Religion in the IDF

BlogCentral would like to welcome a new contributor to the Army Life blog: D.B. He was born and raised in Virginia, USA, and graduated from The College of William & Mary in Virginia in '07 with a degree in Government (Political Science). In September of 2007, D.B. made aliyah and is currently serving as a combat soldier in the Israeli Army, Golani infantry brigade.

I studied in a Jewish seminary (yeshiva) a few years back, and at the time I was just beginning to consider the idea of serving in the IDF. This particular yeshiva is a "charedi" institution - essentially ultra-orthodox. Charedi yeshivas are generally not very 'Zionistic', and their opinion of young men serving in an army instead of spending all day, every day, studying Torah is fairly low. So, when I volunteered to a rabbi that I was interested in the IDF, the response wasn't warm, to say the least.

The rhetoric thrown around was that the IDF is a "bad place for religious Jews." They liked to say that it's hard to be religious there, that it's hard to keep your level of faith, and that there are too many bad influences. At the time, I didn't have any other source of information. I didn't know what it's like to be an Orthodox Jew in the army, so I just took it for what it was worth: hyper-religious Jerusalemites judging what they had no experience in in the first place. I didn't know what to think, but I assumed that they were being slightly dramatic.

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A sense of accomplishment

Following my unit's completion of tironut (basic training), we were sent to guard a kibbutz just outside of Gaza.  It was our first real mission as soldiers, the first time where we could feel that we were actually doing something of true importance.
 
While it was nice to get away from the base, the time on the kibbutz was not without its difficulties. For starters, we were required to prepare our own meals in the small kitchen allotted to us by the kibbutz. This meant that those of us who keep Kosher had to keep a watchful eye on everything in the kitchen, making sure that no one used the dairy pot to cook the chicken and that no one used a meat fork to prepare breakfast. We tried to be as vigilant as possible, but we could only run the kitchen while we were there.  What happened when we were on guard duty was out of our control.

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