Memoirs of a Sha'ar Geisha
I introduced Shmirah in my last [real] post; sounds like an ideal way to relax, no? No. My Faustian corruption, Shmirah-wise, might've come 7 months into the army, but nevertheless it came.
It came, not through a succubus or devil, but from a friend (howsabout "Joe"?). Returning to base after the weekend off, I caught up with "Joe," who berated himself for getting caught reading on guard duty! For getting caught. Why was he be so hard on himself? Because he got caught in the most mentally challenged way you can imagine. He overheard Cmndr. Udi on the radio actually telling the duty officer that he was going to check on the guards at their various posts. After a short while, with the commander still a no-show, my friend figures he's not coming, and whipped out his [neo-post-Zionist history] book...into the waiting arms of Commander Udi. Oops. Joe just lacked some basic trust in the commander's word. Tsk.
I commiserated with him. But the idea, like a moth in the wardrobe of the mind, closeted in my mind, slowly eating away, growing. And so, I started to read, too.
On Shmirot of "secondary importance" I began to read. I started to love Shmirah, and would request the most annoying posts in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing, since now privacy and solitude were advantageous. It would be difficult for a suspicious commander to surprise me as they had, er, Joe! Ironically, I guarded better, more alertly, since now I was constantly on the lookout for my own officers.
With growing confidence, I developed my skills in guarding-while-reading. I know I was corrupted, i.e., that I had officially changed my mind on the issue, since a different friend ("Oswald") had been caught reading on Shmirah (in the middle of the day, in the middle of the desert, on Shabbat) only two months into boot camp, Way Back When. And upon hearing this WBW, I was horrified, but mostly mystified: 'how could someone disregard his moral and patriotic duty so fragrantly? What a hillul HaShem as well, for a hesder guy to be caught so. Sleeping, I can understand. It happens. But reading??'
But in that nostalgic time of Way Back When - when besides working through the rough life and philosophical knots in my mind, I was so gung-ho that while on duty I'd run through imagined scenarios how I could be attacked: which heights commanded a view of my post, which directions were defensible, etc. This is what They told us to do. My fertile mind would produce a Bedouin popping up from behind the rock over there, or the Egyptian Second Army sneaking behind that tumbleweed (hey, we were only 3k from the border!). Hmm, They must have been cracking up.
The naivete of my Zionism dried up shed: Shmirah-as-mitzvah ceased to motivate. One of the ramim at Gush had tried to inspire us in advance, before we got inducted, to see shmirah as an analogue to awaiting God's response to the events in your life, and to the events in the life of the Nation - the art of awaiting the redemption, a rarely practiced skill in this day of proactive generation. But that did not, in the end, float my boat.
Over the months, my Zionism became pragmatic: What am I really doing here? If I am watching the tanks so that other soldiers don't nick our equipment, do I really need to patrol? Do I need my combat webbing so I can grenade the heck out of Akiva from the next company, and will I seriously need to pump Cmdr. Nimrod full of 5 magazines of lead? Where will 145 bullets make me more effective instead of 29?
If I am manning an access gate, a sha'ar gisha, on a base within another base, am I really needed to stand 50 minutes out of every hour? If the enemy attacks, they will clip the fences, or jump them. Terrorists don't charge the front door, and if they do, being inside the guard booth, and sitting, will protect me more than standing!
In general, erosion comes from -- in traditional army language the world over-- chickensh*t (CT). Equating all types of breaking the rules dilutes the effectiveness of any single infraction; sitting down is patently not like walking off the job, forgetting to bring a weapon to guard duty, or going to sleep. All suspicions of CT are confirmed, however, when you have flexible commanders who, because they are leaving the army, don't care about beauracratically maintaining the letter of the law. They care about needs and results. For example:
- Some commanders would tell us "you can sit and read, take off your combat vest, do whatever you want, just don't fall asleep. And if the Lt. catches you, I didn't say you could."
- At some posts, the rules allowed us to listen to music, just so long as it was with speakers, not headphones.
- The Deputy Company Commander (hiloni) once responded to a request for time for mariv, "Pray? Why don't you just pray on guard duty?"
- We had the strictest SOPs (Standard Operating Procedure) for guarding, but if a commander needed a grunt for manual labor, he'd tell you to doff your combat vest and put down your weapon to come help him monkeywrench the tank.
-We're allowed to talk to anyone we want, like our fellow soldiers. (How is that different from a hands free phone?)
-We can belt out songs at the top of the lungs. No secrecy here!
Perhaps the greatest indictment of [some specific posts'] guard duty regs, however, was when my friend Aviad Badner broke his only pair of glasses. He could not recognize a person sitting 6 feet away in daylight at, say, another table. Nevertheless, despite his practical blindness, they still put him on guard detail! (He was still allowed to serve as Gunner, but that's because the tank's focusing apparatus can compensate for near or far sightedness, like that doohicky in the optomotrist's office).
If an officer will have me leave my guard post because he's too lazy to open up the gate himself (or fantastically busy?Anything that important could be radio'ed in - we don't use couriors), it leaves an impression on the soldier. That post might need a guard, but he can scan the territory once every 3 minutes, instead of every second.
And that leads to a general erosion of idyllic idealism. I do not think this is a bad thing. Coming from America, there are some values that I intend on importing to the country, but I do not want Little America in Israel! Though I am proud of our Tradition Of Democracy, and though I appreciate the US gov't's embrace of technology, our work ethic, tipping, et al, I will swing my elbows when boarding a bus -- I will smile, typically American, at my fellow passengers, but I will swing. I will argue my points. Ideology did not suffer from this process, just idealism. A realistic and pragmatic reaction to the requirements of your environment are the sign of a mature, developed military sense (in this specific instance), or a mature, developed decision making sense in the larger picture. We did not play fast and loose with the rules when guarding over the Green Line, for example. There, you never know what will happen. Fast, but never loose.
Does this affect other areas of army life? Best illustration: 5 months into the army, and Shabbat is coming. Shabbat kitchen rules are just so strict as to be just shy of kariism so as to provide a K.I.S.S.-level procedure for the secular army to keep kosher. But what if you are the kitchen helper for the day, and you know something is kosher or mutar - can you do it? On the one hand, it's halakhically ok, but on the other hand, you're breaking army regs. What if nobody will know? You don't want the kitchen staff to get any bright ideas because of what they learned from some smart alec yeshiva soldier, but what if it's the middle of the night, and you want a bowl of cereal? Example: The army doesn't provide milk, only chocolate milk, and any non-listed product cannot be used with army utensils. So even though Tenuva choc. milk is ok to bring in from the outside (since it's army approved), Tenuva regular milk is out of bounds, despite the same hashgacha, plants, cows. Can you eat your cereal?
I don't think this trully illustrates the guard duty question, however, since one SOP is meant to guide the army's intuitive sense for defense (I mean, it's an army!), and that is not weakened by pragmatism, while the latter SOP is meant to blind-guide the army on kashrut issues for which it has no training, short of the individuals of the Rabbi Corps. (Religion-Engineering Corps? God Squad?)
Also keep in mind that this has nothing to do with volunteerism. Most of the time, I was amongst the first to volunteer for everything, as we hesderniks are wont to do, except for the most difficult thing: staying in for Shabbat. After 6 months, I started to volunteer for those as well, as I lost my fear of the unknown, and I felt more comfortable in Israel in general (though I admit, I did not ever offer to lose days out - as a lone soldier with no family to take care of my basic needs [hot food, laundry, etc.], all things were never equal, and I had priority) .
In short, most people break shmirah in some way, shape, or form, or desperately try to escape it by going through a commander's course. Those few who never break often as not become officers. And I have no regrets, and a clean conscience. But that means little. What if something had happened? Would I consider myself blameless, an ones? Perhaps this one army minhag that I should have resisted. Perhaps this is the perfect place for idealism. Nothing happened, which is the basis of the logic of reading on shmirah, but is that luck? I am unsure of the answer, which means I still have not truly resolved the question of shmirah.
It came, not through a succubus or devil, but from a friend (howsabout "Joe"?). Returning to base after the weekend off, I caught up with "Joe," who berated himself for getting caught reading on guard duty! For getting caught. Why was he be so hard on himself? Because he got caught in the most mentally challenged way you can imagine. He overheard Cmndr. Udi on the radio actually telling the duty officer that he was going to check on the guards at their various posts. After a short while, with the commander still a no-show, my friend figures he's not coming, and whipped out his [neo-post-Zionist history] book...into the waiting arms of Commander Udi. Oops. Joe just lacked some basic trust in the commander's word. Tsk.
I commiserated with him. But the idea, like a moth in the wardrobe of the mind, closeted in my mind, slowly eating away, growing. And so, I started to read, too.
On Shmirot of "secondary importance" I began to read. I started to love Shmirah, and would request the most annoying posts in the middle of nowhere, doing nothing, since now privacy and solitude were advantageous. It would be difficult for a suspicious commander to surprise me as they had, er, Joe! Ironically, I guarded better, more alertly, since now I was constantly on the lookout for my own officers.
With growing confidence, I developed my skills in guarding-while-reading. I know I was corrupted, i.e., that I had officially changed my mind on the issue, since a different friend ("Oswald") had been caught reading on Shmirah (in the middle of the day, in the middle of the desert, on Shabbat) only two months into boot camp, Way Back When. And upon hearing this WBW, I was horrified, but mostly mystified: 'how could someone disregard his moral and patriotic duty so fragrantly? What a hillul HaShem as well, for a hesder guy to be caught so. Sleeping, I can understand. It happens. But reading??'
But in that nostalgic time of Way Back When - when besides working through the rough life and philosophical knots in my mind, I was so gung-ho that while on duty I'd run through imagined scenarios how I could be attacked: which heights commanded a view of my post, which directions were defensible, etc. This is what They told us to do. My fertile mind would produce a Bedouin popping up from behind the rock over there, or the Egyptian Second Army sneaking behind that tumbleweed (hey, we were only 3k from the border!). Hmm, They must have been cracking up.
The naivete of my Zionism dried up shed: Shmirah-as-mitzvah ceased to motivate. One of the ramim at Gush had tried to inspire us in advance, before we got inducted, to see shmirah as an analogue to awaiting God's response to the events in your life, and to the events in the life of the Nation - the art of awaiting the redemption, a rarely practiced skill in this day of proactive generation. But that did not, in the end, float my boat.
Over the months, my Zionism became pragmatic: What am I really doing here? If I am watching the tanks so that other soldiers don't nick our equipment, do I really need to patrol? Do I need my combat webbing so I can grenade the heck out of Akiva from the next company, and will I seriously need to pump Cmdr. Nimrod full of 5 magazines of lead? Where will 145 bullets make me more effective instead of 29?
If I am manning an access gate, a sha'ar gisha, on a base within another base, am I really needed to stand 50 minutes out of every hour? If the enemy attacks, they will clip the fences, or jump them. Terrorists don't charge the front door, and if they do, being inside the guard booth, and sitting, will protect me more than standing!
In general, erosion comes from -- in traditional army language the world over-- chickensh*t (CT). Equating all types of breaking the rules dilutes the effectiveness of any single infraction; sitting down is patently not like walking off the job, forgetting to bring a weapon to guard duty, or going to sleep. All suspicions of CT are confirmed, however, when you have flexible commanders who, because they are leaving the army, don't care about beauracratically maintaining the letter of the law. They care about needs and results. For example:
- Some commanders would tell us "you can sit and read, take off your combat vest, do whatever you want, just don't fall asleep. And if the Lt. catches you, I didn't say you could."
- At some posts, the rules allowed us to listen to music, just so long as it was with speakers, not headphones.
- The Deputy Company Commander (hiloni) once responded to a request for time for mariv, "Pray? Why don't you just pray on guard duty?"
- We had the strictest SOPs (Standard Operating Procedure) for guarding, but if a commander needed a grunt for manual labor, he'd tell you to doff your combat vest and put down your weapon to come help him monkeywrench the tank.
-We're allowed to talk to anyone we want, like our fellow soldiers. (How is that different from a hands free phone?)
-We can belt out songs at the top of the lungs. No secrecy here!
Perhaps the greatest indictment of [some specific posts'] guard duty regs, however, was when my friend Aviad Badner broke his only pair of glasses. He could not recognize a person sitting 6 feet away in daylight at, say, another table. Nevertheless, despite his practical blindness, they still put him on guard detail! (He was still allowed to serve as Gunner, but that's because the tank's focusing apparatus can compensate for near or far sightedness, like that doohicky in the optomotrist's office).
If an officer will have me leave my guard post because he's too lazy to open up the gate himself (or fantastically busy?Anything that important could be radio'ed in - we don't use couriors), it leaves an impression on the soldier. That post might need a guard, but he can scan the territory once every 3 minutes, instead of every second.
And that leads to a general erosion of idyllic idealism. I do not think this is a bad thing. Coming from America, there are some values that I intend on importing to the country, but I do not want Little America in Israel! Though I am proud of our Tradition Of Democracy, and though I appreciate the US gov't's embrace of technology, our work ethic, tipping, et al, I will swing my elbows when boarding a bus -- I will smile, typically American, at my fellow passengers, but I will swing. I will argue my points. Ideology did not suffer from this process, just idealism. A realistic and pragmatic reaction to the requirements of your environment are the sign of a mature, developed military sense (in this specific instance), or a mature, developed decision making sense in the larger picture. We did not play fast and loose with the rules when guarding over the Green Line, for example. There, you never know what will happen. Fast, but never loose.
Does this affect other areas of army life? Best illustration: 5 months into the army, and Shabbat is coming. Shabbat kitchen rules are just so strict as to be just shy of kariism so as to provide a K.I.S.S.-level procedure for the secular army to keep kosher. But what if you are the kitchen helper for the day, and you know something is kosher or mutar - can you do it? On the one hand, it's halakhically ok, but on the other hand, you're breaking army regs. What if nobody will know? You don't want the kitchen staff to get any bright ideas because of what they learned from some smart alec yeshiva soldier, but what if it's the middle of the night, and you want a bowl of cereal? Example: The army doesn't provide milk, only chocolate milk, and any non-listed product cannot be used with army utensils. So even though Tenuva choc. milk is ok to bring in from the outside (since it's army approved), Tenuva regular milk is out of bounds, despite the same hashgacha, plants, cows. Can you eat your cereal?
I don't think this trully illustrates the guard duty question, however, since one SOP is meant to guide the army's intuitive sense for defense (I mean, it's an army!), and that is not weakened by pragmatism, while the latter SOP is meant to blind-guide the army on kashrut issues for which it has no training, short of the individuals of the Rabbi Corps. (Religion-Engineering Corps? God Squad?)
Also keep in mind that this has nothing to do with volunteerism. Most of the time, I was amongst the first to volunteer for everything, as we hesderniks are wont to do, except for the most difficult thing: staying in for Shabbat. After 6 months, I started to volunteer for those as well, as I lost my fear of the unknown, and I felt more comfortable in Israel in general (though I admit, I did not ever offer to lose days out - as a lone soldier with no family to take care of my basic needs [hot food, laundry, etc.], all things were never equal, and I had priority) .
In short, most people break shmirah in some way, shape, or form, or desperately try to escape it by going through a commander's course. Those few who never break often as not become officers. And I have no regrets, and a clean conscience. But that means little. What if something had happened? Would I consider myself blameless, an ones? Perhaps this one army minhag that I should have resisted. Perhaps this is the perfect place for idealism. Nothing happened, which is the basis of the logic of reading on shmirah, but is that luck? I am unsure of the answer, which means I still have not truly resolved the question of shmirah.
posted by Shlome at 6:21 AM
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