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From: Ben-Ari
Subject: Formative experiences
Date: 22 Elul 5783
Subject: The Israeli experience
Let me describe what "formative" looks like in Israel.
Gadna. The youth battalions. Two weeks of pseudo-military training at 16. For some it is a joke, for others it is a first taste of something larger.
Tzofim. Scouts. Not like American scouts. More ideology, more hiking, more nationalism.
Shnat sherut. A year of service before the army. Working with development towns, with new immigrants, with the periphery.
The army itself. I will not discuss it. But it is the most formative experience for most Israelis.
Kibbutz volunteering. It shaped an entire generation of diaspora Jews who came to pick oranges and found something else.
None of these fit R. Nachmani's codes. Are they less Jewish? Less formative?
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