keeping our enemies at bay

Well, it has been almost a month in beautiful Zerifin. I would just like to recount some of my finer moments in my military service.

I was sent as an armed guard to escort a group of people in a course for the Chevra Kadisha (people who deal with funeral services and burial.) The trip was, as one might expect, to a cemetery and mortuary in order to learn the necessary requirements for the course. As some of you know, I am a Kohen; thus, I am forbidden to enter a cemetery or mortuary under most circumstances. Upon being given the job as the armed guard I asked my boss what I am expected to do, since I cannot violate Halacha. He told me to just to sit in the office outside of the cemetery and wait for the guys while they go on their course.

“But what if they need me? What if something happens?” I asked.

“Don’t worry. One of the guys will have your number. He’ll call you,” My officer responded.

I retorted, “It shouldn’t be too hard to find them. They’ll be the ones being shot at without someone to defend them. Either way, they’re already in a cemetery with a Chevra Kadisha. I guess even if the worst possible scenario occurs, they couldn’t have it any easier.”

Another story of my defending the State of Israel:

Last week I worked as a backwards Mashgiach, or at least that is what I call it. There was a group of soldiers who were having a Shabbaton and the Rabbinate sent me along with two of the organizers in order to see to it that any food that they bought for Shabbat was Kosher. As a matter of policy, the Army Rabbinate only accepts labels of Kashrut that is endorsed by national religious Kashrut endorsements, such as the Chief Rabbi of the country or any particular city. The strange thing was that the soldiers kept finding stuff that was endorsed by ultra-orthodox Rabbis, so the food had a standard of Kashrut way above the standard Rabbinate. Unfortunately, since it was not endorsed by national religious Kashrut endorsements I had to keep telling them that they could not buy it. Thus instead of ensuring that all the food was Kosher enough, I was ensuring that they did not buy anything that was too Kosher.

Oh, I got engaged. I will only be discussing the aspect of the relationship of being engaged and its relationship to the army in this blog, keeping with the original idea.

In the spirit of breaking the rule I set forth in the previous sentence, you can leave me a message of mazal tov on onlysimchas.com. Look for Jonathan Degani. That’s me.

That’s all for now. I am off to keep defending the country in my only very limited way.

all over the place

I finished my first full week working for the Rabbinate. I am still not sure what will be happening, but as of now I am helping out a captain with the religious needs of the base, such as Kashering food, preparing for religious events etc. (I spent a large chunk of the week preparing a seder Tu B’Shvat for a bunch of lieutenants.) I will probably be in a course to be a religious counselor, once the course begins, and I may be taught how to check and fix mezuzahs in order to fix up what is needed in the base.

I am meeting a lot of people who do nothing in the army. No, I am not talking about lazy people, I mean people who actually have a job of doing nothing. These is a guy who works in my department and actually has an office and seems to do nothing. After working with him for a week and a half I asked him, “Eli, what is your job here?” He shrugged his shoulders and told me that he is “just there” in case someone needs something, but in the mean time he has a TV in his office to kill time. And this isn’t a case of a solider without a job, he actually signed up for a job in the army (he is in his thirties) and the army usually only does that if they want the person to stay one.

There are a group of guys who show up every day to get a paper or something. They were waiting when I first arrived a week or so ago and told me that they have been waiting outside the office for a month. I thought they were joking, but it has now been almost two weeks and they just show up every day, wait and go home.

I met a lot of people around the base over the past week. Everyone is fascinated by Americans. I usually get two different kinds stages of responses. First they tell me how noble I am for moving to the country and volunteering for the army, then they ask me why I would possibly volunteer my time into such a crazy army.