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Four Trade Sun Valley Wear for Israeli Uniforms-But Just for Two Weeks
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Thursday, June 28, 2018
 

BY KAREN BOSSICK

Dana Henry Berntson busies herself teaching yoga in the Wood River Valley and tutoring the youth of the Wood River Jewish Community in Hebrew.

A couple times a week she even commutes to Twin Falls from her home in Hailey to practice acupuncture and herbal medicine on Magic Valley farmers.

But a couple months ago, she found herself in Israel wearing an Army uniform as part of a volunteer army designed to allow Israeli’s youngsoldiers have a couple weeks vacation with their families during the two to three years they are obligated to serve.

The program—Sar-El, or the National Project for Volunteers for Israel—was founded as a non-profit, non-political organization in 1983.

It had its genesis in the 1982 Galilee War when the majority of Israel’s able-bodied settlers were called up for army reserve duties, leaving crops in the Golan Heights unattended.

The former head of the Israel Defense Forces recruited 650 volunteers from the United States to harvest the crops before they could go bad. And the volunteers enjoyed it so much that they advocated that the one-time volunteer project be made a permanent one.

Henry, who moved to Sun Valley from Connecticut 18 years ago, traveled to Israel with her father Bob Henry, a retired mechanical engineer for a pharmaceutical company that manufactured laxatives and Oxycontin in the days before the pain pills became a four-letter word.

They reported to a train station in Tel Aviv where they were taken to an undisclosed noncombat army base, which specialized in medical supplies.

There, Dana’s father was assigned work cleaning guns, while others were assigned working packing supply bags and mending uniforms. Dana was given the task of filling designated boxes with specified numbers of Imodium, syringes and other medical supplies and of sorting through medical supplies that had expired.

“The good news was that a lot of boxes with expired goods meant that the country wasn’t in the middle of a war,” she said.

At 40 Henry was the youngest. There were some 50-year-olds but most of the volunteers were in their 70s.

During break from 4 to 6 p.m. Henry taught yoga class for the volunteers. And her father bragged about his daughter’s skills teaching others Hebrew.

The latter made her blush.

“It was like someone coming to Sun Valley from Florida and bragging about being a good skier,” she said.

Henry isn’t the first from the Wood River Valley to participate with Volunteers for Israel.

Bob Goldstein and Sherwin Drobner went five years ago and Bob’s wife Claudie Goldstein went this past year.

Sherwin was 80, a retired lawyer. Bob had had a successful career importing U.S. active wear to France and Italy.

It was the seventh trip to Israel for Bob since 1963. He had gone on a high-level mission as a young man. And he had returned for a daughter’s marriage and his son’s bar mitzvah atop Masada.

Bob and Sherwin’s two-week work project started at Ben Gurion Airport where 150 incoming volunteers between the ages of 18 and 80 were divided into groups of 10 to 15. They came from around the world, including Australia, New Zealand, Scotland and Finland. Half were Christian.

They were taken to a large warehouse where they were invited to outfit themselves in slacks, boots and shirts piled on the floor. Then the two were taken to a small communications base between Ben Gurion Airport and Tel Aviv.

Goldstein was assigned to refurbish radio batteries for tanks—$400 batteries that he says the U.S. military probably would have thrown away but had to be kept by the more frugal Israel Defense Forces.

Drobner worked on tank antennas, while others rebuilt radio equipment.

They started their day with a morning flag raising. They ended it listening to talks by army generals.

Goldstein particularly enjoyed sharing lunch with the Army servicemen.

“We’d sit down at lunch with 16 of us at a square table and we’d be talking with first-generation Russian and Ukrainian youngsters and second-generation young people whose families had moved from Morocco, the French colonies in North Africa,” Bob said.

Not all  of those who live in Israel do so because they want to be there—most had to leave their country, said Bob, noting that Israel has absorbed people from 70 different countries who speak 40 different languages.

Some, for instance, were among a million North Africans who were told they had less than 24 hours to pack a suitcase and get out.

“It’s interesting to see what the young people have to say about Israel. Not all is happiness,” said Goldstein. “I talked with a tall blond 18-year-old soldier whose parents had moved to Israel from Lithuania. This young man said, ‘The whole world hates us. Why am I living in a place that the whole world hates?’  He may not have wanted to be there. But there was no other place for him and his family to go.”

Bob enjoyed his adventure so much that his wife Claudie Goldstein went last year. She and a woman who had been a tech firm executive in Madrid were assigned to a medical supply base where they put together kits of medical equipment that could be used by Israeli teams responding to such catastrophes as Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.

“Claudie bonded with the lady from Madrid,” said Bob. “They told the soldiers to sit down, and they took over the management of the warehouse for the duration of the time they were there.”

All four of the volunteers were given military transportation passes that allowed them a free pass to go to such places as the Dead Sea on their own on weekends.

“Israel is 263 miles long—71 miles at its widest and nine miles at its narrowest point. So traveling around is very easy,” said Bob Goldstein. “We could go to Jerusalem in an hour and a half. And everywhere we went there were soldiers in uniform going home on leave—you’d see 4-foot-11 girls carrying AK-47s on their back, ready to mobilize in 15 minutes if they need to from wherever they are.”

Henry and her father toured the Red Sea, Masada and the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

“Tel Aviv and the beaches were beautiful,” she said. “And I liked going into Jerusalem—it was majestic, magical. The city sits on a giant hill so I ran up and down stairs for exercise. Jerusalem is just a beautiful city with all its old ruins. And the people are so nice…and so vibrant.”

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