Reply To: So who here has actually been in the IDF?

Ivory:

My oldest daughter who finished found it to be a very positive experience. She was assigned to a base near the Syrian border in a non-combat but important job. She was in a group that included both dati and non-dati girls. She came home every other Shabbat, and alternated being off for chagim. She made Shabbat into the best experience she could when she was on base – lighting candles (which she didn’t normally do at home), singing, making kiddish when she wasn’t on shift. She said the other girls respected her for what she did, and the non-dati girls made sure that the rooms and common areas were “Shabbat friendly.” They wouldn’t play music or the radio in the rooms on Shabbat, and they would make phone calls in other areas.

My youngest daughter has the same job as her sister, but she’s in Beersheva. We tease her that she’s in “IDF summer camp” because she lives in a beit ha’chayal, not on the base, so she has air conditioning and access to a swimming pool. There’s a shule on base that she attends on Shabbat (when she’s off shift), and she’s home every other Shabbat. Her group is all girls, and again some are dati, some are not. She’s busy all the time and loves it.

I should add that we insisted that each of them attend a midrasha for one year between high school and joining the army. They each learned in a place that had a specific learning program for dati girls going into the army, including learning halachot of what they can and can’t do on Shabbat as far as their jobs, kashrut in the army, and how to properly ask a Rav a shaila if one should pop up suddenly.

All in all, I’d say the oldest had a positive experience, and the youngest is currently having a positive experience.

(I’ll add, for full disclosure, that our middle daughter did two years of sheerut leiumi; one at the Israel Museum, and one at Leket Israel.)