Shavuot, celebrated a week and a half ago, commemorates a key moment in Jewish history when G-d gives the Torah, both the written and the oral, to the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai. Pesach and Shavuot are therefore representative of the two key characteristics of the Jewish people. Pesach, celebrating our liberation from slavery, is a holiday that cements our national identity. Meaning, we the Jews are a single, ethno-national group, with a language, a history and a significant degree of genetic continuity. Shavuot represents the next stage in Jewish development - the connection to G-d through the study and performance of the lifestyle and life philosophy of the Torah. Every nation has its own national character, but we are unique in that our nationality is integrated with our religious beliefs. Judaism as a religious philosphy and a religious lifestyle is the principle aspect of Jewish national life.

Sadly, between about 1860 and 1960, massive waves of secularization in all parts of the Jewish world have sucked away Judaism from the Jews, and today, in 2007, the majority of Jews are connected rather weakly to their Jewish essence. The spiritual impoverishment of the Jews began with the secularization of European Jews trying to assimilate into German, French and English societies in the period of 1860-1900. The trend quickly spread to American Jews and to Eastern European Jews in the early 1900's. The former quickly entering into the economic opportunities of the American system, the latter involving themselves in the Socialist philosophy and its associated revolutions and state-building processes. Ironically, it was the Jewish socialists who build the foundations of modern Israel from the early 1900's up until the formal creation of the state in 1948. Finally, the secularization trend reached the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in the 1950's, after they came to Israel. Against their will or not, they were integrated into the Western-minded Ashkenazi-dominated Israeli society, and many of them accepted the Socialist secular philosophy of Eastern Eurpean Jewry.

Today, every Jewish community is majority secular and lives, thinks and acts more like Western progressive individuals and less like Jews. Israel, for fairly obvious reasons, has a relatively high percentage of fully Torah-observant Jews, about 33% of the population (and growing fast!). In the US it's about 12% and in Europe about 20% that live the Torah lifestyle. Compare that with the year 1850 when there was no widespread concept of a secular Jew, and you can see the difference. Not since Roman times, when large segments of the Jews left the Orthodox core and assimilated into a progressive and accepting Roman citizenry, has the Jewish world had such a massive percentage of Jews throw Torah aside.

On the other hand, we do have the State of Israel, which gives us the hope that we can find a solution that blends the national and the religious, allowing for both physical expressions of our identity such as land and language, and for spiritual expressions such as belief, religious holidays, kashrut and Shabbat observance. The spiritual aspects of Jewish identity are still strong if they stand by themselves, but then they lack a national logic and hence aren't particularly compelling. On the other side of the coin, the physical reality of the Jewish state with the original Jewish language doesn't mean much if it lacks the spiritual substance that gives meaning to its very existance and gives drive and purpose to its future.

The reason why I launched into the discussion above is because the national direction of Israel is the single most important underlying issue today. Economic decisions, political manuevering, the security situation - all these aspects of national life are not trite, but they are to a large extent effects, not causes. They are the outer, surface issues, and not the inner core of the nation of Israel. The cause, the inner core, the very life force of Israel is its Jewish identity. To whatever exent we can create a strong Jewish identity, both as national-political entity and a spiritual entity, we can move forward and keep developing Israel into the future. To whatever exent we fail to be Jewish enough and we let ourselves be sucked into the lifestyles and values of New Yorkers and Western Europeans, we will watch Israel slide downward.

Hence, my current training in the IDF, my future performance of my military specialty, and that of every single serviceman and servicewoman in the army - these are all things that are driven, one way or the other, by how Jewish we truly are and how connected we are to Torah and Hashem. If we're not strong enough in our spiritual identity, my accurate shooting isn't worth much. As proud as I am of my strong core muscles, and their ability to carry weight for long periods of time, it's a pretty meaningless little fact if the majority of Israel's youth is obsessed with trying to pretend like they are living in Los Angeles.

Did I ever mention in this blog that Los Angeles, especially Holywood and San Fernando Valley, is the source of the worst values and ideas that modern Western culture has created? That place is incredible morally corrupt and large groups of people the world over, especially residents of urban areas, are absorbing the rottenness of the culture emanating from Los Angeles. Tel-Aviv being a prime receiver of said immorality. Physical comfort, trendy lifestyle, easy money, nice cars, lots of sex. If it looks so good on TV, why wouldn't people want it? Luckily for Israel, the counter-trend of religious belief and strong values is working at a solid pace and regaining lost spiritual ground. Soon, with G-d's help, Torah values will be much more strongly incorporated into the State of Israel's government, political policies and educational system. We have a long, long way to go though.

As far as my training, we have been covering very long distances with weight and with loaded stretchers, and we're been improving our various tactical skills. Nothing you wouldn't have already seen on some TV special. And we're better than the US Army, even though we don't have as much muscle mass, and our equipment is second rate. It's all about motivation.