Firstly, I apologize to all the readers for the lack of posts, I vastly overestimated how much free time I would have to write a blog during my army service. But I guess that’s not the only thing I underestimated.
During this first month and a half in basic training I have experienced the shock of being in the army, but also started to understand what it is to be a soldier in this country. It has been a hard month and half, but also a rewarding one. I have crawled though the thorns and rocks in the middle of the night with a full pack on, learned what happens if I don’t shave well enough in the morning, but best of all I have learned the feeling of finishing a full week in the army and having the incredible satisfaction of getting on the bus home on Friday morning SO ready for a restful Shabbat.
I have learned a lot of life lessons and things about myself, just in these first six weeks. I think one of the most important things I have learned has been that the army has a lot of ups and downs. When you are sprinting and crawling and being woken up four times a night from sleeping in your hole with no sleeping bag or anything to keep you warm, you feel like you have hit rock bottom. But when you finish that week and wake up Friday morning and put on your dress uniform on to go home, there is no better feeling in the world.
I don’t have a whole lot of time to really go into detail about how these few weeks have been and like I think I have posted before, I cant talk in any detail about anything that is going on so I will just give a bit of an insight of how it is going for me personally.
It has been hard both mentally and physically, but when each day is over you have some sort of satisfaction. One of the hardest things is never knowing what is to come. When you are in college or really most other places in everyday life there is some sort of schedule; classes that you know you have to go to, meetings that you have to keep. For us it pretty much up in the air, you wake up every morning having no idea what to expect. Apart from that there are amazing things as well. When you pray for the first time in the field, still in your sweaty smelly uniform, gun hanging down next to your hip, it is an amazing feeling. You really feel like you are where you dreamt you would be, doing what you dreamt was right for you.
In a week and half I have my Tekes Hashbaah, (swearing in ceremony) in which we take our guns home for the first time and are presented with a copy of the Tanakh along with our unit tags. Is is a big ceremony at the Kotel in Jerusalem and should prove to be quite a scene. It is looked upon here as one of the milestones in the army so I cannot honestly believe I have already made it to this point. I can still clearly remember the say I started the army and how nervous/excited I was getting on the first bus to the base.
One thing I realized this week, which has helped me dramatically is that I have so much support in this journey. Not just my friends, family and my garin, but all the people that you meet and learn of your story and your life. This last Thursday I was on a “Yom Kef” (fun day) for Lone Soldiers, (this was instead of parent day for the rest of the soldiers) and at the end of the tour the tour guide, who we had spent probably one and half hours with, invited every single soldier on the bus to Shabbat at her home in Jerusalem and read out her mobile phone to everyone and said if they ever needed anything not to hesitate to call. That was my lesson for the week, when it is hard for me and when I want to quit or not be there, remember all the amazing people that are behind me, who care, support and are so proud of me. That thought, and those people will be what I use to get through my future challenges—now to all of you reading this post: you are a part of that strength and support so for that I want to say thank and remind you that you are doing a Mitzvah helping me though this time of learning and hardship.
I pray that everyone has a restful, safe and relaxing Shabbat.
Shabbat shalom and much love, strength and prayers from Israel.
אנדרו
