Catching Up, Part 2: Gadna

Immediately after the (very sad) departure of my friends, Israel Experience Week began. For this week, we had three options to choose from – volunteering in Haifa, participating in Gadna, or doing an archaeological dig. Knowing that digging wasn’t for me, and deciding that I would be volunteering all of second semester, I decided to challenge myself and do Gadna. Gadna is a five day long stint in Israeli Army Basic Training. While it is all simulation, it is pretty close to what basic training in the Israeli Army is actually like. The program was designed both for foreigners who wanted to get a taste of the Israeli Army, whether just out of curiosity or to see if they actually wanted to join the real army, and also for Israeli high schoolers as a way of preparing them for what they would be doing in the upcoming years.

Thirty-three Nativers signed up for Gadna. We were driven, bright and early Sunday morning, to the Gadna base, which is located on Kibbutz S’de Boker in the middle of the Negev desert. We stepped off the bus and were told (in Hebrew) to form three lines. We were then split up (also in Hebrew…little did we know that the entire week would be conducted in Hebrew with everything being translated by one of the bilingual Nativers) into three separate groups – our tzevets. This is the group that we would do everything with for the entire week – all of our lessons, activities, chores, and meals would take place with our tzevet. There were twelve of us in my tzevet, including (luckily) my friends Ashley, Liora, and Sarah, but I wasn’t really close with many of the others in my tzevet. Each tzevet has a leader, or mifakedet, who is basically the commander of the group. After being split up into our groups, we learned how to take commands (the Mifakedet would give us a certain amount of time to do something, say 10 seconds, and say “Ten Seconds, Move!” and we would repeat ‘Yes Mifakedet, 10 seconds, 10…9…8…7…, but all in Hebrew) and we got our uniforms. The rest of that day basically consisted of running different places in different time increments so we could get accustomed to following orders. We also had an opening ceremony, where we met the higher-ups. Directly above our mifakdot was the samelet, a terrifying tiny redhead who told us that if we couldn’t breathe quietly we shouldn’t breathe at all. Above her was the Mem-Mem, short for something I don’t remember, who was less scary and even let us sit when he talked. Standing up at attention was my least favorite part of Gadna – not only did we have to stand with our hands making a diamond behind our backs, we also had to stand with our heels touching, feet pointed out. Anyone who has seen me walk for more than four seconds knows that my feet do not naturally go this way – and after the first fifteen minutes of standing like this, I was dying to point my toes inwards.

After the opening ceremony, my tzevet, lucky us, got a rushed ten minutes to eat dinner and then began our chore for the day – kitchen duty. Kitchen duty didn’t merely consist of ‘cleaning up’ after dinner – it consisted of three and a half hours of washing (fish) dishes in our uniforms, which we still had to wear for another three days…and we were in the middle of the desert at night, so while we were soaking wet, it was also freezing. It was this task that induced me to call my mother crying about how miserable I was, which in retrospect was a terrible idea, because in my absence my mother’s sanity is waning to say the least, and this caused her to be beside herself with worry for the entire week, no matter how much I assured her that the first day was by far the worst.
That night we curled up, all the Nativ girls, in our cozy tent with our putrid sleeping bag and blankets and cots. At night we had about an hour of free-time in which we were to do everything we didn’t get to do during the day, at the end of which we were to report back to our mifakedet, who would then give us about five minutes to get back in bed before lights out.

Monday morning we woke up bright and early at 5:45 (I can assure you, this did not make me a ball of sunshine) and be outside and dressed in our uniform to meet the mifakedet at 6:05. A word about our uniforms: they were VERY difficult to get on and off. The shirt had to be tucked into the pants, which was sometimes hard when I was wearing a sweatshirt underneath because of the cold, and was also difficult because my shirt only had one button. The pants came with a belt that was very hard to buckle because of my full canteen that weighed it down. We also had a giant coat that had to always be zipped and buttoned up completely, and which made me look so round that Ashley nicknamed me the ‘Weeble Wobble,’ which is an egg-shaped toy that has such a low center of gravity that you can throw it all around and it will rock a little and then stand straight back up. As a result of this less-than-convenient uniform, I went to the bathroom as infrequently as possible, because it took a good seven minutes to get redressed each time.

Mornings always started with prayer time, which luckily was optional and gave the girls a good 40 minutes to finish getting ready for the day (twenty minutes is not enough!) and to relax for a little, and call those at home, since it was only around 11:00 for them. We then usually did some cleaning up around the tents, including making sure all of our ‘civilian things,’ sleeping bag, and blankets were in order, and we rolled up the sides of our tent. Then it was breakfast time, and then on to our activities for the day.

Monday was field day, the most physical of all the days. We traveled by bus to the makdesh, or open area in the desert. When we were in the desert, instead of standing in two lines in front of our mifakedet, we had to stand in a circle, and answer only ‘yes’ instead of ‘yes mifakedet,’ so that if our enemy was watching he wouldn’t be able to know who was the leader and who wasn’t. Once in the makdesh, we learned all sorts of different army crawls, which were fun except I got sand down my pants, and I don’t like sand. We also learned how to run from ‘Rimonim’ or grenades (literal translation: pomegranates. Why the Hebrew words for pomegranate and grenade are the same, I’ll never know). Our mifakedet would throw a ‘rimonim’ (aka a rock) at us, and we would have three seconds to run as far away as we could and then get on the grounds and cover our heads. If we didn’t get far enough away, we were pronounced ‘dead’ by the mifakedet. We also learned the art of camouflage by decorating ourselves with desert brush and rubbing our faces with black powder. My favorite part of the day, however, was when our mifakedet picked up two rocks, a big one and a little one, and passed them around the circle, asking us what the difference between them was. Each person gave a different answer – “this one is sharper than that one” “this one is darker than that one” or “this one is heavier than this one.” When everyone had given his or her opinion, the mifakedet took the rocks and said to us ‘You’re all wrong. This one’s just a rock and this one is a RIMON!!!!’ at which point she proceeded to throw the rock down while we were all scrambling away to take cover. The morning finished with a few army-style games and relay races that were actually really fun.

That afternoon we had our first gun lesson – with the Mem-mem – in preparation for the shooting range on Wednesday, where we would all be shooting M-16s. We learned the nine safety rules of shooting a gun, which would be continuously drilled into our heads over the next three days.

That night, while we still had a duty, it was FAR better than kitchen duty – we got to sweep rocks. For forty minutes we were blessed with the chore of sweeping the rocks and dirt off all of the sidewalks. While it was definitely mundane, to say the least, after being subjected to kitchen duty I was truly grateful to be doing anything else. And at least that night for dinner we had more than ten minutes to sit down, relax for a little, and eat. The rest of the night was spent in different kinds of lectures and discussions, which were hard to sit through after such a long day. We then got our free hours and went to bed, to wake up and start basically the same process over again the next day.

Tuesday morning went the same as Monday, but since Tuesday wasn’t field day, the entire day was dedicated to lessons preparing us for the shooting range on Wednesday. In addition to going over the nine safety rules numerous times, we learned the names for the parts of the gun (in English and Hebrew), how to disassemble and reassemble the weapon, and the proper procedure and commands for how to enter the shooting range, load the gun, cock the gun, and when to fire. We practiced this procedure several times so that when we were in the shooting range with the Mem-mem on Wednesday, everything would be familiar to us. Although these lessons were quite interesting, our days were so long and I was running on so little sleep that it was extremely difficult to stay awake, which resulted in my Mifakedet having to make me get up and run a lap as punishment for falling asleep. These lessons were followed by some more relay-races, this time involving the disassembling/reassembling of the gun, some team-building games, more lessons and discussions, and (hooray!) a duty-free day.

Wednesday, the highly anticipated day at the shooting range, started out normally, except that after a hurried breakfast we were bussed to the shooting range. While things were being set up, we went over the rules one more time, and did some more relay-races and army style games. Of all the Nativ groups, we were the last to shoot, so we had already had a chance to watch two groups of our friends. We each had a test shot, to get the feel of the recoil, and then ten bullets. The gun was big, and a little bit awkward for me to hold, but once I started shooting it went really fast. It was a lot of fun. It’s not something I think that I’m necessarily dying to do again, but it was a really great experience and I think that learning about and using the weapons that we see soldiers our age carrying every day – walking around, at security checkpoints, and on buses – is an important part of living in Israel.

After the shooting range, the rest of Gadna went fairly quickly – we had a few more discussion groups, and Thursday morning we were privileged with bathroom duty, which was not fun but still not nearly as bad as kitchen duty. The best part of the week by far though, was the second that Gadna ended. That was when our Mifakedet – who had been giving us orders all week, yelling at us, not smiling, and laughing only on the rarest of occasions, only to then compose herself into a straight face and say “Lo mazcheek” (not funny) – was able to break character and introduce herself. This girl who had been giving us orders all week was less than 4 months older than me. As soon as she was able to, she had so much to say to us that the translator couldn’t translate fast enough – and she was so happy to be able to finally be at the part of the week when she could smile, talk, and laugh with us freely. Best of all, after worrying all week about how much we liked her and how she wouldn’t remember us because she had a different group of kids every week – she confessed that we were her first group. We were thrilled, because this meant that she would always remember us! Our group, most of whom weren’t good friends at the beginning, had really cemented into a team. We had even made up our own cheer, which we shouted at roll-call – “Tzevet Tesha, Lo Chookoomookoo!” which meant “Squad 9, Not A Mess!” and this was the cheer that even succeeded in getting the hard-assed Samelet to break character and laugh.

Although it wasn’t a week that was always easy or fun, I’m certainly glad I chose to do Gadna (Yes Dad, you were right). The kids that were in Haifa had more fun and were far more relaxed than we were, but I don’t think they got nearly as much out of the experience. Living in Israel, especially during that week when the operation was going on in Gaza, it’s impossible not to be acutely aware of the fact that the people risking their lives to defend this country and make sure that I’m safe during my year of playtime, are my age. Almost every kid in Israel spends years doing what I only had to do for five days. I think that it’s really important that I took the time put in a little bit of extra effort to really try to understand what it is that these kids have to go through. And I’m sure that being in the army is something I never want to experience again (not that they would even let me if I wanted to thanks to my pigeon toes), and so it was great to do it for a little while to appreciate those who defend my life, in both of my home countries, a little bit more…but let’s just say I’m glad it’s behind me.