Week 24

There’s a certain delight, a special pleasure, in knowing the week ahead will be easy. This was one such week. 

Rumors had gone around motzash that Sunday would be a half day. There was a celebration in Tel Aviv for the anniversary of the founding of Tzanchanim. The entire chativa, army wide, would be attending. 

We spent Sunday morning at the shooting ranges, the sharpshooters breaking off to do our own drills, and at about 11, packed everything up. We did a little bachmas practice, scaling the wall and climbing the rope, and then boarded buses to head to Tel Aviv for the celebration. 

I had a Yom siddurim the next day and left early from the event. I met up with Ariella, still here in Israel on her last night. 

I made sure to pack my Yom siddurim. In the morning, I went to the YMCA to use the sauna, pool, and jacuzzi – give the sore, cramped muscles a well deserved rehab. It felt great and I’m definitely going to go again. I met up with Ilan for minyan and we worked at a cafe for a bit. I did some errands and shopping in the afternoon and then headed to Tel Aviv to see Jeremy for dinner. After that, I broke off and went on a second date. We went to a small concert. The date was fun but we realized were not matim the following day and aren’t continuing. Still though, I don’t feel like I wasted time on a Yom siddurim, which would have just made it worse. 

I got back to the base around noon on Tuesday. After an evaluation of our classmates, ranking who we thought would be good candidates to be officers, we heard there was a hakpatza. We were on konenut this week and could be called to any situation that called for backup throughout the country. After rushing to get our bags and everything ready, we realized it was just another one of those fake hakpatzas to test our readiness.  This time though, there were different stations set up throughout the pluga to test our skills. There was a station for doing different shooting stances, a station for opening up rooms, a station for krav maga. Evaluators from the gdud were there to test our competence. 

We set up our tikei lau for the masa the next day – 40% body weight – and had a krav maga session where we finally started learning how to defend against a knife attack. At night we had a shiur from the סמ”פ on the dangers of the 40 km masa. I’d never worried about Masaot before, but they’ve also never given us a safety presentation before Masaot. What was different about this one that it required extra caution?

We woke up around 5 the next day and set out for the masa at 7:45, our first masa during the day. Honestly I’m relatively good at Masaot, it’s just the time that gets to me. Hours of continuous walking. The strategy everyone learns in the army is chunking: splitting everything big into smaller, more manageable parts. It’s not a 40 km masa, it’s just 6 kilometers and then a 10 minute break, 6 kilometers and then a 10 minute break, (four more times) and then 5 kilometers with alunkot. Thats much more manageable – mentally at least.

We got back to the pluga at 5:15; 10 hours later. I have a crazy blister and I’m sore all over – that was the reward from this masa. 

Luckily, the rest of the week actually was chill. We had sidrat chinuch: the army takes us to museums/gives over seminars to strengthen our why. To help ground us in our service and help us remember the importance of Israel and it’s defense. 

Thursday morning we visited the museum of the underground prisoners, the site of the old prison in Jerusalem that held political prisoners pre founding of the state. Everyone was sore all over, so we hobbled from place to place. I have to say, it also felt really weird being in Jerusalem with my Machlaka and pluga, like an unexpected and unwanted crossover episode. My two distinct worlds combining. Until then, coming home to Jerusalem meant leaving the base and the army behind. Here I was, in madim with everyone from the army. 

After the museum, we traveled to kfar etzion, where we’d be staying for the next few days. We were given our phones and told we’d have them on us throughout the sadach. The מ”פ explained that In the gdud we’ll have them at all times and thats how the mefakdim will communicate with us and let us know where to be and when; why not practice that now. I don’t care the reason; it was a nice taste of freedom. 

In kfar etzion we had different shiurim – from the מ”פ, מ”מ, and סמ”ל. The point of the little seminars was to strengthen the intellectual/logical/emotional side of our army service. To strengthen our reasons. 

On Friday, we drove to Jerusalem and started our day with a tour in Nachlaot and then were given free time in the shuk. I ran home to my apartment to grab a jacket and then grabbed shawarma and snacks. From there, we traveled to a mitzpe in Jerusalem and heard from the father of a fallen soldier. We sang and danced a Kabbalat shabbat.

That night, after a nice shabbat dinner, we had a 3 hour sichat Machlaka. The מ”מ ran some conversations and  exercises that probed at the bond between our tzevet. One such exercise had everyone close their eyes. One person was selected each time to go in the middle. The מ”מ would read a statement like “this person brings down the machlaka” or “I feel confident going into war with this person” and the person in the middle would tap the shoulder of two people he felt represented that statement. 

We had more shiurim shabbat day. This time, we spoke about morals and values. Questions like, “if you’re in a house in Gaza can you take whatever you want?” or “if a units commander was killed by terrorists and the army found the terrorist, should that unit not be allowed to carry out the mission to capture him due to their personal connection?” I don’t know if any other army spends time training their soldiers with moral/philosophical dilemmas. 

Saturday night we had a shiur from the מ”פ, again on values in the army and then a shiur with our מ”כ about our why for being in kravi as opposed to other units.  

We chose a sentence and shared our why. I have hundreds of reasons and do want to write a much longer blog post going into them, but I’ll share what I said then. Our מ”כ scattered a bunch of quotes on the ground and asked us to pick one that best represented our why. I chose “השואה והאנטישמיות בעולם גורמים לי לרצות להגן על העם  היהודי.״


October 7th changed my life. I was living on the Upper West Side and working in a consulting firm down in SOHO. I remember going into work after and feeling confused and mad. I tried getting work done but I couldn’t focus. Every couple of minutes I had to go back to my phone, scroll through the news and Twitter to see any updates on the situation. How many confirmed hostages were there? How many Israelis had been murdered? How many terrorists were still inside Israel? I felt an intense cognitive dissonance, working on powerpoint slides for some meaningless consulting project and then turning to my phone and reading about how the people and country I love, my family, were suffering an incredible tragedy. It felt wrong to not be doing anything but I didnt know what to do. What could I do 6,000 miles away?

On top of that, I started seeing the signs of growing antisemitism around the world and in Manhattan. I saw hostage posters defaced and torn down, anti-israel/antisemitic graffiti on street corners and sidewalks and I even had someone on a bike once shout at me “Genocide supporter!!” Just because I was wearing a kippah. I grew up with Holocaust survivor grandparents and a rich Holocaust education in school and remember thinking this all felt too similar to early signs of the ostracisation of Jews simply because they were Jewish. I wanted to do something about it but I didn’t know what. My initial idea, and my solution to feeling like I was doing something, was to make Aliyah. I wanted to go home – to where Jews can feel comfortable being Jews. I’d planned on making Aliyah for a few years at this point but never this soon. October 7th moved up my date.

I made aliyah April 11 2024. Two days later Iran sent it’s first barrage of 300 missiles into Israel. 2 weeks later Israel celebrated Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut. Maybe even more than my Aliyah decision, those days and experiences made me feel like I needed to do something. I felt the need to protect, to contribute and to serve. Especially after spending time on Har Herzl and going to different Yom Hazikaron memorials, I felt an unfairness in these people giving their lives and me thinking that Aliyah was enough. I needed to give to the country in the same way that everyone did. (This also motivated the decision to do combat instead of an intelligence job; I felt like I needed to do something physical and something that felt like I was a soldier. After years of working and internships, I thought an intelligence, office job would feel too much like a regular job.) Ultimately, when you know it’s the right thing to do, and you know there’s only one way to really contribute and feel like you played a part in helping the country and people you love, how can you not do it. I could either draft now or spend the rest of my life regretting not drafting.

At some point, in another blog post, I want to go through my entire draft thought process, the emotional, logical, practical reasons that pushed me to draft. But for now, this is what I shared with my class and what I’ll write here.

Sunday we went to Har Herzl. I didn’t feel like we spent nearly enough time there but it was special being there in an army uniform; it added a level of comraderie with these fallen soldiers I’d never felt before.

We went to Yad Vashem afterwards and I had similar thoughts. Too short a visit but a very different feeling than past visits.

And that was it. We ended our sidrat chinuch at Yad Vashem and headed back to the base. It was helpful having these few days to reflect and think about our why, especially after my experience the week before in thinking of quitting. It was nice to take a pause from all the physical training and remind ourselves why it’s important were here at all, doing what we’re doing. Learning how to protect the people and country we love.