Parshat Lech Lecha: Dusty Boots of the IDF
I wrote this piece exactly five years ago in the week of parshat Lech Lecha which is this week’s Torah portion and it has taken on a whole new meaning in light of recent events in Israel. It took place during the Men’s Momentum trip and it was one of those moments in Israel where an event or moment – sometimes big and sometimes subtle – brings on a surge of Jewish pride or tears to the eye. It happened in a most unexpected place, in a corner of Israel that I will probably never visit again.
During the trip, it happened to be that there was a wedding of the daughter of a good friend taking place in Caesarea. Caesarea is an amazing ancient port city during Roman times famous for its Roman amphitheatre and well worth a visit. We were up north at the time visiting the holy city of Tzfat and heading south to Jerusalem late in the afternoon. Elad, our madrich/guide arranged for me to hop off the bus at the town closest to Caesarea so I could take a cab to the wedding. And this is how I found myself at the local mall in Yokne’am at 4:15 pm with about an hour to spare. You never heard of Yokne’am? Me neither.
The modest mall there is identical to the other small city malls you will find in Israel. A zigzag shaped place with the requisite food establishments, stationary store, luggage store, grocery store, etc. I walked about the place, wheeling my carryon luggage which had my suit and change of clothes for the wedding, clearly the only American-looking bloke in the whole place.
After surveying the shops for about 15 minutes – Aventura Mall it wasn’t – I holed up in a falafel/shawarma joint to recharge my phone, get a drink and rest a bit from all the stair-climbing I did earlier in the day in Tzfat. As I sat there drinking my Prigat Eshkoliyot/grapefruit drink, a bunch of young soldiers began to file in and line up to order their late lunch or early dinner sandwiches.
By the looks of it, I assumed they were fresh recruits in basic training. They seemed very young, not in the best shape, and certainly not an elite unit of buff, tough young men we met later on in the trip. My guess is they were maybe six months into their three-year stint and they came in all shapes and sizes and colors.
They must have just finished some exercise or training because they were tired, dirty and some had black smudge on their face. And they just kept coming. First five, then another group of seven or so, then another. At any given time there were about 20 of these fellows standing across from me lining up as if in a cafeteria for their grub.
And as they stood across from me, I couldn’t help but focus on one thing – their boots. No matter how much I looked at this group of teenagers, my eyes kept drifting downwards toward their boots. I just couldn’t take my eyes off of their boots. They were all wearing the same army-issued boots and every one of them had the dust of basic training on them. For fifteen minutes or more I was somehow mesmerized by these dusty boots.
And then it hit me why this held me so. For in my mind, I contrasted this footwear to the collection of shoes one sees at Yad Vashem, or the piles of shoes in Auschwitz or at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. The shoes of poor souls – countless men, women and children – who went to their deaths and never wore those shoes again.
And all I could think of when I looked at these many pairs of army boots was that they were a proclamation to the world: “You aren’t going to mess with the Jewish people ever again! The days of our marching to our death are over.” In my mind, those dusty boots became something much more that mere footwear for these basic trainees. They became the symbol of how far we Jewish people have come in a mere two generations.
This week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha and it means to go, to walk, to move ones feet. Avraham was told to leave his land, his birthplace and his father’s house and to walk to the Promised Land. He picked up his feet and together with his wife, his nephew and his followers, he walked through the dust of foreign lands and planted them in what became our homeland.
And with that fateful walk he removed the shoes that walked to Auschwitz and replaced them with the boots that defend our land, our people, our values and our history. He discarded the shoes caked with the deathly dust of Poland and of Russian pogroms and of Chelminski massacres and of Christian Crusades and of expulsions from Spain and every Muslim nation, and replaced them with boots smudged with the dust of life, with the dust of hope and of self-defense and bravery and courage and of the dignity of being God’s people in the land that God promised him.
These are the boots that the Jewish nation wears today. This is the footwear of the IDF that loudly proclaims that we no longer walk to our demise with bowed head to our oppressors but with heads held high in proclamation that we are God’s Chosen People who have come to teach the world about Goodness and Truth and Life and that we will fight every malevolent evil force that tries to extinguish this light and our purpose.
So lace ‘em up and with God’s help, we shall march to victory for the Jewish Nation. Am Yisrael Chai!!
You’ve been a-messin’ where you shouldn’ta been a-messin’…
These boots are made for walkin’
And that’s just what they’ll do
One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you
-Nancy Sinatra
