The Tekes

Sabra plant


Garin Tzabar (literally, the “Sabra seeds,” or the “Sabra unit”), is the program that is facilitating the process that will lead to my enlistment in the Israeli Army in late November. Garin Tzabar is a program run by Israel’s major youth movement (Tzofim) that places groups of new immigrants on Kibbutzim, where they live together for three months before individually serving in the army for a minimum of two years.

For those of you who don't know, tekes means "ceremony" and I'll be using that word A LOT cause Israelis are obsessed with ceremonies. They have one for everything.. when people get married, bar mitzvahed (haha okay thats my attempt at a bad joke). But seriously, everything here is a tekes.

So early this morning (and by early I mean at 2 PM) there was a tekes for all of garin tzabar (the program that I"m doing to join the army) at the shmolarsh auditorium in Tel Aviv University. It was awesome to finally see everyone in my garin again... really, so good. There are about 9 garin-eem (groups) and something like 250 kids joining the army from all around the US. I also saw the kid that held my hair back on the plane while I was puking, and picked him a flower in appreciation for his chivalry!

The tekes went on for ages... and everyone was getting really ancy. This one kid, in the middle of two speakers yelled "AD KAMA ZMAAAAAAANNNN" - which pretty much translates into "HOW MUCH LONGER". this would happen- but only in Israel.

what was really amazing is that I ran into two kids from my highschool back in New York. Naomi Spilka and Yechiel Szeinuk (definitely had to look that one up on facebook). They are both a year younger than me and joined the army last year through garin tzabar... so they came to the tekes with their units and didn't know I'd be there and it was a big ol' happy reunion.

We finally got on the bus and arrived at the kibbutz which is AMAZING. seriously. I'm going to live here for ever. In 3 months time when I'm expected to join the army they'll have to pull me out of my air conditioned apartment (YUP. AIR CONDITIONING!). I live in a room with my best friend Talia from Riverdale and we share an apartment with two of our other friends. And we have a kitchen, and wireless internet.

Living in the desert aint bad.

We had a tour of the kibbutz and all the women made us cakes and welcome signs and I love being here and everyone come and visit. OK?!

much love ya'll