I've recently returned from five days' volunteering at Beit Lid army base, located not far from Netanya. During this time, I was part of the Sar-El corps, working for the Logistics division of the Israeli Defense Force (known in Israel by its Hebrew acronym צה"ל), in a base for members of the Paratroopers (צנחנים in Hebrew). We were scheduled to leave from Ramla mid-morning on Sunday, but ended up leaving late-morning, because of a confusion of where we were supposed to meet our guides. "We," by, does not include all of the (already severely-diminished) members Israel Way's ITF and Community Involvement volunteering groups from Ramla, but includes just Ari, Florencia, Julia, Juliana, Shira, Melisa, Noah, and me. We picked up Veta on our hour-long trip to the base (I cheered as she got on the minibus), bringing us to a total of nine volunteers: seven women and two men.
On our first day at the base, we were introduced to the soldiers with whom we were assigned to work, fed, given our bunks and uniforms, and told the basics of our task. We also began our work, which I'll presently describe. It felt unusual for me to be putting on a uniform. Although my paternal grandfather was a mapmaker in World War II, and one of my maternal ancestors had the unpleasant job of collecting Confederate corpses from the battlefields of the American Civil War, I don't come from a military family, by any stretch of the imagination. True, I wasn't a soldier, I was just wearing the uniform, and, even more true, not everyone who wears the IDF uniform is involved some way in combat, let alone a combat solider, but the uniform still didn't feel right on me.
As I mentioned before, we worked for the Logistics division while on base. Inglorious work, but important for military preparedness, etc. The task that the base had ready for us was -- folding maps. That's right; we had literally several thousand maps, printed on poster-size laminated paper, that needed to be neatly folded, stacked, bagged, tagged, and transported to their holding space. There were far too many rolls of maps for the nine of us, plus the group of soldiers who intermittently worked alongside us, to have any hope of finishing by Thursday morning, the set time of our departure. The way we would agonizingly turn a pile of tightly-rolled sheets of a paper into orderly stacks, only to have another pile of rolls dropped off in its place at times made the entire task feel Sisyphean. We tended to work in teams of two or three, in which the first person made the initial fold or folds, and the second and third completed the work. Creasing the folds became quite difficult by the end, and I saw several people around me using their cellphones to press down the maps' edges, in order to keep them flat. I had some very good conversations with the other volunteers, particularly Florencia, as well as with the soldiers, during this mind-numbing task. At one point, one of the group-members got a call from a friend in the army, who said that what we were doing was pointless, and that nobody cared about our work. This really made me doubt the value of my work. The work, I know, would have been done anyway, but my members of the Reserve forces rather than unpaid volunteers. In my mind, that at least means that I saved the IDF a few shekels in Reserve pay, and some miluimnikim the bother of hauling themselves out to base in order to perform an insipid task.
Some of the soldiers with whom we were working, such as Nir and Noam, spoke English quite well. Other soldiers, as well as most of the soldiers with whom we spoke around base, did not. I spoke in whatever language made the Israelis most comfortable. I got in quite a few funny conversations in Hebrew. I hope that my conversational Hebrew is improving; sometimes I'm not so certain that I have enough Hebrew-language interactions outside of school. Most of these conversations took place in the mess hall, which was also in the process of purging itself of all chametz in time for Pesach. I ate better at the mess hall than I had in weeks (months?). It's really hard for me to complain about all-you-can-eat chumus and Israeli salad.
Sar-El evening activities were interesting, and I wish that I had had the opportunity to be around for more of them. On Monday night, Suzi, our madrichah, put us through a couple of hours of imitation tiranut (basic training), which was not nearly as physically demanding as the real thing. Sure, the very first thing, Noah and I needed to do push-ups for looking in the wrong direction, and there was some running around involved, but nothing too severe. On Tuesday night, after Suzi helped us sort out our different divisions of the IDF (the organization is rather different than the tri-fold Army-Navy-Airforce division of the U.S. armed forces'), the paratroopers with whom we had been working performed some combat drills for us, showing us how they take cover, move tactically, shoot in different body positions, etc.
Throughout my time at Sar-El, Noah coached me through better forms of upper-body exercises. He's quite knowledgeable about such things, and I think that I'm going to be able to get at least slightly stronger. Pretty much, I've been doing what I always do, and have been working harder without working smarter. No, I'm not going to be as muscular as Noah anytime soon (or ever), but I'll have a little bit more upper-body strength, with patience. As an example of the intensity of these workouts, my the soreness in my legs resulting from from Wednesday's squat sets did not subside until Monday morning. I guess I need to spend more time strengthening those muscle groups.
On Thursday morning, after breakfast, Roi, the officer of our group (who spoke with flawless English, by the way), kindly drove us off base, where we caught first a bus, and then a train, to arrive back at Ramla. Veta and a few of the other volunteers headed off in other directions. I'm now sitting in my apartment, alone, preparing for Pesach. Veta is in Chaifa, and Alex is in Europe, as are many other members of our group. I'm looking forward to Seder tonight, which will be my first in Israel. Galit and Micha'el (Tamir's parents) have invited me to come with them to Galit's parents' seder. This should be fun (note: this is the same family who welcomed Rose, Ben, and me to their house on Rosh Hashannah and on Yom Kippur break-fast).
By the way, the entire time at the base, I was burrowing my way through Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, which Eli had lent to me two weeks ago. It's very hard to put down, and I very frequently found myself thinking about general relativity, quantum mechanics, and vibrating strings while I was busy folding maps. Eli asked me for a review of the book, and I thought that as long as I was writing it, I might as well share it with the rest of you on JDWrit. The book argues for the acceptance of Superstring Theory, especially as modified by M-Theory
in 1995, as the most likely theory explaining the working structure of
the universe. The way we are used to being taught is based upon the
Standard Model, and the main difference between superstring theory and
the Standard Model is that the superstring theory replaces the Standard
Model's point particles with tiny, vibrating strings. This causes some
key differences, such as the fact that this model offers a "bouncing"
theory of the Big Bang because it prevents the universe from shrinking
below Planck Length, that it unifies quantum mechanics and general
relativity, that it "postdicts" gravity, that it can allow for
superstrings to get "wrapped" around spacial dimensions at key points in
the evolution of the universe, etc. Unfortunately, the book was first
published back in 1999, and a lot has
happened in the past 15 years of physics! Even someone outside of the
world of physics such as myself heard about the discovery of the Higgs
Boson a couple of years ago, for instance. According to the Preface to
the 2nd edition (written in 2003), some of the less extended spatial
dimensions described in the book (M-Theory explains the universe as
having 10 spatial and 1 time dimension) are not as "small" as believed
when the the book was written. Also, it helped me sort out some of my
more basic physics, such as special and general relativity, and quantum
mechanics. The last book that I read about q.m. was very poorly
written, and I walked away with very little information. There's a lot
of good stuff, well worth the ride, although, I admit, I still don't
fully understand things like the space-tearing coniform flop-transitions
of Calabi-Yau spaces. Highly recommended for style and content, although the content might by now be slightly dated.
Chag Sameach and love from Israel to you all!
~JD
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