Cleaning Guns - Hatzerim Airbase (1996)

For a couple weeks I participated in the SAHAL program, which is essentially volunteering with the IDF.  You are helping out the military by doing the BS work that would normally be done by soldiers.  Here we are at Hatzerim Air Base in the Negev desert cleaning UZIs, M-16s, and Galils.  Our supervisor Oren, nicknamed "Vegas" by one of us because he had spent time there, was really nice - even though he would confide in me that American girls drove him up the wall, especially when you had to deal with a bunch of 'em at once. No shit, chaver!

The newest recruits had to sleep in those tents in the background.  Suckers!!  Also funny, the soldiers on the base who had screwed up and lost their gun (or misplaced it) had to walk around with fake guns painted red and made of wood!  Talk about shaming someone into never making a mistake again...

The OTZMA X Songbook - Eli, Eli (1995)

A mandatory entry in the American Jew's songbook is Hannah Szenes's "Eli, Eli."  Her story of Jewish nationalism and anti-Nazi heroism is legendary:

In 1941, Hannah joined Kibbutz Sdot Yam and then joined the Haganah, the paramilitary group that laid the foundation of the Israel Defense Forces. In 1943, she enlisted in the British army in the Woman's Auxiliary Air Force as an Aircraftwoman 2nd Class and began her training in Egypt as a paratrooper for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).  In March 1944, she and two male colleagues, Yoel Palgi and Peretz Goldstein, were parachuted into Yugoslavia and joined a partisan group. After landing, they learned the Germans had already occupied Hungary, so the men decided to call off the mission as too dangerous.  Szenes continued and headed for the Hungarian border. At the border, she was arrested by Hungarian gendarmes, who found the British military transmitter she was carrying, used to communicate with the SOE and other partisans. She was taken to a prison, stripped, tied to a chair, then whipped and clubbed for three days. The guards wanted to know the code for her transmitter so they could find out who the other parachutists were. She did not tell them, however, even when they brought her mother into the cell and threatened to torture her too.

Whilst in jail, Szenes used a mirror to flash signals out of the window to the Jewish prisoners in other cells, and communicated with them using large cut-out letters in Hebrew that she placed in her window one at a time and by drawing the Magen Davidn the dust. She tried to keep their spirits up by singing, and through all the things Szenes went through she still kept her spirit high and stayed true to her mission. -  Wikipedia
 

This is a songsheet handed out (probably on a Shabbat) during OTZMA X:

Volunteer Card From My Life-Changing Year

I can't remember if I've said it before on this blog, but my year in Israel as part of the OTZMA program changed my life forever - and here is where it all began.  After arriving in the country we filled out these cards, which gave us volunteer status for 11 months.  I have reflected on that year almost every day of my life...and that was 1995-96!

Sar El at Hatzerim Air Force Base (1996)

Here is the calendar from my Sar El experience in February/March 1996:

I was looking for pictures of my time there, but seem to have misplaced them. I had a good time on the base. I was the only guy out of half a dozen OTZMA participants, so I had an entire barracks all to myself. FINALLY...my own shower! My own bedroom! MY OWN TOILET!! All mine! For some reason, there was NOBODY else in the barrack (a huge building). I assume it was up for a refurb.

We spent our days cleaning guns with an IDF soldier the girls nicknamed "Vegas," because he grew up in Las Vegas...he didn't really like that. Lots of tiyulim (trips) and lectures, too.

The most memorable moment, though, was when we went to visit the Air Force museum and found a mannequin dressed an a soldier hanging from the helicopter skid. We posed, pretending to be hanging from the dude, making all sorts of crazy faces...and then we realized what we were doing: Posing and joking with a representation of Ron Arad, the Air Force hero taken hostage in Lebanon. Pretty fucking stupid, but would you have expected any more from a group of post-collegiate North Americans? No.

OTZMA X - Tiyul to the Shfela Plain (1996)

Part of my OTZMA experience (www.otzma.com) was a stint as a volunteer on Hatzerim Air Force Base.  During those weeks, we took a day-long tiyul (tour) of sites in the Shfela Plain.

For a .PDF of both sides of the document, click here:   http://www.divshare.com/download/8617935-855

OTZMA X (1995-96)

I really can't explain how important the OTZMA program was in the context of my life.  After graduating college, I went on this 10-month journey (I actually stretched it to a year), and haven't been the same since.  My connections to Israel and Judaism strengthened and I now see this experience as one of the important milestones in my life.  Birth, College, OTZMA, Marriage, Children:  It may sound like I am going over the top, but trust me, I'm not.  The "X" means this was the 10th iteration of the program.

This photo (that's me in the back row/center - eyes closed, of course) was taken at the end of our initial 3-month stay at Kibbutz Ma'ayan Tzvi, where I volunteered as a gardener.  No, not planting tomatoes like your grandma, but essentially landscaping and irrigating the entire kibbutz.  I had a ball and was thankful I wasn't working down in the fish ponds.

My connection to the Land of Israel has only strengthened since 1996.  I have returned numerous times, and was married in Haifa in 2002.

Later in the program I was stationed elsewhere in Israel, specifically Beit She'an in the North, but I often skipped out on my "duties" (volunteering at a school) to go have fun with my Israeli boss-turned-friend who lived down the road at Kibbutz Nir David.

I encourage any recent college grad to check out the program at www.otzma.com.