The Lessons of the Lollipops

Honey and very sweet food enlighten the eyes of man. (Yoma 83b)

I have become the lollipop lady.

For the past few years, I have been giving caramel apple lollipops to kids on the first day of school. Besides the idea that all learning, especially Jewish learning should start with sweetness, the caramel apple flavor seemed to fit right in with the holiday flavors. We eat apples and honey, why not apples and caramel? 

And then I learned of the wonderful SImchat Torah tradition the synagogue I am currently working with has of giving lollipops to the students starting their Jewish education. We had a whole gaggle of kiddles on the bimah, covered by a large talit, being blessed by the pulpit as they formally begin their lifelong learning. But, I realized that for many of the community, the only contact they have had with me is through a lollipop.

Once the dancing and the hakafot began, I was approached by child after child to request a lollipop. And, while I apologized to several parents who (I hope) jokingly said they would send their dental bills to the synagogue, I got to meet and talk with (albeit briefly) all the children in the room. I had the opportunity to meet younger siblings of our current school children and to meet many of the LGA and the Gan Keshet students.

I even made some friends. One little girl gave me her half eaten apple to hold while she danced and came back to nibble when she wanted (of course, she wouldn’t give me her lollipop to hold; she hung on tightly to that).One little boy sat next to me for a long while and generously gave me his sticker for my sweater. One older boy was curious about the stickers and three older girls wanted all their stickers to match. Obviously, the lollipops served as a sweet entry point to conversation.  

Besides Shabbat, there are no more Jewish holidays for almost two months. We have started our year with this amazing assortment of holy days. Rosh Hashanah which jump-starts the spiritual journey, Yom Kippur in which we dig deep inside ourselves to find a way to better connect our lives to God, and Sukkot which reminds us of the fragility of life are all followed by Simchat Torah which seems to incorporate all the swirling emotions of the past few weeks.

I had one more wonderful conversation at Simchat Torah because of the lollipops. One girl wanted to look at several of them to find the ‘prettiest swirls’. She looked for the colors and for the patterns and finally chose the best one.  I think we can all learn from her approach. The lollipops lasted through the evening, but the memory of the sweetness lasts longer.

The holidays are over but their sweetness will last for awhile.

Of Prisoners and Watermelons

As I watch the images of Gilad coming home, the parades and groups of people outside his hometown, I can’t help but rejoice but I am also conflicted. I firmly believe we should not negotiate with terrorists and yet I firmly believe that we should do anything we can do to bring every Israeli soldier home.

I think about Gilad and I think about his parents, friends and family. 

I also think of all the others who will be impacted by the release of hundreds of terrorists. I realized this week that it is 25 years since I was discharged from the IDF.  Time has flown and time has crawled and times - they have certainly changed.

I was in uniform in 1985. I served in a smaller outpost just south of tzomet Mickey Mouse; named not after the efficiency of the soldiers but after the shape of one of the original building which ( I was told) looked like Mickey Mouse ears. When I first arrived on the base in January, it was a pretty relaxed place. When we weren’t on guard duty we would often change into civilian clothes and walk down the hill into the Arab village and buy fresh bread and cremebo-im. The locals greeted us warmly and sometimes saved loaves of bread for us. There was no bus service into the base so we would be trucked down to the nearest Egged stop and left alone to wait for the bus. To be honest, in the first few weeks, I would often hitch hike home to Beer Sheva rather than wait for the bus to Jerusalem and then take another bus south.

By March, there had been some terrorist activities in the area. Couples out walking in the hills had disappeared and were later found dead. A number of soldiers were taken from trampiadas and killed. Security in our area was increased. We were no longer allowed to wander into the villages in the evenings. If we went during the day to buy fresh bread or produce, we were only allowed to go if one of us was armed, and female soldiers were discouraged from going at all. The truck which took us to the bus stop to go on leave now waited with us until we got on the bus. I was told by my commanding officer that if he heard I was hitching, he would never give me leave again.

But, the villagers were still friendly for the most part. The children would wave to us as we drove through and the adults waved and smiled.

When the prisoner exchange was arranged, there wasn’t the same oversaturation on the news. Granted, in 1985 nothing was as oversaturated in the news and our little outpost had only a radio for news and music and of course, cable tv wasn’t standard issue with our uniforms.  I know that there was concern. We went into full alert, no leaves, more guard hours and we were armed all the time, even on kitchen duty. Of the roughly 1500 prisoners, convicted terrorists and felons, roughly 800 were expected to return to their homes in our area. The army set up road blocks in the villages and our small outpost became headquarters for part of the added security and intelligence gathering teams who were supplementing the regular teams.

It was a strange place for a woman soldier to be. Theoretically, women were still not allowed to be on the front lines. And yet, the front lines had come to us. I think had they been able to evacuate us, they would have. But, there wasn’t time or capability and so they left us on the base, with our male counterparts. We served as front gate guards, radio room operators, and kitchen cooks, just like the men did. The only thing we were not allowed to do was to walk the perimeter. But, when the road blocks were set, the men were taken to ‘man’ them and the women were left to fill in on the base. Instead of one shift a day at either the front gate or the radio room, we were now doing two shifts, one at the radio room and one at the gate. And of course, there was still kitchen duty and more mouths to feed because of the extra teams.

One of the things I am most proud of is my IDF training. Because of the division I served with I had more in depth training, more on par with a typical male soldier than a typical female soldier. I was trained to serve on an outpost and to be part of the non-gender specific team, including being qualified on many of the ‘larger’ weaponry and potential bullet wounds. We had been trained to be soldiers and yet somehow, the nascent Jewish mother genes kicked in.  I, and the other women who served on that outpost at that time, were more concerned with whether our men were getting enough to eat at the roadblocks than whether we were being shot at.

The first couple of days, we sent food to the roadblocks. We baked, and cooked and sent the best pieces of chicken, and the freshest produce out to them. In fact, I have vivid memories of trying to keep my gun slung over my shoulder onto my back while taking trays out of the oven. The first day, they came back to the base grateful for the wonderful chuparim( treats). But the second day, they brought back some of the cookies and fruit we had sent them but also a couple of watermelons which hadn’t come from the base.

It turns out that some of the villagers who had been stopped at the roadblocks  had taken pity on the soldiers and left them with watermelons, and in the coming days, peaches, avocado and fresh bread. Relationships which had been developed through the years of soldiers walking into the villages for produce and ice cream were still intact. For the week the blockade was up, we had more fruit and vegetables on the base than we ever had before.

We also had our military incidents as well. If you have ever gone to bed with the sky lit up from flares, or to the sound of not so distant gunfire, then you know how easy it is to fall asleep when you need to. I have been fired at and returned fire and consider myself lucky that I don’t know if any of my bullets actually hit anyone.  And in those weeks which followed the prisoner exchange in 1985, we were in more overt danger than we had been before the exchange. Combatants were injured on both sides, as were civilians.

But, I would not have told the government to not exchange prisoners.

As I watch the images of Gilad coming home, the parades and groups of people outside his hometown, I can’t help but rejoice; just as I can’t help but think of the soldiers in the outposts. I hope that someone is saving them the best bread and watermelons.

Welcome home Gilad.