TEKES KUMTA - BERET CEREMONY - PIKUD HA-OREF - PALCHATZ SHACHAR SHAVIT - ZIKIM

Some of what follows may seem like random musings.  You may think its an odd column.  In the days after my travels, I edited these notes so that they might read better, but much of this is simply what I was able to write between things during my last visit to Eretz Yisrael.

June 17 - 8pm

50 - it's just a number.  Of course the AARP membership card (bestowed half jokingly by my wife) is a ‘nice’ reminder in my wallet.  The funny comments from my kids who say,"Dad, you’re like half a century old now!" help me laugh at this milestone.

I wonder if it is possible for those in their 20’s and 30’s to truly believe it when people advise that they don’t feel any different at 50 something than they did at 20 something.

I don't mean physically.  I certainly have more and different aches and pains than I did at 20, and I notice grey hairs among the brown, especially in my beard.  Still, emotionally, mentally, psychologically even, I am the same - I feel the same. 

Tonight, on my 50th birthday, coinciding with the AJ Annual Meeting, I board a flight to Eretz Yisrael to be present for Rafi’sTekes Kumta - The beret ceremony that concludes  advanced training in his unit - Palchatz or Pikud HaOref - Combat Search and Rescue.  Until now, Rafi and his fellow trainees wear simple army green.  Soldiers in the Givati unit wear purple, the Tzanchanim - red, and in Palchatz they wear orange, so that as they joke, together, they look like a sea of traffic cones!

Our oldest child’s choice to enlist in the IDF didn't surprise Dayna. Maybe she listens better, maybe she has a better filter. I just know that I am lucky to have found a partner in life who complements me so well.  Without her, I know I would have much less of an understanding of myself, of life, and now, of our children.

June 18, 4pm

So after an unusually challenging experience finding my luggage and clearing customs, I visit a bit with good friend Talia Lidar who came to greet me in the airport.  Tali was our Shlicha (Israeli Representative to the community) during our earliest years at AJ.  We got to know her, her husband Omri and their daughters Cori and Naya quite well. We sip overpriced airport coffee before I am off to get my underpriced rental car.  Why underpriced?

Because in Israel, unless one chooses a particularly large or fancy car, the rate of rental itself is miniscule ($5-$15 a day) but the mandatory insurance?... not so cheap!

5:05pm - I'm starting to take it for granted though I prefer not.  Like a good piece of chocolate, I am savoring it and reliving its flavor while also looking forward to the next piece.  You see, for me, when in Israel, nearly every personal encounter is  different.  There are certainly exceptions, especially in more rushed areas like Tel Aviv, but everyday life in Israel is, ironically, more relaxed. 

6pm - driving from the airport in traffic I need a break, so I have stopped at the mall in Rishon L’Tzion - Before I pulled off the highway, the radio station was covering the Peres birthday celebration.  The Clintons, Streisand and so many others are noted by the announcer.  As a personal request of the 90 year old, Streisand will sing her lush rendition of Avinu Malkeinu, a choral work of Max Janowski (1912–1991).

AJers may know Janowski’s music best by the similar setting of Sim Shalom we include on the High Holidays.  As a side note, Janowski dedicated this composition to the American diplomat Ralph Bunche.  Its an interesting tidbit for which I digress.  In 1950, Bunche became the first African American to be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.  It was awarded for his mediation in what was then Palestine.  And on that note, after stretching my legs in the mall,  I am heading back to my travels down Highway #4 towards Zikim, Rafi’s base on the northern tip of oceanside border with Gaza, Palestinian territory ruled by Hamas.

June 19, 4:30 am.  I'm giving up on trying to sleep and head out.  It's already light outside so I'll make sure I know where I'm supposed to be later.

5:30 am  - I'm so early and finding it was so simple that I went to the Zikim beach to sit awhile.  I don't miss the flies of israel.  Here the flies land on you and it seems the moment you swat at them, they come right back.  I guess I'll learn to stop swatting.

The guy who works at the cafe here on the beach is happy to have a visitor, a customer justifies him taking a break from his chores.  We chat a bit and he plays CD’s of Mizrachi music.  Mizrachi means eastern but it refers to music that either originates from or is influenced by the region from which so many Jews emigrated shortly after the establishment of the State of Israel.  “Should I change the music?” he asks.

To many Ashkenazi Jews like myself, these twangy sounds, that are so similar in feel to the music of our Arab neighbors, are like nails on a chalkboard. He doesn’t know of course, that I developed a taste for these sounds long ago, having heard them played often by my friend (really like a brother) Yigal Maimon. He belted out “Elinor” and "Mah Lakh, Yaldah?" ("What's With You, Girl") as the needle wore out the records of Zohar Argov, well before the pop star’s arrests and ultimate suicide.

7 am -  I leave the beach after visiting its cafe and drinking ‘shachor’.  Shachor literally means black, but in Israel it refers to Turkish coffee served usually in a glass similar in look to your zaydee’s ‘glaizeleh tea’.  A hefty tablespoon or two of this dark brown powder becomes black with boiling water and after a few minutes, the water cools a bit and the powder sinks to the bottom of the glass.  The sediment laying at the bottom gives this form of coffee its other well-known name, ‘botz’, literally - mud.

Now I head toward to the base (less than a mile away) where I am the first to arrive and am told by the guard that none of us will be able to enter until 8.  I put on my tallis and tefillin and daven from my iphone.  I feel an acute awareness (or perhaps hopefulness) that this moment, right now, will years from now, clearly stand out in my memory.

7:34 am.  More people are arriving.  It will surely be a cross section of Israeli society, but right now they all seem more chiloni (secular).

7:49. The sun is very hot already and I am starting to anticipate the emotion that will flow in the next few hours.

I watch every car arrive knowing full well that none of our frelatives will arrive until later when the actual tekes(ceremony) takes place.  You may recall from previous columns, but a frelative is our personal term for several friends who may not be blood related, but might as well be.  Our closeness has developed over the years and our commitment to one another, well..., my eyes well up as I describe it.

Of course, jet lag is at its worse right now but my lack of sleep pales in comparison to the 9 hours or so total combined that Rafi gets sometimes in 72!  So I remind myself to focus on something other than my fatigue and the annoying flies.

Several families have had T-shirts made with their soldiers' names on them and hold signs and banners of welcome and congrats. I have just my Eagles cap protecting my head from the increasingly sweltering heat.  My intention was that my wearing the cap will somehow help Rafi distinguish me in this mass of love and pride when I meet him during the last kilometer of his hike through the night.

I'm already getting sunburned at nearly 8 am. But my fatigue cannot compare to that of his unit.  They started out in the wee hours of the morning not being sure how long they would hike.  Rumors of anywhere from 30-65 kilometers were perhaps purposely bandied about. 

Parents have the option of meeting their soldier for the last kilometer of the hike and it's funny now that Rafi has been stressing in emails and texts the rigorousness of this last kilometer. In response, I added running to my gym schedule over the last few months.  And now, “It's just a halicha” one of the fellow parents said, “not a ratz(run) at all!”

8:01 am - Israelis have an actual printed invitation.  Despite what I wrote earlier, there hasn’t been the friendliness from folks here.   It seems they all have their family unit with whom they came and I am the only party of one that I have seen.

8:15am - Well forget what I just wrote because I now have a sprig of delicious grapes in hand to prove it isn’t so.

This large Israeli man engaged me in conversation and let me take a picture of the invitation that they received by mail.  We chatted awhile:  the usual "where do you live?", "who are you here for?".  A few minutes later, while I'm sitting in the car taking a break from the sun writing more in this journal, he comes over.

It isn't, “would you like some grapes?”, but rather, “Take these grapes! You will need them for koach(strength) on the walk!”  And said like this, he practically forced the grapes into my hand.  I am immediately back to my appreciation of this society as one that surpasses them all.

Still, this simply isn't enough for far too many here.  Their jobs don't allow them to live a life of comfort and rent a decent apartment.  They protest the decreasing middle class. Imagine the disappointment young folk feel when they cannot make it on their own. 

They are post army, about 21 years old, with insufficient prospects and abundant concern about a bleak future. They return to their rooms, more than likely shared with a younger sibling.  I imagine them moving back into that room. The walls still bear the posters of their favorite bands, heartthrobs and beach babes. 

9:55.  Well everything has changed again:  I am told we won't get to go with them at all.  We just get to see them as they pass and they are running late. Maybe 10:30 they'll arrive they say now.

10:09 am - The build up is considerable and the Israelis do not seem fazed by this at all.  The darker skinned simply stand there waiting.  Almost no one is complaining and the lighter ones including me, find areas under trees and we complain more.

6/20, 3:45 am.  When I was writing the last post I had moved about a kilometer away from the base with a group of hopeful parents.  Just after I was misinformed that we would not be meeting them for the last kilometer I was startled to hear one among us exclaim “Hinei heim ba’im - Here they come!” 

I was briskly walking and then running towards them. Not on the path that would be easier, rather through the brush that lies between us reminding me that the shortest distance between any two points or people in this case, is a straight line.

They are a mass of army green heading towards us.  Chanting phrases with which I am not familiar, they come closer.   One by one, I try to distinguish them through the camouflage paint they so proudly wear until the point at which I see him.

There is no time to be overwhelmed with emotion.

He can embrace me for a moment and does, but he must keep marching forward and it isn't even a minute more of plowing ahead through this unrelenting brush and it is his turn to carry a pole of the stretcher on which the largest officer lies.

The stretcher they carry fulfills their motto that no one, dead or alive, is left behind.  We come closer to the worn path that until now they refuse to further beat.  Why walk on the beaten path while your enemy watches they posit and I think, “instead its better to trample through prickly thorns and sprain your ankles on unpredictable rocks, holes and branches?”

Now we are back at their camp and the southern sun has worn me down, but I am just one of hundreds of parents, siblings, friends and various other relatives who have traveled from all over our tiny nation to see their one loved one.  The Martzianos have arrived with a delicious picnic and they are so happy to see their adopted son Rafi... so proud.

At 11:10 am pthe ceremony begins.  A blast of honor guard trumpets is heard but not seen (I assume a recording) followed by an orchestral rendition of the Naomi Shemer song ‘Machar” and I can only think of the final verse.

Tomorrow when soldiers put off uniforms,

Alerted to other things

Then each man will use his own two hands

To build that of which he dreamed today.

Next speeches, most of which I could follow, Hatikvah, and celebration! 

To us, our children are everything, carrying the torch for our name, our heritage, our evolving narrative. To themselves and to the army, they embody the message that together, their unit, working as a whole, is greater than the sum of their individual selves.

It isn't perfect I learn from Rafi later that day and evening.  This one fights a lot, that one is lazy.  But today it is all put aside, today they are all so proud of one another.  They seem equal in giving and receiving pats on the back congratulating one another.  They only know my son as a soldier, as a brother in the field who sleeps on a cot in a tent in the relentless heat of Zikim.