First Encounter
Your first encounter with the IDF comes courtesy of “Tzav Rishon,” the initial draft-call process. I arrived at the Jerusalem recruitment office in the late afternoon of a fast day, where the place was filled with soldiers (mostly female soldiers) and just a handful of nervous young recruits. Even so, I found myself waiting quite a while before being called in for the various interviews and examinations.
The interview itself was almost comical. The young soldier seated opposite me was required to ask a fixed list of questions that didn’t quite match my background: How is your relationship with your parents? Is your bedroom usually tidy? How are things with your friends? Do you drink alcohol? And on it went.
I tried to answer honestly, but we both quickly understood — I immediately, she after a minute longer — that perhaps the IDF should consider tailoring its questionnaires to different populations.
I tried to answer honestly, but we both quickly understood — I immediately, she after a minute longer — that perhaps the IDF should consider tailoring its questionnaires to different populations
The meeting with the army doctor, however, was unexpectedly interesting. He turned out to be a Haredi reservist. Alongside the medical exam, we spoke about the challenges of Haredi enlistment. He told me that my medical profile was, in principle, a 72 — something important to me, since several Shlav Bet programs require a minimum of 72 — but he conditioned it on a letter from a dermatologist.
In practice, this small detail (and perhaps other factors unknown to me) delayed my enlistment by many long months. Baruch Hashem, it eventually went through.
The Drafting Line
But Tzav Rishon is only the prologue; service doesn’t begin until you arrive at the drafting date itself. And there, the experience is entirely different.
The morning began with excitement at Tel Hashomer Base, where I already met some of my soon-to-be comrades (and some other Haredi boys who were drafting into the Chashmonaim brigade). From there we were called to a bus that took us to the “Drafting Line” (Sharsheret hachiyul). And somewhere between those stations, the penny dropped.
One after another, I received vaccinations, gave a DNA sample (a dab of blood on a card) and fingerprints, had my photo taken (the room was bursting with soldiers; I was told they were testing new equipment), bit down on a plastic stick for a dental X-ray, answered another round of personal-verification questions — all of it tracked through personal barcode stickers handed to me at the beginning of the line.
“The pants are too long,” I said with sincere naïveté to one of the staff, who was hurrying over to help someone whose shirt didn’t fit. “Welcome to the IDF,” he responded without breaking stride.
At the end of the process, I was given an IDF service card and dog tag, inherited the classic green army duffel (the kind you always see on buses), and changed into my army uniform for the very first time.
“The pants are too long,” I said with sincere naïveté to one of the staff, who was hurrying over to help someone whose shirt didn’t fit. “Welcome to the IDF,” he responded without breaking stride.
Yup.
At the end of the drafting line, dog tag around my neck and the large bag stuffed with my black-and-white clothing, I entered a large waiting hall with an IDF snack counter at the front. “Shekem,” I later learned to call it. A commander — Commander Eli, as I would come to know him — announced in simple terms: “Nobody is allowed to leave the hall without permission from one of the commanders.”
But even before all that, somewhere between the dental X-ray and the DNA sample, I understood the principle: I had officially become IDF property.
Freedom Found in Servitude
It’s no secret that the ethos of personal freedom and modern individualism makes this stage difficult for many young recruits. In the army, after all, you relinquish no small part of your autonomy to the state. I once read an op-ed written in a tone of deep resentment, in which the author lamented becoming “an undifferentiated entity defined by six digits” (seven, in my case). “Throughout my service,” he wrote, “that’s what I was—a number.”
From where I stood, however, I saw in that very number a kind of greatness: a number within “all those who go out to war in Israel.”
True, military service demands the surrender of a considerable measure of freedom; one enters a condition not entirely distant from servitude. I recall the moment we handed over our phones at the start of each day—by command, of course—and the punishments we received when, during a moment of overconfidence, a few soldiers retrieved their phones without permission (the sergeants may have half-looked the other way, but that changed nothing). We’ve become so accustomed to smartphones that our identities blend with them. Suddenly, both the phone and I were placed under someone else’s authority, subject to the absolute say of the commander.
And yet, even servitude can include a form of release—indeed, even a form of elevation.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the philosophical father of certain modern currents that prize individual autonomy above all, was also the source of what later became known as “liberal dictatorship.” In The Social Contract, he famously wrote that “whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body,” and that the recalcitrant individual would thereby be “forced to be free.”
As many have pointed out,[1] Rousseau’s ideas helped fuel the bloodshed of the French Revolution and planted early seeds of the “enlightened coercion” visible later in Marxist thought. Yet, any idea capable of moving masses and redirecting the course of history must contain at least a kernel of truth. And there is something true in the notion of freedom that emerges when the individual merges with the “general will.”
And there is something true in the notion of freedom that emerges when the individual merges with the “general will.”
Isaiah Berlin, the Jewish philosopher, named this inner dimension “positive liberty”—the freedom to become as fully oneself as possible. He also identified the danger: that such a concept may justify a regime forcing “freedom” upon its citizens, as history has shown more than once.
A related resonance appears in the poetry of Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi: “Slaves of time are slaves of slaves; only the servant of Hashem is truly free.” Divine servitude, though, contains an element that goes beyond Berlin’s formulation—the capacity not only to become one’s true self, but to step outside the self entirely and taste a higher mode of being.
I would not go so far as to ascribe this full spiritual quality to the army, even the army of the Jewish nation. Still, there is no question that we experienced something of total self-subordination to the collective—Klal Yisrael, for whom the army has long served as its most concrete embodiment in Tanach.
And this “servitude”—our becoming “IDF property”—carries profound meaning even for everyday civilian life.
The Master Presses
Our Sages were exacting — down to the last hair — when defining a laborer’s obligations toward his employer. As the Rambam emphasizes, the standard is set by none other than Yaakov Avinu:
Just as the employer is warned not to steal the wages of the poor nor withhold them, so too the worker is warned not to steal from the employer’s labor — to waste a little time here and a little time there, spending the day in deceit. Rather, he must be exacting with his time, for the Sages even omitted the fourth blessing of Birkat HaMazon for workers, so they would not take undue time. And he must work with all his strength, as Yaakov the righteous said: “With all my power I served your father.” He was thus rewarded even in this world, as it is written: “And the man became exceedingly prosperous.” (Hilchot Sechirut 13:7)
A laborer is not a slave — yet he is not very far from it (see Rema, Choshen Mishpat 339:3; and Chatam Sofer, Orach Chaim 206). His time “belongs” to another, and he may not squander it. He may not steal the hours entrusted to him. Rabbi Tarfon sharpens the point by applying the same principle to our service of Heaven:
Rabbi Tarfon says:
The day is short,
The task is great,
The workers are lazy,
The reward is abundant,
And the Master presses.
(Avot 2:15)
We are all laborers in the service of the Holy One. Our time is not truly our own. “And the Master presses.”
Our generation loves to emphasize choice — and of course, choice is essential. Without the power of free will, life would lose a great measure of its meaning. Yet the very same Judaism that celebrates choice also binds us with absolute obligations, duties that leave no room for negotiation: “They stand this day according to Your laws, for all are Your servants” (Tehillim 119:91).
I chose, together with my comrades, to enlist. But as the commanders made clear in moments of intensity, the choice is a single act; what follows is obligation
I chose, together with my comrades, to enlist. But as the commanders made clear in moments of intensity, the choice is a single act; what follows is obligation. The Jewish people experienced the same: we chose Torah, but by choosing it, we bound ourselves to it. On the one hand, we continue to choose; on the other, choosing otherwise is no longer an option.
***
I am deeply grateful for my IDF service — among other things, for the way it gave me a vivid, lived picture of absolute servitude. Just as a soldier becomes “property of the IDF,” there is a sense in which a person is “property of God,” as the halachic discussions on self-harm make clear: “A person is not in full ownership of himself.”
Alongside the sanctity of choice, I hope to find the same depth of meaning in the absolute commitment to fulfilling God’s word — to living truth, justice, goodness, and integrity without wavering.
[1] See, in particular, Jacob Talmon’s The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1961).
In the Picture: Standing in the waiting hall right after going through the drafting line.
Awesome essay! See the Beis HaLevi on Parshas Mishpatim on the nature of the Kinyan Mecirah at Matan Torah