For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Michael Herschmann, and I’m a freshman here at UT. Rabbi Zev asked me to speak a little bit about my experience in Israel as well as share with everyone what it was like for me to come from NY and go straight into the Israeli army.
Quite honestly there were a few things that pushed me to join the IDF. I had been to Israel over 30 times and already felt a great connection to the land and the people; but mainly, a few of my friends a year older than me had gone for the year and told me, “Michael, this is by far the craziest, hardest, and most rewarding year you can ever have. If you decide you want to push through it then do it now before college while you have the chance.” With a little more looking into it, and some time, my mind was set on joining and with help from my father and friends in Israel, I was able to join at the age of 17, which technically isn’t even allowed.
I joined the army in the August draft of 2011 and was sent to the unit Kfir, one of the five main combat units. I requested Kfir, because all my friends who had attended Aish Machal, a pre-army training program with me, had been sent to one of the platoons in Kfir. When I arrived on base, all the way in the north a few kilometers away from Jordan, they sent me to a platoon with no one I knew. At first I was furious because there was only one other person there that spoke English, but with time the other soldiers there became some of the best friends I have today. I remember so vividly my first night there. My hebrew was adequate enough to speak with them, although I was unable to portray anything that would even sound like myself.
The way training works is that, for the first 3 and a half months your in basic training. During basic training you spend most of your time practicing shooting, sleeping in tents outside, and taking shifts guarding the base. This was all such a shock to me because, there I was right out of yeshiva day school, literally two months ago, and now I had my own m16 that I would shoot, sleep and shower with. Right after basic training we began advanced training and started gaining SOME basic human rights. We wouldn’t have to stand in rows of three, and they wouldn’t make us drop into push up position every time we spoke out of turn, although the work got much more intense. For the next three months we were trained to fight in situations we would encounter should there be a war. We learned things as simple as Krav Maga (hand to hand combat), to techniques on how to take over mountains using live ammunition, as well as learning how to fight in cities and buildings. Now, when you would do all these drills with your officers and fellow soldiers, it would never be near the base. We would take a few hour bus ride, usually to some isolated area, and stay there for a week at a time. When we finally arrived we would spend hours unloading the trucks carrying all our equipment and set up camp. I was unfortunate enough to have all my outdoor training done in the winter, which happened to be the worst one in years. After camp was set up, we would spend the week learning the terrain, and performing dry and wet drills in groups of 10, 30, and eventually 90 people. This was by far the most physically draining part of my army experience seeing as we would be running around with our heavy gear all day, shouting commands and shooting at targets.
After three months of training in mountains and cities, we were moved to a base in Gush Etzion, which is in the west bank. This is when things started to get real; we would have interactions with Arabs daily. While in Gush Etzion, we would do a multitude of things, ranging from guarding the base, to guarding in Arab villages, jeep patrols, night missions, and arrests. Fridays would be especially hectic because every week at 12pm, after the Arabs would finish praying, they would come throw stones and molotov cocktails at us and our jeep patrol. I don’t want to speak for too long so I won’t go into great detail, but it was really eye opening for me to see all the craziness that was going on literally 30 minutes away from Jerusalem, where everyone goes with their families on vacation, and the fact that not many people realize that this is going on right next to them.
Towards the end of my service in Israel I actually started getting a little bit nervous because I wasn’t sure if I would get released in time for UT, although in the end I got out 4 days before classes started so luckily everything worked out. For those of you who haven’t been to Israel, or have but haven’t seen everything they would like to see there, I really recommend going on an organized trip. Daley Epstein here is gathering kids to go on Birthright, which I hear from everyone is actually the best trip you can take to Israel. You don’t need the army experience to develop a connection to the land, my friends here Jerry and Elan went to Orayta, a yeshiva in Jerusalem, and they too gained a meaningful connection to Israel. If anyone has questions or wants to know a bit more in detail what I did, you can feel free to ask me. I appreciate everyone taking the time to listen to me, and have a good Shabbos
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