Daniel’s Army Experience – 2

I walk out of the office furious and I call everyone who I think might be able to assist me at 8:45 in the morning before most people are at work. I call people from the Lone Soldier Center, Nefesh B’Nefesh, and the Absorption Director at my school at IDC Herzliya.

I get in touch with the head of the Lone Soldier Center and I am lost for 1 hour in the heart of Jerusalem trying to find his office and once I meet him the only information he gives me is to finalize my status in Israel as an Israeli Citizen and give him a call in six weeks.

The hero of the day is Absorption Director at IDC and I spoke with her once she was in the office. I told her about all the problems I had and she said this is ridiculous that she would talk to the 19-year old and see what she could do.

Two minutes later I get a phone call from the 19 year old and he says “Daniel, come back to the office. I will see if I can help you.” I called the Absorption Director and she told me that she was able to scare this “brave soldier” by yelling at him and putting him in his place.

I get back to the office and it turned out that the Rambo of desk jobs has a supervisor and I am able to go through the recruitment process as originally planned. This is where the real fun begins. I have pulled off the amazing accomplishment of living in Israel for three years without learning Hebrew, and my first test is to test my level of Hebrew.

After meeting me for 3 seconds it was obvious that I would need to take an extensive 3 month course in Israel, but that did not stop them from testing me for 30 minutes. I have not written in Hebrew since I was 12 years old at my weekly Sunday school, and here I am being tested on difficult words that I do not even understand.

The girl testing me had never experienced anything like me before and during the part where I need to write down what she was reading she read slowly and tried to stress each major syllable thinking that it would make a difference. We had our conversation in Hebrew and they only think I said which she understood was “I know I have three months of Ulpan in the army.”

To make matters worse the kid sitting next to me when I started the Hebrew test looked like he was 14, and he was soon replaced by this stereotypical obnoxious punk Israeli teenager who came fully equipped with the Carpe Diem tattoo on his forearm. The next station was my physical and thankfully it went well.

I am blessed to not have any medical problems, and even if I did I would not have an easy time communicating with these people in Hebrew. The girl who looked at my chart told me that she did not speak English and all I knew what to say was “Baruch Hashem, en baiyot,” which I think means “Thank God, No Problems.”

I go through a three minute examination and they “doctor” concludes that I have a perfect profile to do combat. The final stage of the day was intelligence. There is a crowded room with 30 different computers and each person is taking a computerized test to determine their mental capability for military purposes. I have a 45 minute test looking at circles, squares, and the most random patterns imaginable and now the army feels that they are fully equipped to make a determination about where I can best serve the country.

After I finished this test I was finished for the day and I was free to go home. I was tempted to find someone and fight for a free bus pass back to Herzliya, but I realized that the best I could do would be to get a ticket to the Central Bus Station which was a 5 minute walk and that I would probably have to spend three hours fighting.

Deciding to join the Israeli Defense Force for me has been one of the toughest decisions I have ever made. I realize that I have not even started and here I am dealing with bureaucracy in some obscure office in Jerusalem and the only way I was able to get anything done was through connections.

Still at the end of the day, I am excited for what lies ahead. I know that the army will break me down physically, mentally, and emotionally, but I believe that it will be a rewarding experience and give me a level of toughness and mental strength that will help me throughout my entire life.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 22nd, 2010 at 7:34 am and is filed under Food for Thought, Our Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.