So there I was on a tour bus, headed for several days on an Israeli army base and God-knows-what-horrors-I-would-find-there.
It was the fall of 2006, and I was doing the American Reform movement’s high school semester in Israel. Built into the program was Gadna, a weeklong IDF program for Israeli teens that gives them a taste of what lies in store for them after high school. We Americans were there by choice — which is insane.
Knowing that Gadna would be part of my semester almost kept me from going to Israel at all. But in the end, I went. It turned out to be several days of grueling exercise, ludicrous educational sit-downs and, in my case, mild embarrassment that largely stemmed from me being as bad at P.E. in Israel as I was back home. True, I was named my squad’s soldier of the day on one occasion, though I think it was because my commander could tell I was one eyelid twitch away from losing it completely.
We 40 Americans were split into three squads for the week, and plunged in among hundreds of Israeli students going through the same program.
Gadna was filled with “ceremonies,” most of which felt a lot like school assembly, except you have to stand at attention the entire time. Each began with “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, played from a boom box. At one such “ceremony,” the boom box skipped horribly for several minutes before some officer decided we’d better abort the song and move on with life. Afterward I was reprimanded severely for my “inappropriate” laughter.
Inappropriate laughter was a big part of my Gadna experience. In a moment of downtime, my commander ordered us to ask her questions — any questions we wanted. Up to this point, she had been a stone-faced, disciplined officer; she had not smiled once. I asked about the goldfish that she and the other commanders had stitched onto the strap of their M-16s. She immediately turned and walked away, failing to hide her laughter. Finally, we had cracked her. Evidently, the fish was some in-joke among them, a reference to a joke their commander had told them while attempting to train them not to laugh.
Within the hour, I had spread this valuable intel to the other American squads. Across a field, later that day, I saw another commander fall over laughing. Success! The third one was harder to crack.
That is, until the day my friend Tal took an extra chocolate milk — shoko — from the dining hall. Israeli shoko is packaged in a little plastic bag that you bite the corner of before sucking the milk out. Tal had secreted this in the front pocket of his uniform pants. Later that day, when we learned how to dive away from a grenade, things didn’t turn out well for Tal — or his pants. And his commander finally laughed.
Leaving aside all my liberal baggage about guns, the absolute highlight of Gadna was getting to fire 15 rounds from an M-16. I did not hit my target once, and yet it was completely fun and entirely exhilarating.
The low point was the propagandistic “education” we received in preparation for our day at the firing range. It included heavy-handed reminders about the Israeli army’s superior moral fiber and the like. It also included, as if it was somehow relevant, a viewing of selected scenes from “Operation Thunderbolt,” one of three films about the famous IDF rescue mission in Entebbe.
Our last day on the base was devoted to track and field. Each squad of Israeli students marched from one challenge to the next calling out hearty chants adapted from Israeli soccer cheers. Our commander exhorted us Americans to show some spirit as well. Much to the amusement of the Israelis, we began moving between exercises singing fragments of “Tradition” and dancing like Tevye.
In retrospect, I’m not sure what to make of this bizarre paramilitary adventure. However, the paths we all took are worth noting. On the bus home, my most gung-ho classmate, an Israeli American from New Jersey, was ready to join the army the next day. She now considers herself an anti-Zionist. At least one of us has made aliyah, adopting a more Israeli-sounding last name and serving in the army. Me? Well, I write for the Jewish media. And, almost unbelievably, the Reform movement still sends kids on Gadna.