Army Fluent

One question I often get asked, ecspecially now after a year in Israel, is "are you fluent?" In a word, I would say no. But also yes. But also what does that question even mean, and what does it mean to be fluent?

Moving to Israel and enlisting in the IDF is the deep dive into Israeli culture and the language. Anyone can move to Israel from the suburbs of NYC, find a nice cozy apartment in Baqa, get some job working in the Israeli offices for some non-profit Jewish organization, and spend most of their time around other Americans speaking English. This, at the end of the day, is moving to Israel. However, with this trajectory, how fast is that American-born Jew going to learn Hebrew, if at all. And, how fast will they get to learn about the Israeli culture, the many facets of it? I'd say not at all.

The unique thing about enlisting in the army of all places, is that even for Israelis, the army is a culture shock.

A few months ago, as my platoon was sitting in a classroom with our platoon commander, he begins asking us questions about where we are from, and the lifestyles we grew up in. He then turns to one guy, who might be the most secular one of us all, and he puts him on the spot. The platoon commander asks if he could have ever seen himself being friends with this other guy in the platoon, who is one of the most religious of the group. From there, the conversation began. People started sharing with each other that during the first few days of the army, when our perception of each other is premilinary and external, that certain people saw others as individuals they might get to know, but certainly won't be friends with. "We are too different" was simply the underlying idea being circulated, growing up in the same country, but having lived very different lives.

This idea is simply what makes the army the deep-end of Israel. In my room, I sleep on the bottom bunk of the second bed to the right. I am 22, post college, a lone soldier, and lived my entire life outside of this very country, and in America. To my left is another lone soldier, but from the UK, and above him is a secular merkaznik from right outside Tel Aviv. On my other side is a religious soldier from Eilat, and next to him is quiet possibly the most religious in the platoon, living right outside of Jerusalem in the West Bank. Ironically, beneath him sleeps a kibbutznik, who is one of the most secular in the platoon. Across the room we have a Druze soldier from a town in the north, and two beds over an American who made Aliyah when he was seven, and now is as Israeli as the rest. My point, if not made clear, is that the army is a melting pot of (almost) every corner of this country.

So, if you want to come to Israel and really learn the culture, the army is the place. I am not just being exposed to the Tel Aviv culture, or the American southern Jerusalem culture; I am not being exposed to only the Kibbutz life or what it's like to live in a settlement; but rather to everything and more. Yes, there is indeed this thing known as the "army culture," which I am certainly exposed to at its fullest, but this culture is made up of the collision of every sector of Israeli society, with the added stresses and tensions of life in the army. So to summarize, how fast am I getting to learn about Israeli culture? I'd say faster than any other method, all as I'm trying to stay afloat in the deep end.

Now let's tackle the other side of the coin, am I fluent. To this we obviously need to understand my Hebrew level and at what proficiency I am conversing in my every day life.

The "deep end" aspect of the army really plays itself out when it comes to Hebrew, in the sense that I am surrounded by Hebrew speakers every day, and therefore spend most of my time in the army speaking Hebrew. This isn't like doing some American program in Jerusalem where my Hebrew interaction is either in a classroom or ordering a falafel in the Shuk. Rather, in order to get by every day, I quiet simply need to speak Hebrew.

At first when I started in the Paratroopers unit, I was in a bit of shock. This was the first time that my social circle was primarily Israelies, and it was the first time in my life that I had no other option but to learn Hebrew if I wanted to succeed. I guess you can call this a sink or swim scenario.

One thing I realized quick, is that this wasn't the every day Hebrew I was used to, but rather I just entered "army Hebrew." For the last 6 months, I have been surrounded by 18/19 year old Israelies who love to curse, yell at one another, use slang all the time, and have their specific way of explaining things, that might be different than a group of adults talking to one another. I slowly started to pick up on the way they talked, and I started adapting some of their language. In this sense, I was learning Hebrew the natural way like a baby learns a language, by hearing words and starting to say them as they sounded. In fact, to this day, there are still words that I have learned in the army that are a regular part of my Hebrew vocabulary in which I do not know how to spell. This just shows how much I am absorbing from hearing Hebrew constantly.

Addtionally, I have absorbed army terminology by a great amount. This, I'd say, is not specific to Hebrew. When going to any new environment, that new environment has its own specific lingo that must be acquired. If we take college for example, my campus had its own lingo that I picked up within the first few months such as "the green" which stood for the campus quad in the center, or "main" which referred to Main Street with all the resteraunts. Just like that, the army has its own vocabulary and even more.

I can tell you every part of my weapon, but only in Hebrew. I can tell you what the many acronyms used in the army means, even if I don't know what each letter represents. I know what a "paltziv" is, and a "scavias" and a "brosk." These are all super niche words we use in the army, and words that I have never heard outside of the army context ar all. Oh, and by the way, the list goes on. What I am trying to say is that after half a year in Paratroopers training, I have picked up so much of this army vocabulary, coupled with my absorption of how 18/19 year old Israeli boys talk in an army setting, that my army Hebrew is close to fluent, I'd say.

However, take me to an economics classroom, and ask me to have a conversation on the most basics of the topic (this was at the end of the day my major in college). Take me to a Shabbat dinner table and ask me to talk about politics. Ask me to talk about football in Hebrew, a topic I can talk about for hours in English. Basically, I'd have no idea how to. I'd be able to get along, and maybe even understand most of it, but with any of these topics, I'd need to know how to say basic words of the conversation. As I'm sitting here now, I realize I don't know the Hebrew translation for simple words such as "supply," "recession," "scarcity" and so on. For any basic level conversation of economics, the words above are ones that at least someone should understand, and I'd say that most native English speakers would know what they mean. To have an economics conversation in Hebrew, without knowing those words above, would be incredibly hard.

So, am I fluent? I'd say that I'm army fluent. There is obviously a lot that goes into it, an amount of learning that is super hard to attain as an outsider trying to learn a new language. However, when it comes to getting along in the army, that's a domain where I understand mostly everything going on, and is also a place I can express myself most freely due to my knowledge of the terminology and my absorption of how Israelis there speak. Furthermore, my immersion into the culture has obviously not made me a wizard of all things Israel, but this has exposed me to the very essence of Israeli culture, which is a melting pot of people from the Hermon mountain to Eilat.

I might not know how to say "colonoscopy" in Hebrew, which yes is a word I understand in English, but I do know the word "chickolokim," which has turned into my favorite army term. And in that sense, I'll call myself army fluent.

*this is chickolokim