Another Orthodox Chaplain is deploying

. . . this time a haredi from Lakewood. Story here.

The Kombatica

I remember seeing one soldier always wearing one of these on Speicher, though I have no idea who he is, and there was a SGT "R" who always wore one on Balad.

They used to be hard to get, but most chaplains and chapels had some. Now they are available from Shaina Agami, whose brother SPC Danny Agami was killed in Iraq.

They are authorized under 670-1 1-7 b.(2)(a).

Succot in Kuwait

CPT Jonathan Gross' story about Succot in Kuwait.

. . . and prisoners

I really appreciate all the work they did for me and many other Jewish soldiers when I was deployed. Apparently they work with prisoners too.

Torahs for the military

The Army is looking for Torahs. I know that there is one in JBB and the Jewish Chaplain in Baghdad had one. I wonder how many others there are in theater.

In NY

As many of you know by now, I am back home in NY. The deployment is over. I will still continue to post stuff here that I and I think some of you who read this might find interesting, and some stuff that I didn't post during the year for one reason or another.

Thanks for all your support over the year.

Iraqi Torah

Iraq seems pretty concerned about its torah.  I am glad that there are already ministries up and running with time to do things like that. 

Challah

Unfortunately none of Marla Turk's challah made it to Balad or Tikrit while I was there.  However, Balad was lucky enough to have SSG F who made us great fresh Challah that was ready just in time for the kiddush each Friday night. 

More beard issues in the Army

I wonder how this will play out.

In Kuwait City International Airport

A bunch of us are stuck in Kuwait City International Airport because our airplane seems to be broken, so we will have to get to Camp Arifjan by ground transportation. The plane we took here from JBB was a regular C-17 that was carrying a full compliment of passengers and their cargo. The plane was also carrying the remains of a soldier for burial in the US right there in the back right next to where I was sitting. When they transported the deceased soldier from the plane to the truck that will carry him or her to the flight to the US there was a brief ceremony that was both quick and moving. We lined up in 12 man a formation at the rear of the plane on either side of the cargo ramp. Six airmen carried the flag-draped casket off the plane and we rendered a slow 4-second salute - the last one the soldier will ever get - as he was placed onto the truck. We were then dismissed. The whole thing took about two minutes, but it was a very moving two minutes.

Back at JBB

I have left COB Speicher for good and I am now back on JBB. I do not expect to be here for long, just long enough to tie up some administrative loose ends. My job in this country is done and I am now set to come home.

If only getting home didn't take so long.

The Army is looking to buy a sefardic torah

Here is the contract the army is looking to bid on.

The smell of the air and other random thoughts

I was struck by the fact that when one walks out the door of their CHU, especially in the summer, the first thing that hits you, and hits you hard, is the brightness of the sun and the heat of the air.  Both are painful for the moment until you get used to it. 

The stars in the sky, and the wind are all rather prominent around here.  The sky seems lower; the moon seems bigger here than anywhere else I have ever been.  You always see Venus nearby too though I don't recognize most of the constellations, though I am not sure I'd recognize the one's I can see in NY either.  Many FOBs have a blinking "star" that is on the blimp with the camera that floats high above the FOB watching the nearby city.  The moon rises quickly.  You can see why the heavens and the weather were so important to the ancient peoples here.  They stick out, they are not just details that can be passively ignored.  They physically touch you. 

The very air is odd.  Sometimes, especially around Tikrit, the air is orange or red or even brownish, sometimes it is a fog colored gray.  It is always dust or sand and it limits visibility sometimes to a few feet.  That weather always grounds the helicopters and sometimes airplanes too.  It is painfully obvious why Arabs wear the head coverings they wear.  It is certainly unhealthy to breathe without something filtering out the sand in this climate.  In the right weather when you walk around your clothes accumulate a fine layer of sand after walking a mere few hundred feet. 

Once in a while there is a whirlwind of sand that is maybe 20 feet in diameter and a kilometer high and you can see it coming right at you.  I was once in a parked car and one of those came right at us, and for about 10 or 15 seconds completely engulfed the car in a mini tornado.  It was quite a cool sight to behold.  From the car, we just watched it slowly lumber toward us and engulf us, and then, seemingly uninterested in consuming us, just continued on its relatively benign way.

I am in Mosul this week.  There are two FOBs on Mosul: Marez and Diamondback.  Diamondback sucks.  Everywhere had the smell that you experience when you are stuck driving behind a garbage truck in the summer and your car has no air conditioner.  Marez is considerably better.  The smell is far less perceptible, the DFAC is better, etc.  Diamondback has one or two interesting shops, but that's all.  One of the main Iraqi roads leading from the north to Baghdad runs between the FOBs and so a checkpoint separates them.

The foliage is uninteresting on FOBs, though Mosul has some lush mountains off in the distance and when you are up against the Tigris or Euphrates rivers there is a lot more green. Some scattered trees and bushes and things like that.  But they are always covered in dust.  Lots of desert and nothingness.  I sometimes see tumbleweed just rolling across a field like in the old westerns. Once in a while a pretty weed manages to erupt from a crevice.  On Marez there is so much dust that a truck drives around spraying water on the road so that the vehicles don't kick up too much dust.   

There is the occasional hare that hops by and some foxes that I am getting used to seeing in the early morning and late night.  There is a red fox that apparently lives near me and some mangy looking tan and gray ones too.  This morning I woke up and there was a gecko on my bed.  They are fairly common, but today was the first time one crawled into bed with me.  There are the usual assortment of insects too and now it is bee season again.  There was a long period when it was mosquito season - that sucked. 

It is usually quiet on FOBs.  Every place is different.  On JBB you always hear the loudspeaker telling you something about "incoming" and "all clear"; you learn to more or less ignore that after a while.  Some of the smaller bases like Warrior or Warhorse are dark and quiet at night and not much happens.  Mosul too is quiet at night. 

There are usually people going to and from somewhere at almost any time of day or night and it almost always feels safe when you have to leave your room at odd hours to go to the bathroom or something.  We have no indoor plumbing in most rooms.  You have to be pretty special to get that. But it usually is dark.  Not all FOBs are well lit. Warhorse is not, neither is FOB Warrior.  Flashlights are de riguer. 

This place does present a stark contrast to everywhere else I've ever been.

Benjamin MeTudella in northern Iraq

I have spent the past few days in Mosul (a city on the Tigris in northern Iraq) sitting around waiting for convoys to arrive from Irbil. Not very exciting stuff. But by coincidence I have been reading the travel diary of Benjamin MeTudella a 12th century Jew who traveled from Spain the middle east, then Asia and North Africa.

Like "D" and I on our last trip through Spain, he passed through Barcelona and Gerona on the beginning of his journey.

Here is what he has to say about Irbil and Mosul:

[From the place where Noah's ark is, near the synagogue of Ezra where Jews come to pray on the 9th of Av,] it is two days to Mosul, which is Assur the Great, and here dwell about 7,000 Jews, at their head being R. Zakkai the Nasi of the seed of David, and R. Joseph surnamed Burhan-al-mulk, the astronomer to the King Sin-ed-din, the brother of Nured-din, King of Damascus. Mosul is the frontier town of the land of Persia. It is a very large and ancient city, situated on the river Hiddekel (Tigris), and is connected with Nineveh by means of a bridge. Nineveh is in ruins, but amid the ruins there are villages and hamlets, and the extent of the city may be determined by the walls, which extend forty parasangs to the city of Irbil. The city of Nineveh is on the river Hiddekel. In the city of Assur (Mosul) is the synagogue of Obadiah, built by Jonah; also the synagogue of Nahum the Elkoshite.

The ruins of the city of Nineveh are now in the city of Mosul which you can see from the FOB.

Metudella stopped in scores of cities, where he enumerated the number of Jews in each one and the historical sites, artifacts and lore that each had. It is unclear what he was doing on his travels. Was he looking for Jewish havens? Was he looking for Jewish connections in other cities for trade? His motives are unknown, but it certainly must have been an exciting adventure.

Update: I am not the only one who has been reading Tudella's diary lately.

CH Goldstein

COL (CH) Goldstein spoke in our shul (B'nai Avraham) in Brooklyn Heights last Succos. He had some great Iraq stories.  He is the only person in the US Army with a full beard. It _was_ weird seeing that. Article about him here.

Canada's Jewish Chaplain

Though Canada has a pretty small armed forces, the fact that they now have their first Jewish chaplain since WWII is still surprising.

Jewish military cemetery

Oldest Jewish military cemetery. Story here about confederate cemetery.

Life on FOBs - getting around on FOBs

In case you are wondering how we get around in FOBs, we don't all drive tanks, Humvees, and MRAPS. 

 

When we are on a FOB, and some of them can be very big, it is often hard to get around.  When you are on a base in Iraq you have a few options.  Personally I bicycle when I can.  I bought a used bicycle from the Arab market on JBB pretty cheaply when I was there and have been using it ever since.  Each unit has a very limited number of vehicles that everyone must use and it is pretty tough to get access to it all the time and I hate always bothering the people with the keys.  When I take the keys it often means that the soldiers have to wait to do something that it often more important.  So unless you want to walk a lot, bicycling is a good option.  It is a bit annoying when you have to bicycle in the rain or dust storms though.  But it has not been too much of a problem for me yet.  It is sometimes really unpleasant in the summer heat when you are wearing a uniform.  My unit is kind of resourceful and we got a few "gators", so our guys get to drive in those. 

 

Lager FOBs have buses, or vans, that travel on specific routes.  JBB has quite a few, Speicher has one or two.  Some more remote smaller FOBs have none.  On Speicher there is a very nice culture of people stopping their vehicles on the side of the road when someone is walking and offering them rides.  It happens to me quite often.  Almost no one minds going out of their way to drop someone off.  The heat is oppressive and lots of people are pretty good about it.  I made an interesting friend or two that way. 

Once, on a smaller FOB I have quite literally walked up to a complete stranger in civilian clothing at the airport (what we call a PAX terminal) and asked where some place was.  Turns out it was a local interpreter who just gave me a ride straight to where I was going.  

Flying from FOB to FOB is a whole different story. There are whole procedures you go through for getting flights, and many can be quite adventurous.  I have ended up in the wrong city or wrong country through no fault of my own.  It happens.  Then you just stay where you are until they can get you to where you have to go.  Obviously I have to be sketchy on details about this and about what follows.  If you go from the FOB to the nearby city, that is if you "go outside the wire" you would almost definitely take an uparmored vehicle.  Obviously I can't give details, but it is safer than it sounds.  Same for convoys.

Burglary in monticello

Who knew that there was a JWV post in Monticello?  Too bad they are plagued with problems like this?

Qatar

I am now in vacation in Qatar.  I have a few days to relax here.  So far, so good.  It is however the hottest place I have ever been to in my life.  It took me about 3 days to get here.  I took a helicopter to Baghdad, then flew to Kuwait, and then another plan to Doha.  I slept in 4 cities (in 3 countries) on four consecutive nights. 

Rumor has it that the temperature was in the high 130's yesterday, and this morning it was over 100 in the morning.  I will try to report on what we do here. I only have 4 days before I have to get back. 

Marine funny man

Jewish comedian in the Marines. (Hat tip: NY)

Kadish at Arlington

A tour of Jewish Arlington.  Story here.

Shavout in VBC

I spent this past Shavous in Victory Base Compound in Baghdad.  There was a Jewish retreat of sorts there.  I got a FRAGO that provided all the information for that.  We had 12 soldiers altogether and thus a minyan the whole time.  I missed the first night but was there for the two whole days.  I met up with some of the guys in my unit that are stationed there so that was fun too.  I brought one of the guys who are attached to my unit with me, and we were the only two Jews who came from Speicher.  The people who came were from all over Iraq.  We were mostly in Camp Victory and Camp Liberty.  We goofed around a lot in the palace and spent a bit of time chatting on the balcony.  It was nice and relaxing and I am glad I was able to go. 

Future officers

Jewish in ROTC? Marty Nosenchuck, Matthew Golub, Josh Jacobs, William Adelson, Rachael Ruben, Dylan Neidorff, Jack Morris, Scott Friedland, Nick Lawson, and Neil Bloch explain.

in a war zone

CPT Brewster's thoughts as a Jewish serviceman in Iraq.

Iraq demands. . . .

 . . .the return of Jewish artifacts.  Looks like this story will keep coming back.  I am convinced that they are not very good at taking care of what they have now, and there is no reason to let them hold on to the artifacts the community that they forced out.

Food

Since I know how worried many of you are about my eating, I thought I would include a photo of a portion of my current kosher food stash here in COB Speicher - so you need not worry. Just keep it coming regularly and I'll be fine. (Thanks - to everyone who sends stuff!) I also put a picture of the box that kosher MREs come in. They are pretty hard to get though from the Army. You have to know someone. The food that I find most edible is the Meal Mart meals. I heat them in my microwave and viola, a hot meat meal. (The LaBriute and My Own Meals are OK, but not as good. But they mave the advantage of not needing a microwave.) I also have the soup often. They don't ship as well, but almost all of them make it OK. Anything that can be microwaved and eaten, or have boiled water poured in is great. I also have become a fan of the various kosher beef jerkeys on the market (I have seen three so far).

Although there are many cereals here, we do not have alphabits, so I love getting those too. (My favorite cereal.) It is a rare treat to be able to enjoy that. I get bored of eating Total and Special K and Coca Krispies and stuff like that.

What's a nice Jewish girl doing in a place like this?

LTJG Laurie Zimmet's thoughts.  

Rain

One minute it just looks ominous, then I snap a photo, then my CHU is flooded. A little work later I am no longer underwater. No damage. Now lets hope this doesn't happen again tonight.

The Times finally got something right about the Army

This piece on the Army and Powerpoint is spot on.

When I look out of the helicopter this is what I saw

I am in the airport in COB Speicher, Iraq, waiting for a ride back to work.  I just got off a Chinook, coming from a relatively remote FOB where I had some work to do for a few days. 

I don't get very emotional about places.  Well, maybe sometimes.  I am definitely not one of those people who is moved when I hear something like "Benjamin Franklin stood on this very spot over two hundred years ago!!!!"  "So what", I think to myself,  "I'm standing here now."  OK, perhaps once in a while a place moves me.  Checkpoint Charlie a few years ago got to me.  I was sad that Berlin was reunified.  I always thought of her division as a punishment.  But then again reunification was a symbol of the end of Soviet communism.  So I had mixed feelings.  Sitting on the Brooklyn Heights promenade reading Whitman, or in the West Village thinking about Alan Ginsburg's New York or the walls of Jerusalem with Judah Halevi and Judah Amichai sometimes make me misty as well.  But I already digress.  

In grade school, for the first few years of my education in Yeshiva Torah Temimah, we heard lots of biblical tales and let's face it, most of them are implausible.  And even if they were true, they were told of people whose lives had little resemblance to my own.  The characters conversed with God, saw and performed miracles, fought angels, and sired nations.  I never met anyone who got water from a rock, no one did.  So when I picked up some silly red string at Rachel's tomb in Hebron as a teenager or stood atop Mt. Nebo in Jordan a couple of years ago, I was somewhat nonplussed.  After all, who can really identify with Moses or a "matriarch"?  I know, I know "THIS IS WHERE JACOB FOUGHT THE ANGEL!!!"  Yeah yeah, but THIS is where I AM NOW standing around looking at sand on the floor!  Had the "patriarchs" really even been there or was all this mythology created by some ministry of tourism flunky to get me to buy local knickknacks?  Seriously, does this matter to anyone?  Did they even exist?  What could possibly prompt an emotional experience from these places?  

But then I grew up.  I progressed from fourth grade to fifth and story time was over.  My education got more sophisticated and everyone stopped pretending that Biblical stories were really true - no one denied them, but we stopped making a big deal of them.  To be sure, they were certainly nice morality tales or homilies.  From these fantastic tales I learned the value of not lying (yeah, I see the irony) and loving my neighbor and all that.  But truth?  Even the Rabbis gave up trying to convince us of these things once we hit nine whole years old.  Certainly these things might have happened, but you have to admit, they are hard to believe.  

By fifth grade my Jewish education switched from fables and myth to more real-worldly matters.  Who can forget their first Talmud lesson: What do you do if you find some fruit or money or packages spread out all over the floor of the market?  What if it is a ring of figs or fish or meat, or if it is flax or wool that you find?  Keep it?  Look for the owner?  The Talmud tells us: Rabbi Meir says that the owner must have already despaired of finding and getting back his unmarked figs. Just keep them.  

This was something I could use.  OK, growing up in New York in the 80's there were no farmer's markets yet, but still there was some principle there I can learn from.  Who said it?  Rabbi Meir.  Who was this Rabbi Meir?  He must have been real.  Did he perform miracles?  I doubt it.  He apparently had to get his figs from the market like everyone else.  They didn't fall from the sky for him.  We are told that he once prayed that some muggers should die.  Did they?  No.  He was a real person with real worries.  He worried about things like what to do when you are traveling from the old city of Jerusalem and go past Mount Scopus holding some consecrated meat that you forgot to burn.  (This is actually a walk I have taken a few times  - sans the consecrated meat.)  The rabbis of the Talmud actually did a lot of traveling.  Many of them traveled from Yavneh (near what is now Tel Aviv) to Falluja (a bit southwest of where I woke up this morning).  The trip was undoubtedly more dangerous and unpleasant for them than it was for me. 

And the rabbis knew of the dangers.  They were of a different breed of people than those who populate the pages of the Bible.  They all had jobs; they were butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, etc.  Did the biblical Isaac have a job?  Not that we are told.  Did Judah, Joshua, or Job have jobs?  Not that we know of.  They were all rich and busy serving the Lord.  But Rabbi Meir of the Talmud toiled away day and night being a scribe.  Just a regular job in the year 200.  

But there's more.  These folks with ordinary jobs and annoying travel plans were not merely people whose lives and teachings we study.  These are the people who have shaped who we are today.  To be honest, no one learns what it is to be a Jew from looking at the life of Abraham.  (Again, there are some nice lessons about hospitality, but that's all.)  Jews wake up in the morning and put on T'filin, pray, go to the bathroom, make love, die, cry, eat, work and rest.  They find lost objects and they are involved in legal disputes whose principles we can still derive from Talmudic analyses of goring oxen.  What it is to be a Jew was shaped - for me anyway - not by King David's swashbuckling and lusty exploits, but by Rabbi Meir and his ordinary observations about life in his neighborhood.  

And this is where I finally get to the point.  My Chinook just passed over the neighborhood of one of Rabbi Meir's Babylonian colleagues, or one just like it.  There is a market where a few copper coins might have fallen on the floor and some rabbi might have wondered who they belonged to and what the owner must have been thinking about them.  And I'll bet anything that the improvised fire-pits the Arabs make to cook in the field are no different than those that the Rabbis of the Talmud saw when they were wondering about the quality of baked offerings. And, (this will amuse my brother) the way that the Arabs wrap their kafeiahs around their heads in a sandstorm is the same way that that Shmuel of the Talmud insisted we wrap our talis each morning.  Some things have not changed much.  

Certainly not the geography.  

By sheer coincidence a bit of Talmud I was I was glancing at the other day was somewhere at the end of Berakhot where the Talmud was discussing the blessing that one makes when seeing the Euphrates.  And it was clear that the rabbis knew well the cartography of the Tigris and Euphrates and the channels and the places where it was diverted by the Persians. . .  I just spent the last 25 minutes looking at the Tigris myself.  Many of the Rabbis spent their time in Mechuza - a wealthy town off the banks of the Tigris - talking about perfumes.   

Such is the Judaism that we recognize today:  The Judaism that is recorded in the Talmud that many of us spend a lifetime trying to master, the Judaism forged by hundreds of Rabbis toiling over hundreds of years to figure out what Judaism needs to look like in a post-Temple era, the Judaism that thrived and flourished for thousands of years from the Talmudic rabbis to the Ben Ish Hai - that is the Judaism that I grew up with.  It it hard to describe the feeling that one gets the first time he is in the place that Modern Judaism was conceived.  I don't know why some Rabbis thought the Euphrates required a blessing, but I know why I'd say one.  It is here that the details and protocols of modern Judaism were hashed out.  It is on these streets that the Rabbis argued over each detail and each theoretical principle that the Judaism of today stands on.  It is in these rivers that the Rabbis purified themselves and from these waters that they drew water and derived sustenance.  These are not people whose existence has ever been questioned.  These are not people about whom we tell fantastic tales.  These are people about whom we tell the most fantastic tale of them all: they created the document that shaped our lives for two thousand years.  They determined how we live, what we eat, who we marry, and what we say.  They made us who we are and they did it in a way that has endured and kept us enduring all this time.  What they worked out while talking in the markets and courtyards of Pumbeditha (now Falluja) was enough to spiritually and intellectually sustain Jews for millennia.  They make sure that Jews had a unique and special lifestyle that saw us through the inquisitions and crusades, the Holocaust and the pogroms, the industrial revolution the sexual revolution, and the internet revolution and the Copernican revolution.  The principles of law they worked out then work as well for camels (which are still around here in abundance) as they do for cars.  

It is sad that Jews, or anyone else for that matter, can't visit here today.  For a Jew whose every moment is guided by Jewish law seeing the tomb of Samuel pales in comparison to walking the same streets that the rabbis walked when they worked out what blessing one utters over cake.  When I think about the time I spent in yeshiva trying to understand what a "hatzer" - courtyard - must have looked like and I come here and see one, halacha - Jewish law - moves from an abstraction to a reality.  It is no longer some theoretical construction that exists only in some old book, but it is the way real people with real lives really lived.  And it is the way that many still live today.  

(Updated 4/20/10: Corrected a severe anachronism)

Worth noting

I thought that this story was worth noting. 

Yom Hashoa on COB Speicher

COB Speicher just held a Day of Remembrance ceremony for the victims of the Holocaust. It was very nice. It was somewhat sparsely attended, but it was quite moving nonetheless. On of the LTs was the MC. There was an invocation by a local chaplain followed by a presentation video from the Holocaust museum. Again, quite moving. The MC then spoke well about the theme of "what you do matters" and recited the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller. Then there was a ceremony where 7 candles were lit, for the women, the resisters, the children, the non-Jews, the survivors, the world, and the last one for those who continue to stand up to tyranny. This ceremony was followed by a speech by one of the Jewish soldiers there (possibly the only other one beside myself) who spoke movingly about the importance of remembering the past and our role in preventing the re-occurrence of such a genocide.

(I understand that there was some sort of ceremony on JBB as well.)

In Speicher

There are a few differences I have already noticed between JBB and Speicher.  Here are some preliminary observations since I have only been here less than two weeks. . 

First, at night it is pretty dark here.  There are hardly any street lights and it is harder to ride bicycles at night.  It is harder to walk and find stuff too.  Second, things are pretty spread out here.  So there are far fewer buildings and housing areas and stores and stuff.  There is no movie theater here, I think either.  It is also much dustier here.  There is just a lot of that here.  Dust storms are common and when you ride your bike in one you feel it in your lungs and also when you wipe your face afterward.  

Let you think it is all bad, I actually am much happier here.  There are a few nice things about Speicher.  Since everything is so spread out people will stop their vehicles on the side of the road to give rides to those who are walking.  People are generally friendlier here.  I think the atmosphere is a bit more relaxed for a lot of people.  It is actually a lot quieter here.  The fighting seems much farther away.  

My room is different.  I live in a large shipping container.  It is actually fairly comfortable despite the fact that it really looks like I am living in a large shipping container.  I do not yet have TV hooked up, but I have fairly reliable, though quite slow internet.  I spend a lot of time listening to galgalaz radio for some reason.  I do not have a roommate yet and I hope to keep it that way.  

I'll write up something a bit more detailed later on. 

The 188th Crybaby Brigade - Book review

(I am writing about a book I just finished reading.)  

I read on the dust cover that Chasnoff is a comedian, so I am thinking his book will be funny, right?  Wrong.  It is bitter and cynical.  But that's OK.  Lots of good books can be bitter and cynical.  But this book was bitter and cynical about an institution I like, y'know Israel, the Israeli Army, stuff like that, and that's fine too.  It was still a good read.  Not quite what I was looking for, but what I got.  Joel Chasnoff's The 188th Crybaby Brigade is probably a pretty accurate description of what it is like to be a junior enlisted soldier going through tironut, basic training, in a combat unit of the Israeli Army.  

I say that it was probably a fairly accurate description because I could have written that book myself and I recognize most of the details of Army life in his book, except for those here and there which are specific to Israel.  Yes, I would have to change a few details, like I am in Iraq now with the US army and he was in Lebanon with the Israeli Army.  He had some conversion issue in his family which I do not.  But it is interesting to see how similar my military experience was to his.  I mean, it is scary how similar our experiences really are.  The same things that disappoint and frustrate me on a day to day basis about how things are run in the US Army are generally the same things that made his life miserable.  Both of us apparently had long swathes of experience that made us wonder how we win wars given all we know about how things work (and we both came up with the same answer).  

Interestingly, our experiences were similar both in terms of what we experienced in the Army, say about "guard duty", "duck walks", "initial reception", annoying leadership, and the like, but also on a personal level.  Reading him talk about telling his family was pretty familiar.  And listening to how many people asked him why he joined the Israeli Army and not the US Army was a mirror of my own experiences.  I can't begin to recall how many people have asked me why I joined the US Army instead of the Israeli Army.  (As if the point was just to join an army and then we flipped a coin about which one it was going to be.)

Of course I am willing to bet that both of our experiences are anomalous.  Americans who are raised very Jewish do not typically join the IDF.  Nor do they join the US Army.  Some do, to be sure, but it is very rare.  Those of us who do, come in to the Army completely unprepared.  Whereas Israelis hear stories and get advice from their friends, brothers, sisters, parents, and teachers.  They are raised knowing what is in store for them, whereas Americans do not.  People who go to yeshiva for 20 years do not know what they are getting into when they join the American army either.  So both can be pretty big culture shocks and one never knows what to expect.  (One does not hear the same cynicism from, say, Haim Sabato who, like Chasnoff,  was in the Armored Corps in the IDF and described the Yom Kippur war in his book Adjusting Sights.)  It strikes me that if you don't know what you are doing, you are bound to be disappointed.  Your assumptions about the kind of place you are in are dispelled one by one.  You go in thinking that this is the greatest army in the world and that makes you think that it must be run by people with common sense and the training is logical and resources and positions are allocated in some way that is to the benefit of the Army.  But none of this is true.  Eventually you realize that the army is really now what you imagined it when you went in.  

Seeing the similarities between the experiences he had in training and in Lebanon and my own here in Iraq made me think that it would be interesting to have American Jews in the US Army and American Jews in the Israeli Army trade stories or something.  It would be informative to see how similar and different we really are.

The book read well and I am glad I read it.  This is certainly a book I will plagiarize large sections of my own life story from.

Seders in Iraq

We had two seders on Joint Base Balad, Iraq, one of each of the first two nights of passover.  Both were well run by the Jewish chaplain who is here on JBB for a few weeks. Both were really nice experiences. 

 

The first seder was rather traditional and intimate, about 15 people showed up - at least 10 of whom were Jewish.  One of the Army officers (the youngest) asked the four questions and a soldier from the Air Force found the Afikomen (both were female).  We had Kosher for Passover self-heating LaBriute MREs for the meal as well as plenty of matzoh (regular and some shmurah hand-made in NY), gefilte fish, macaroons, chocolate, jelly friut slices, and other traditional Pesach fare.  One of our JBB regulars made great (Ashkenazi) charoset (with great difficulty as she had only a pocket knife and blender) and we got some sefardic charoset in the mail.  We used little packets of horseradish for maror as well as some horseradish sauce. There was also a little wine- as part of an exception to GO#1B for religious purposes.  

 

During the seder the chaplain was talking about the difficulties he had getting the stuff from the Army for the seders.  The K for P MREs arrived a bit late.  We ultimately did get plenty - half chicken and half beef stew.  There were also plenty of leftovers.  He then went on to tell us about the different people in the US who sent all kinds of things and all the offers he had for help.  Our 20 cans of macaroons came from one person, our gefilte fish came from another.  A third sent kosher for Passover toothpaste and lots of new toothbrushes.  We got tons of kosher for Pesach cereal, Barton's chocolate, marshmallows, and much else that I must be forgetting.  The piece de resistance was a whole lot of gift cards donated to us by a few really generous folks from different schools, congregations and organizations in the US.  It was truly inspiring and humbling to be the benefactor of such largess from such complete strangers who never met us and probably never will.  I sent some of the people thank you emails, but it seems a bit inadequate.  The seders would not have been the same without their generosity. 

 

The second seder was open to the Jewish service members and the first 40 or 50 others who signed up.  The seder itself was thus larger and somewhat less traditional .  There was a lesson on Hora dancing, a movie clip of the Jews crossing the Red Sea from Moses the Lawgiver, and some rather non-traditional music.  One of our guests found the afikoman and everyone left with a bag of stuff that was donated to us.  The rabbi did a great job both nights. 

 

A friend who is stationed a bit farther north in Q-West sent pictures of his seder and I would assume there were seders in Baghdad and Kuwait as well and probably elsewhere in theater.

It was a bit sad not to be able to be with my family and friends this year on Passover, but we pulled together and had an experience that most of us will not soon forget.

Update: 3-MAY-2010 - I am told that COB Speicher's seder was planned out by a TCN who used to work in a South African Jewish retirement home and was able to prepare a whole bunch of traditional seder stuff. I also saw pictures of the Seder on one of our bases in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

New Location

I am no longer in JBB.  I am now in COB Speicher.  I will keep you all updated as I get settled in. 

I know what you are going to ask

Just to let you all know, I am back in JBB for now.  I have returned from R&R and have resumed my duties here. 

I also wanted to share that as part of a now-that-I-think-of-it ill-conceived pre-R&R agreement with the Battalion XO I got a "high and tight" flat-top haircut yesterday.  It looks amusing. 

Now, the answer to the question I know you are all asking is: no, I will not send any pictures.

Kosher (for passover) MREs

Let's see if these made it to JBB in time.  

In transit to R&R

I am now en route to the US for some R&R. I flew from Iraq to Kuwait, from Kuwait to Ireland, and we are now headed from Ireland to Atlanta where I will catch a flight to NY.

I will be in Brooklyn for the better part of my two weeks with some respite somewhere else. Call me if you want to get together. My usual number will not work until I return for good int he summer. So use the funny "Google Call" button on the side of this page to call me.

Life in JBB - IBA holders

No matter who you are, these things look weird when you first get here.  They are all over and everyone thinks they are something else.  I personally thought that they were memorial things for people who were killed.  Some people thought they were religious items.  Other people had no idea what to make of them.  But really they are holders for your individual body armor (IBA) and Kevlar helmet.  They look like little crucifixes and really are creepy at first.  Most people keep their body armor on it.  I usually just keep my knapsack and bicycle helmet on mine.  I leave my body armor under my bed.  Many people like to keep that stuff at work.  It really depends on what you do and where you spend most of your time.  But the truth is, it really doesn't matter where you keep your body armor since you hardly wear it here.  But the holders are really odd.  I asked our guy who makes them to make sure mine was the tallest one.  It is actually almost lifesize.  The two pictures show what the holders look like - the first is mine next to a regular one in my office.  The next one is a picture of the holder being used properly with the IBA and Kevlar. 

Sand storm

We are in the middle of a sand storm now.  It is pretty gritty out there.

Life in JBB - Laundry

There are a number of laundry options here at JBB. Most people use the standard laundry option. Basically that means that you give your laundry to some office run by TCNs (third country nationals) and then you pick it up from them three days later. I am not such a big fan, but it is fairly reliable, though people claim to have had stuff lost. The office is right near where I live, so it is not so bad.

There must be many offices that do this, but I only know about the one near me.

There is also another laundry which (because we are special) we can use. Not everyone can use it and it is on the other side of the post, but you can turn in laundry and they will return it to you in 24 hours.

There is also a self-serve laundromat. Just bring in your stuff and use the machines to wash and dry your clothes. They have a lot of machines, but it is often full. You have to go at odd hours to get your laundry done.

I understand there is also a place where you can have your clothing pressed, but I have no idea why anyone would want to do that.

Life in JBB - Water

I was actually fairly surprised how good the water here tastes.  I would not drink whatever comes out of the sinks here, though the signs all say that it is potable (drinkable).  What we do get in abundance here is bottled water here and it tastes pretty good. 

 

Wherever you go you see a huge pallets with hundreds of clear 1 litre plastic bottles of water.  People just take a 12-pack back to their room every now and then.  Most of the offices have these pallets nearby and they restock whenever they run out.  The DFACs have refrigerators full.  Many office refrigerators have signs that tell you to take water and replace it with one that is not cold.   A forklift comes by every now and then and drops off new pallets of water whenever they run out. The water is stored in this big lot that I pass by every now and then that just has acres of pallets of water.  I have a feeling that we have been consuming more water here than Iraq has consumed in its whole history. 

 

Rumor has it that the water we shower with comes from a rather ugly looking river just near JBB and it is cleaned.  But that is just a rumor.  I am not sure I believe it though.  I have seen what they call "reverse osmosis water filters" that make the water we use here. 

 

Oddly enough, you can actually purchase water in the PX too.  It cost something like $0.68 for a one litre bottle, though I can't imagine who buys it when you can just take as much as you want from what is laying around.   

Jewish documents from Baghdad U library

This AP article is interesting. Personally I wouldn't return anything to this country until it was completely stable.

Brooklyn

Here is the flag of Brooklyn flying over Joint Base Balad, Iraq.