Joel Chasnoff - The 188th Crybaby Brigade - A Skinny Jewish Kid from Chicago Fights Hezbollah - A Memoir

“No.” She interrupted me. “We need to know it was done by a mohel, at a ceremony. Not in the hospital.”

“I’ll see if I can dig it up,” I said.

Aviva nodded. “You never know when you’ll need a bris certificate.”

Once I’d finalized the paperwork with Aviva, I spent two weeks packing and saying good-bye to family and friends. My Jewish friends understood why I wanted to serve in the Israeli Army, even if they thought I was off my rocker. My one close non-Jewish friend, a devout Protestant named John, was even more enthusiastic. “May the Lord bless you in your defense of Zion,” he said.

“Thanks,” I replied.

When I told my father that my decision was final, he didn’t offer his blessing. Instead, he switched tactics. First, he tried to convince me to work on a kibbutz. Then, once my dad accepted that I really would be joining the army, he tried to steer me into a support job, something like a military spokesman or a job in the Education Corps, helping soldiers from broken homes to finish high school. What my dad didn’t understand was that, important as those jobs were, they were all what Israelis called jobnik roles—support tasks, devoid of glory, just a tad more honorable than being a cook. Finally, my father told me the story of his fraternity brother, Denny MacLean. “I sat next to Denny at college graduation,” my dad said, his voice cracking. “Six months later, he was dead in Vietnam.”

It was the closest my dad ever came to saying, “I’m scared.”

When I told my mother I’d be joining the army, she patted my hand and said, “Be safe.” I wasn’t surprised she reacted so casually. I knew she’d support me if for no other reason than to contradict my father. Family tradition dictates that when my dad expresses an opinion, my mother must stake out a position in the opposite camp. Over the years, I’ve watched my mother disparage trade unions, defend pro-life demonstrators, and bad-mouth Schindler’s List, all because my dad had first professed the opposite. My brothers and I joke that the day can’t be far off when our father will rant angrily against Adolf Hitler, at which point Mom will pipe up, “Now, Ira—Nazis are people, too.”

On June 19, I flew to Israel on a one-way ticket paid for by the Israeli government. I flew alone; once Dorit finished her job at Brooklyn College in early August, she’d move back to Israel to live with her parents.

The immigration literature promised that upon my arrival in Israel, I’d be met by an entourage of government officials who’d escort me to the New Immigrant Lounge inside Ben Gurion Airport, where I’d be showered with a welcome kit and refreshments. But when I landed, there was nobody to greet me. Instead, I wandered the bowels of the airport until I stumbled upon the Immigration Office. After I filled out the requisite forms, I asked the clerk if she had any refreshments.

She cocked her head at the water fountain.

Welcome to Israel.

The Israeli Army defines a Lone Soldier as any soldier whose parents live outside Israel or a soldier who’s estranged from his family and has no parents to rely on for support. I spent my first week in the country running from one government office to the next, filing the paperwork I needed to prove I qualified for Lone Soldier rights, including the $200-per-month apartment rental subsidy so I’d have somewhere to stay when I went home on leave.

My original plan was to pocket the subsidy and instead just shack up with Dorit and her family in Bnei Brak whenever I came home on leave. I’d met Dorit’s parents a month earlier, when they visited New York, and we got along great. Dorit’s father, Menashe, is a short, sixty-year-old Yemenite with bushy white hair—he looks like a combination of Joe Pesci and Albert Einstein—and an endless supply of stories about everything from his days as a professional soccer player to the four wars he fought as an Israeli infantryman. Dorit’s mother, Tzionah, wears long dresses and a headscarf and has a heart of gold. It was a no-brainer: if I lived with Dorit’s family when I came home on leave, I’d have no utilities to pay, no groceries to buy, and, best of all, access to Menashe’s car—since Dorit’s parents are religious Jews who don’t drive on the Sabbath, I figured Menashe’s ’88 Subaru would be mine on any Sabbath I was home.

Then Menashe told me about the Shomer Shabbos car insurance.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Shomer Shabbos car insurance,” he said. He explained that because he didn’t drive on the Sabbath, he qualified for a discounted Shomer Shabbos (Sabbath observer’s) insurance policy. And since most traffic accidents in Israel happen on the Sabbath—the day Menashe never drives—“I save more than twenty percent!” he cried.

Bummer.

Worse, though, was Tzionah’s nonstop pressure to marry Dorit. Tzionah is dying to see her children married. Literally. Once a week, she has chest pains related to the heart attack she’s afraid she’ll have if her children stay single. To twist my arm, Tzionah used every tactic from guilt—

“Please don’t let me die without grandchildren!”

—to bribery—

“If you marry Dorit now, the army will double your salary!”

—to subliminal messages, such as the night her neighbor dropped by and Tzionah introduced me using a Hebrew word I didn’t understand, at which point the neighbor hugged me and yelped, “Mazel tov!”

So after two weeks with Dorit’s parents, I opened the Yellow Pages and connected with a real estate agent named Mickey. Mickey drove me around Tel Aviv on his motorcycle, dodging buses and nearly running over numerous children, until, finally, I found a furnished one-bedroom at 60 Ben Yehudah Street in Tel Aviv, two blocks from the beach, for only $300 a month. Which means that between my monthly $80 military salary and my Lone Soldier rental subsidy, I’m losing only twenty bucks a month by defending the Jewish state.

Once I received my draft date, July 30, I began to train. I ran twenty minutes every morning, and then another forty at night. I ran not because I wanted to be the most fit soldier in the platoon, but because I was certain I’d be the runt. I envisioned my future comrades as a platoon of Israeli tigers, each with rippling abs, forearms like bricks, and bushels of chest hair, like Ari Ben Canaan in the movie Exodus. I feared I’d fall behind on hikes, and then the animal Israelis that Dorit had warned me about would punish me with code reds, pummeling me with fists and bars of soap rolled up in their socks. In eighth grade, I was the only kid cut from the Solomon Schechter basketball team—a humiliating experience made all the more shameful by the fact that I’d been cut not just from a sports team, but from a Jewish sports team. In the weeks leading up to the army, I ran so that I would not be humiliated in the platoon of Israeli he-men I was about to join.

Tomer’s father drives a taxi. Next Sunday, on Parents’ Day, Tomer’s father will drive his taxi down from Haifa, more than two hundred miles away. If Dorit needs a ride, Tomer’s father will pick her up at her parents’ house in Bnei Brak and drive her to the Armored School, free of charge.

Elran’s father sells ladies’ shoes. Elran says that if Dorit ever wants a deal on shoes, I should send her to his father’s store on Akiba Street.

Dror’s father has a Ph.D. in physics and lectures on string theory at the Technion. Twice a year, Dror’s father flies to Toronto, first class, and consults a team of engineers building a semiconductor.

Our fathers are locksmiths and lawyers. Our fathers patch tires, program computers, and teach English literature at Hebrew U. They are bank tellers, factory foremen, pharmacists, and high school principals. Our fathers deliver babies, and they deliver the mail.