Yisrael Ziegler ’15

Posted on February 18, 2024

Like many of my friends and family, I was called up for reserve duty on October 7th. As a former paratrooper, I was stationed on the northern border and took part in the effort to secure Israel from the imminent threat of Hezbollah. Now, 120 days later, the time has finally come for me to try and return to my “regular” life, at least for the time being. I would like to attempt to present, at least partially, my state of mind and mental space, by focusing on three different periods of time on the timeline.

The first period I would like to relate to is the 7thof October. I had just returned from a summer vacation trip to India and was making my final preparations for the exciting start of medical school. My roommates and I were spending Simchat Torah in our apartment in Jerusalem. I woke up to the strange sound of sirens in Jerusalem around 10 AM and found my roommate in the living room. While we were heading to the safe room in our building, she told me that a war had broken out. Given that my other roommate and I were both in combat units, we realized that it was a matter of time until we would be called up for reserve duty, but as the day went by and the severity of the occurrence was becoming clearer, the tension and uncertainty began to develop into a large lump in my chest.

The hours between 10 AM and 3 PM, when I finally got the call, are a blur in my memory, and I mainly remember many phone calls to loved ones (including my parents who observe the Sabbath) trying to cling to anything that could grant a sense of security. On the drive up north, my mind was racing. It is hard to explain the dissonance we live in, knowing that we are reservists but never expecting the full, hardcore reality to hit at such speed. Suddenly fear began to slip into my consciousness and the understanding of the task towards which I was willingly driving crash-landed in my mind. We continued to the gathering point of my unit and got our equipment together while waiting for the official assignment. I remember quite clearly looking at my phone at 2 AM while crawling into a sleeping bag on the cold metal floor of an empty hangar. My sleep was troubled by a deadly mixture: the chaos the army was in, the emotional wreck I was, and the relentless thought loop that was running in my head. I felt like an unimaginable reality, that in some way I was supposed to be ready for, had swept up my life in a storm, leaving all I had known useless, irrelevant and unimportant. I was standing over an abyss.

The second period I would like to relate to is two months into the war. After a chaotic first month where our assignments changed on a daily basis, we had been stationed in Rosh Hanikrah, the border with Lebanon that is closest to the sea, for over a month, and had begun to develop some sort of routine. Although the routine included constant bombings and drone attacks, the experience was closer to the border patrols we had done in our period of active duty. Furthermore, the human superpower of getting used to any situation kicked in. It was only a month into this routine that I realized that in order to cope with the situation, I had actively regressed myself to the 19-year-old I had been during my active duty. My main concerns shifted from school, work, relationships, purpose, self-definition and other factors of semi-adult life to a narrow focus on what I will eat, playing poker with friends, smoking and – on a productive day (due to the lack of cellphones) – reading a book. Any complex thought became strenuous and overly heavy, and all emotional and mental tension were buried and left to rot. The visits at home became like vacation from the army, shifting between binge-watching Netflix and getting a beer with friends. As I see it now, I became a caveman. My last worry was any aftermath or repercussion of what I was experiencing.

The final period I would like to relate to is my current attempt to return to my previous life. I finished my reserve duty three weeks into the university semester (which had been delayed by nearly three months due to the outbreak of the war). While I felt a deep need to decompress and to take time to clear my mind, everything around me had seemingly already moved on. A large percentage of my fellow students hadn’t participated in the war, and, with great dissonance to my internal feeling, things seemed quite normal.

After taking a few days of total relaxation, I came to the realization that although my body had received the time off it needed, my mind suddenly had the freedom to wander into all the areas it had avoided for three months. Questions and realities I had set aside moved to the front of the stage. Question marks arose around many issues, and traumatic experiences began to seep into my mental wiring. Priorities rearranged, and the life I left behind did not encounter the same person who had so carefully arranged them. Although I returned to therapy, and decided not to demand too much of myself, I have the nagging feeling that nothing will be the same.

If I had based my life on a certain self-perception, and had set many goals through the lenses of that self-perception, the most basic parts of that structure are now rattled. What is the definition of security? How can I ever feel secure again? How can I live my life knowing that any moment I will be called back up to fight in Lebanon? Have I been condemned to a life haunted by war after war? What does it mean to be Jewish? Is it just a never-ending struggle culminating only in the fantasy of redemption? What are we fighting for? In what sense am I willing to risk my life? Where does my political outlook stand? How do I define my Israeli identity? How do I define my Jewish identity? Facing the rise of antisemitism, is there any safe place for me? Suddenly, I have no patience for deep thought because it seems like a luxury of a bygone world. Who can consider philosophical issues when people are dying all around? While the necessity of the war and the righteousness of protecting my loved ones never came into question, my place in that mixture seems unclear, and the pain and struggle brought on by the conflict seem to be too much. At times I feel like I never signed up for this whole Zionist movement thing, and I definitely didn’t appoint the people who are seemingly running it. What is a good future to look forward to? What should I pray for? How can I pray?

While the moments of peace and clarity do appear more frequently, the deep sense of uncertainty is the challenge I face day and night.