a difference in their lives for the better.
As if enough hadn't happened in the past two weeks, I received a call from my parents informing me that their plane was turned around over the Atlantic and they would be delayed in their coming to visit me. At long last, they arrived and proceeded to get horribly lost in the Judean Hills, and around 3AM that morning pulled up in front of the hotel here on Tzuba. We shmoozed for a bit, while they mused over how I'd grown and both laughed at my newly-grown beard. A few hours of sleep later, we went off to Tel Aviv to walk on teh beach, have falafel and shwarma, and just generally enjoy having some time together in between August 28th and January 2nd. That night we had dinner with our family in Jerusalem, and the next day it was time to get back into the "normal" groove of school.
Sunday, we went on a tiyul ("field trip") to learn all about the 1948 War of Independence, beginning at a kibbutz up north that was turned into an underground bullet factory, and continuing to the building in Tel Aviv where Israel declared its independence on March 14, 1948, at 4pm. Maybe in my next entry I'll expand on the sites in this tiyul and the 1948 war, but it's late, so I'll just outline for now. Not too long after the British withdrew from the Middle East, all of the Arab nations surrounding Israel rushed in to wipe the Jews into the sea. Ultimately, they failed, and although a heavy price was paid (1%, or 6,000 out of 600,000 Jews were killed), the State of Israel persevered and held on, defeating the Arabs and making the borders secure for the time being.
A succession of wars followed the '48 War of Independence, the first being the Sinai Campaign in 1956, in which Israel responded to attacks by Egyptian guerillas by capturing the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal. The story goes that Britain and France meant to help the Israelis, but by the time they got to Egypt to provide reinforcements, the Israeli soldiers were tanning on the bank of the Suez Canal saying "where were you guys?". In the end, the UN made Israel give Sinai back to Egypt, something only done once or twice in history---where the victor of a war actually has to give land back that they gained legitimately. The 1956 Campaign showed the Arab nations that Israel was now something to contend with, and this led up to the next flare-up of violence, the Six Days War.
On June 5th, 1967, Israel sent out planes before dawn to bomb the air bases of Egypt and Jordan, immoblizing the amassed military capabilities existing there. In the weeks prior to this event, Egypt's Prime Minister Nasser moved all his troops to the Israeli/Egyptian border, as well as closing off all trade routes and evacuating the UN peace forces in the area. He united with Jordan and Syria, and by June of '67, Israel knew that the Arab countries meant war. In an effort to surprise the tri-national Arab force, Israel launched a preemptive strike, and then moved its troops onto three fronts. On the Egyptian front, the Sinai Peninsula was captured again; on the Syrian front, Israel captured the Golan Heights; and on the Jordanian front, Israel re-took the West Bank of the Jordan River, now an Israeli territory. The biggest gain of the Six Days War, though, was the re-uniting of Jerusalem. From 1948-1967, Jerusalem had belonged to Jordan, and Jews couldn't get into the Old City to pray at the Cotel (Western/Wailing Wall). After all the hard work of the War of Independence, the Jews of Israel still couldn't pray at their holiest of holy sites. This was the focus of today's tiyul, at Ammunition Hill. This hill used to be a Jordanian outpost, and the Israelis took it by force in order to regain the Old City. After a long, bloody battle, the Jordanians were subdued and Jews began flocking into the Old City, blowing shofars and holding Torah scrolls high. For the first time in 19 years, Jerusalem---all of it---was again in Jewish hands.
This triumph is where we've left off for now, and it is getting rather late, so I must bid everyone adieu. I apologize for lack of entries since Poland, but I've been one busy puppy, running around with my parents everywhere and showing them the sights of Israel. Tomorrow, we're going to take an all-day excursion to Tzfat, the town of mystics and artists in the Northern part of the country. It'll be good to have some parents-and-me time, time that isn't just dinner and back to the kibbutz. Oh, and by the way, our group has again lost two more members, and the countdown to January 1st has inadvertantly begun. I really love it here, and would love to stay. On the other hand, even though this land may be my home, my home in the States has begun calling to me. Oh, what a paradox.
I do believe it's time to start what I call "living it up".
May the next month be a good one for you (in honor of Rosh Chodesh),
--Aron
aronaltmark@aol.com
Aron Altmark
NFTY-EIE High School
Kibbutz Tzuba
90870 D.N. Harei Yehuda
ISRAEL
**Please be sure to mark all letters with, “AIRMAIL.”
We travelled to Sde Boker, an Israeli Army base in the Northern Negev Desert, and after a pit stop to load up on shwarma in Beer-Sheva, proceeded to enroll ourselves in a 5-day course known as Gadna. No sooner had we stepped off the bus than we had about a dozen Israeli soldiers screaming at us in Hebrew to separate into groups and don the uniform of the Israeli Army...and thus begun our week of Hell.
There were no single days in this experience, just a blur of running, pushups, and lessons. Our mefakeddet (commander) decided that she liked to see a bunch of American kids sprint everywhere, so we did. A lot. If it took us 12 seconds to get one place, we had only 10 seconds going back. All kinds of fun, let me tell you. Every day we had several lessons dealing with all kinds of things from the basics of Tzahal (the IDF-Israeli Defense Force) to advanced weapons training to what it meant to be a Jew in a Jewish state. We took a 4-km hike in the middle of the desert, then played a game of military-style hide and go seek with camoflage. Also, our commanders gave us a test: two rocks were presented to us, and we were to tell which one was different. One of the rocks, our commander told us, could be found anywhere in the desert. The other rock, she calmly told us...
...was a grenade!!!!!!!!!!
This little game was hilarious for the officers, and we ended up playing it all day long. Our group would be waltzing along, and suddenly hear "Rimon smol!" (grenade on the left!) or "Rimon yamin!" (grenade on the right!), and we had three seconds to dive to the ground and cover ourselves. The consequences were either to not have children or to not have a head (and thusly not have children). Before someone calls the IDF to sue, don't worry. The grenades were never real. And in the end, the game was quite fun, minus an encounter with a yellow scorpion that shook a few of us up a bit.
The big perks of the Gadna experience for me were the fact that not only were we wearing the uniform of the Israeli Army, but we had just come back from Poland and experiencing the Holocaust. And now, we were preparing to fight for our country and for our beliefs---just as the original Zionists did to make the dream of a Jewish State come true. During the obstacle course, I set my tiredness aside, forgot the horrible sleeping conditions and poor hygeine we were under, and put all my energy into doing well. At one point, there was an 8-foot high wall to get over. This was done by getting a running start, jumping as high as possible, and flailing over the other side. The first two tries I think I was a little too enthusiastic, as I found myself on the other side of the wall, on the ground, without even having touched the top...my commander thought it was hilarious.
On the last day, we had the chance to fire 10 rounds from the M-16 A1, the assault rifle used by the Israeli and American armies. After three days of weapons training, I still wasn't too sure about the whole gun thing, since I'm not that into guns. Once I got to the firing range and shot, though, I could see that the guns we were using don't have to be just a method of destroying things---in fact, this country and much of the world wouldn't be around if not for guns. At a distance of 50 meters from a wind-blown paper target, I managed to fire one bullet practically dead center, and after watching the mefakdim (commanders) do a little celebration of another week of Gadna completed, we were ready to hang up our uniforms and go home. Getting back on the bus, I was a bit sad to have to go, but I'm fairly certain now that sometime in the future, the army will see me again as an Israeli citizen, and I too will have to serve my country just as the founders of Israel did.
After a long bus ride back to Tzuba, we had a few hours to sleep and then headed back out, this time to a complex of farms near Tel Aviv. Here, we picked palmellos (a citrus fruit, akin to a grapefruit) for a program called Table to Table. At the beginning of our stay in Israel, we picked onions for those that don't make enough money to buy bread in Israel. Well, the several hundred kilos of palmellos we picked went to the same people, hopefully making a difference in their lives for the better.
As if enough hadn't happened in the past two weeks, I received a call from my parents informing me that their plane was turned around over the Atlantic and they would be delayed in their coming to visit me. At long last, they arrived and proceeded to get horribly lost in the Judean Hills, and around 3AM that morning pulled up in front of the hotel here on Tzuba. We shmoozed for a bit, while they mused over how I'd grown and both laughed at my newly-grown beard. A few hours of sleep later, we went off to Tel Aviv to walk on teh beach, have falafel and shwarma, and just generally enjoy having some time together in between August 28th and January 2nd. That night we had dinner with our family in Jerusalem, and the next day it was time to get back into the "normal" groove of school.
Sunday, we went on a tiyul ("field trip") to learn all about the 1948 War of Independence, beginning at a kibbutz up north that was turned into an underground bullet factory, and continuing to the building in Tel Aviv where Israel declared its independence on March 14, 1948, at 4pm. Maybe in my next entry I'll expand on the sites in this tiyul and the 1948 war, but it's late, so I'll just outline for now. Not too long after the British withdrew from the Middle East, all of the Arab nations surrounding Israel rushed in to wipe the Jews into the sea. Ultimately, they failed, and although a heavy price was paid (1%, or 6,000 out of 600,000 Jews were killed), the State of Israel persevered and held on, defeating the Arabs and making the borders secure for the time being.
A succession of wars followed the '48 War of Independence, the first being the Sinai Campaign in 1956, in which Israel responded to attacks by Egyptian guerillas by capturing the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal. The story goes that Britain and France meant to help the Israelis, but by the time they got to Egypt to provide reinforcements, the Israeli soldiers were tanning on the bank of the Suez Canal saying "where were you guys?". In the end, the UN made Israel give Sinai back to Egypt, something only done once or twice in history---where the victor of a war actually has to give land back that they gained legitimately. The 1956 Campaign showed the Arab nations that Israel was now something to contend with, and this led up to the next flare-up of violence, the Six Days War.
On June 5th, 1967, Israel sent out planes before dawn to bomb the air bases of Egypt and Jordan, immoblizing the amassed military capabilities existing there. In the weeks prior to this event, Egypt's Prime Minister Nasser moved all his troops to the Israeli/Egyptian border, as well as closing off all trade routes and evacuating the UN peace forces in the area. He united with Jordan and Syria, and by June of '67, Israel knew that the Arab countries meant war. In an effort to surprise the tri-national Arab force, Israel launched a preemptive strike, and then moved its troops onto three fronts. On the Egyptian front, the Sinai Peninsula was captured again; on the Syrian front, Israel captured the Golan Heights; and on the Jordanian front, Israel re-took the West Bank of the Jordan River, now an Israeli territory. The biggest gain of the Six Days War, though, was the re-uniting of Jerusalem. From 1948-1967, Jerusalem had belonged to Jordan, and Jews couldn't get into the Old City to pray at the Cotel (Western/Wailing Wall). After all the hard work of the War of Independence, the Jews of Israel still couldn't pray at their holiest of holy sites. This was the focus of today's tiyul, at Ammunition Hill. This hill used to be a Jordanian outpost, and the Israelis took it by force in order to regain the Old City. After a long, bloody battle, the Jordanians were subdued and Jews began flocking into the Old City, blowing shofars and holding Torah scrolls high. For the first time in 19 years, Jerusalem---all of it---was again in Jewish hands.
This triumph is where we've left off for now, and it is getting rather late, so I must bid everyone adieu. I apologize for lack of entries since Poland, but I've been one busy puppy, running around with my parents everywhere and showing them the sights of Israel. Tomorrow, we're going to take an all-day excursion to Tzfat, the town of mystics and artists in the Northern part of the country. It'll be good to have some parents-and-me time, time that isn't just dinner and back to the kibbutz. Oh, and by the way, our group has again lost two more members, and the countdown to January 1st has inadvertantly begun. I really love it here, and would love to stay. On the other hand, even though this land may be my home, my home in the States has begun calling to me. Oh, what a paradox.
I do believe it's time to start what I call "living it up".
May the next month be a good one for you (in honor of Rosh Chodesh),
--Aron
aronaltmark@aol.com
Aron Altmark
NFTY-EIE High School
Kibbutz Tzuba
90870 D.N. Harei Yehuda
ISRAEL
**Please be sure to mark all letters with, “AIRMAIL.”
posted by aron at 2:51 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home