The Keleh 6 Mesivta

25/6/2019

Israelis are split in their attitude toward time in the IDF Keleh 6 prison up North.

The very clean-cut dati-leumi crowd I hung out with in my new adult years emphasized that prison time was easily avoidable and only screw-ups got sentenced.

In contrast, it seems like the rest of Israeli society opines that “everyone goes to prison at some point.”

The truth is, I met people who got 3 days for not shaving (if they didn’t have a beard permit) and longer if they didn’t return to their base on time. Forging doctor’s notes, resisting a particular role (like if you want to be a foot soldier and they try to put you in a tank), avoiding the draft (“We don’t have enough soldiers watching Friends! Thou shalt share the burden!”), and so on.

And that’s for the minimum security part of Keleh 6. Drugs, hard crime, and such things earn soldiers long sentences in other parts of Keleh 6.

My Son Goes to Prison - But No Worries! They Get Popsicles!

My son, in his goal of getting switched into a combat unit, decided to go on strike. He’d tried normal avenues, even snagging an interview with a high-ranking officer with the power to help him.

Nada.

So he went on strike, which meant that he didn’t show up to base.

The IDF remained unimpressed.

Finally, knowing that he was going to be sent to prison anyway, he decided to turn himself in.

So he bid us farewell and made his way up North where he was received by a prison official, an old kibbutznik wearing a bandana. He greeted my son cheerfully, praised him for turning himself in, encouraged him: “I’m sure you’ll be a good soldier from now on,” then sentenced him to 12 days. (Or maybe he was carrying out someone else’s sentence? Well, something like that.)

This part of the prison, which serves draft dodgers, note forgers, and so on, features tents.

The prison cell is a tent that holds many young men.

My husband and I weren’t sure what Keleh 6 was like, but a family member reassured us that it’s pretty tame because it’s not like a state prison and treatment is pretty decent—“They even get popsicles,” he reassured us.

Popsicles in prison? Why, we have nothing to worry about, then!

The Dedication of Mishmeres Hakodesh

There are also public phones via which your son can call you or you can call him—if you can get someone to find him.

An organization dedicated to freeing yeshivah bochurs imprisoned for draft evasion (“We face a severe shortage of personnel who can sit in an office all day watching pirated movies on their cell phones! Charedim must contribute their share of their burden!”) called us and nonchalantly informed us that our son was in Keleh 6 and did we need them to do anything about it?

Initially, we were puzzled until they explained that although he’d attended a non-mainstream yeshivah (with secular studies and everything), it was a yeshivah nonetheless and as a former yeshivah student, his name appeared on their list when he was imprisoned.

It was very nice of them, and we explained that no, he wanted to be there and they said, fine, but if we need anything, we should feel free to call them back.

Very pleasant and polite for such religious zealots, I'm sure you agree. ;-)

As far as the treatment of the yeshivah bochurs in Keleh 6, my son said he didn't witness them being treated any worse by the wardens (the wardens, especially the female ones, don't behave in a particularly refined manner). The other soldiers mostly ignored them.

Unfortunately, due to media incitement, a yeshivah bachur evading the draft can be despised by fellow inmates more than an inmate who has actually committed a crime. But my son did not personally see active bullying.

Mishmeres Hakodesh also call the public phone repeatedly every day to ask whoever answers if there is a yeshivah bachur there for draft evasion. (They’re always concerned they missed one that didn’t appear on their list.) In return, the imprisoned soldier who answers treats the caller to a string of vulgar curses before slamming down the phone.

How self-righteous.

Sometimes, the soldier tries to accommodate the caller, but usually not.

But these guys put up with the treatment and keep calling anyway to see if anyone needs their help.

Actually, someone did try to take them up on their offer to help, but he couldn’t hide his Muslim religion for long, so that fell through.

Prison Shrews Share the Burden Too

Also, many of the wardens are girls.

And this may sound shocking to people with their head in the sand, but young rowdy guys of this age do not take orders from young women seriously.

So the girls resort to shrieking and verbal abuse, and telling them things like, “Look at what a screw-up you are, ending up in Keleh 6 like this, you stupid pathetic zero.”

Not surprisingly, the boys find this entertaining, rather than intimidating.

Also, the wardens play all sorts of minor mindgames to assert their authority over the inmates. He gave an example of the treatment by a 19-year-old girl-warden, but after his initial surprise, he found it amusing.

I kind of wonder if these girls are able to turn off all the shrieky negativity & controlling mindgames when not dealing with mildly delinquent young soldiers, and how that affects their relationships back home and then after their service is over, if they can go back to normal.

But I figure, hey, they’re sharing the burden.

Yeshivah bachurim are just sitting around all day learning Gemara, while these girls are supporting the Zionist enterprise with loud & seething verbal assaults. How could Medinat Yisrael possibly function without them? So I’m just gonna keep my nose out of it. After all, who am I to judge? I don’t share the burden either. (For example, I’ve never seen an episode of Friends. That’s right—not even ONE.)

A Yiddishe Krechtz?

Anyway, there are more rules at Keleh 6 than there are on an army base.

For example, you are not allowed to speak at all in the dining hall. The Chafetz Chaim would approve, actually, because he was against talking while eating because it’s potentially dangerous.

Anyway, during one meal in which only the sound of chewing could be heard, another sound appeared: the sound of choked-back sobs.

Soon, the choked-back sobs turned into the gasped crying as one imprisoned soldier had a breakdown over his hard-boiled eggs & rice.

Because this isn’t The Lords of Discipline, the other soldiers just felt embarrassed & sorry for him. One of the male wardens came over, sat down next to the broken soldier, and tried to comfort him by telling him that it wasn’t so bad here and that he had a really short sentence and that he’d be out soon, and then everything would be all better.

He didn’t suffer any bullying later either. People just felt bad for him.

Day Jobs for Clannish People

My son met several other soldiers who were also there for resisting service in non-combat units.

Then there was a Bedouin soldier there for forging doctor’s notes so he could stay home longer.

Another was there for something else and he eagerly explained to my son his parnasa, which consisted of stealing gasoline from gas stations up and down the country. He usually had a cousin/clan member working at those stations, and that was his connection to the gasoline.

My son isn’t easily shockable, but it floored him to hear someone his age talking about a gas-theft racket as if it’s a regular job. The Bedouin really didn’t seem to realize he was doing anything wrong.

They’re very loyal to their clans and that supersedes national loyalty or basic law—including the 7 Noachide Laws, apparently, which forbid stealing.

"Toto, I've a Feeling We're Not in Lakewood Anymore..." Meets "Big Brother is Watching."

Then, every inmate must do a stint as a guard in the locked-down section.

That’s the place where dangerous or suicidal inmates are housed. It’s solitary confinement, more or less, with a toilet in the cell and everything nailed down, and little barred window way up near the ceiling.

Anyway, the regular inmates need to sit in that room because these people apparently need constant supervision, despite the fact that they are on camera all the time anyway.

In preparation, my son and the other temp-guards were taken to an orientation of what their duties were (“Don’t fall asleep”) and told a scary story of an inmate-guard who dozed off and the guy he was supposed to be guarding crept over and started strangling him, however—the orientation officer gestured to the video screens—these cells are being watched, so the staff noticed the strangulation-in-progress and were able to send forces to stop it in time.

And the message?: “Don’t fall asleep on guard duty. But if you do, we’ve got you covered.”

So the first night, it was really boring. The inmate just slept the whole time.

But the second night, my son was immediately approached by an anxious yeshivah bochur who didn’t understand what he was doing there. Seeing my son in a kippah and tzitzit, he poured out his heart.

What happened was this:
The boy was the child of American charedim who’d made aliyah. A couple of years before he turned 18, the family returned to Lakewood. But, being the idealistic young Yid he is, the boy wanted to go back to Eretz Yisrael & learn in yeshivah.

But he didn’t realize his name was entered into officialdom as a draft dodger, so they caught him at the airport, to his complete bewilderment.

But he needed to have a really good excuse why he could not enlist and stuff himself with American candy bars while watching American sitcom most of the day.

So a psychiatrist, in an effort help him out, decided to write down that he was suicidal (which he was not at all).

And instead of being placed in the regular section with the tents, he was placed in the locked-down section, where the guards have, what my son described as, “soulless eyes” and yell anything they have to say.

So my son reassured him that things weren’t as bad as they seemed, explained what was going on, and reassured him again that there were people working on his behalf to get him out and that he’d be out soon.

And he was.

The Most Effective Way to Get Jewish Boys to Learn & Daven with Cheshek

Anyway, the best part about Keleh 6 is that the boys spent a huge chunk of their day in shul.

The prison shul is nicely designed and air-conditioned (which the tents are not).

There’s davening 3 times a day, plus wonderful shiurim. So whenever there is davening or a shiur, everyone goes to the shul (including the Muslim and Druze inmates).

My son enthused about the shiurim.

He also met a couple of rabbis from his high school yeshivah, who keep tabs on their former talmidim and make it a point to go visit them if they end up in Keleh 6.

Having been very fond of my son, they were thrilled to see him again and he got lots of hugs and kisses. He was also proud of them for delivering such enthralling shiurim.

Really, the best part of Keleh 6 is the plentiful davening & shiurim. It's very geshmak.

So I had this really good idea that maybe the IDF should make a night-sweep of the parks & other hang-outs frequented by at-risk youth and take them to Keleh 6 for six months where they could imbue a constant flow of davening and inspiring shiurim - tefillot & shiurim they would attend BY CHOICE!

Just think of what a life-changing influence that could be.

Anyway, his 12 days ended pretty quickly and he came up energized by the whole experience. You’d think he’d been playing Color War at Camp Simcha or something.

And he came home even more convinced than before that soldiers who aren’t willing to go to jail when faced with an order to expel Jews—those soldiers are spineless wimps.

“It’s not that bad,” he insisted. “I could’ve easily made it through 30 days there. It’s not that big deal.”

And there you go. The Keleh 6 Mesivta.

Note: I feel enormous appreciation for my brothers serving in combat and anyone else standing between a Jew and a terrorist (or a missile). I simply oppose this mandatory draft "Share the burden!" craze, when the IDF clearly has a glut of soldiers in many areas, as detailed in the previous posts. Siding with the Gadolei Hador, I oppose the mandatory draft of yeshivah bachurim & females.

I also oppose the incitement by media and politicians, who rile up severely negative emotions & ideas that people wouldn't otherwise experience without the incitement.

I also feel that rather than chasing down yeshivah bochurim and recently graduated girls, the Israeli government should concentrate on real criminals (like the gasoline-racket guy in prison with my son). In fact, Bedouins live as their own state within a state, committing whatever crimes they want, including murder, with no repercussions (although there are, of course, decent & helpful Bedouin). Yet the government & mainstream media pillories charedim for living as a culture within a culture, even though charedim are not smuggling drugs or weapons, nor do they murder their members (like innocent young girls) due to primitive concepts of "honor." For some reason, learning Gemara in yeshivah is considered so much worse than all that by certain elements of Israeli society.

Most Jews in Eretz Yisrael are good. Those who aren't yet religious have tremendous potential to become sterling Jews. Yet much good is held back by those with warped priorities.

That's all.

For more stand-alone posts in this series (for which I still haven't figured out a title), please see:

8 Comments

elisheva

26/6/2019 00:24:02

Really interesting. On the other side in civilian life, so many times I experience rudeness, usually from female clerks, I mean severe outrageous rudeness in what would be considered a professional setting in chutz la'aretz, the bank, government offices etc, and I can just see them screaming their heads off in the army. So that may answer your question. And one of the reasons I am against the general draft, and all for a professional army.

Myrtle Rising

26/6/2019 10:16:04

Your comment really resonates with me, Elisheva.

Even after I realized how girls were being conditioned in the army, the light bulb still didn't go on until I was in the hospital after birth and my roommate, who was understandably uncomfortable with the infusion-thing still in her wrist, was trying to see if the intern could remove it. (It wasn't clear that the infusion-thing was still necessary.)

The female intern was very assertive and finally proclaimed in a haughty voice something like, "Like we say in the army, there is no 'DON'T want' - there's either "CAN" or 'canNOT'!"

(Or maybe it was the opposite? Maybe it was "there is no 'can't' - there's either 'rotzeh' or 'lo rotzeh'!")

Either way, both me and the roommate just stared at her like, "Okay, chickadee, but you're not in the army anymore. You're in the maternity ward and you'd better make that mental switch."

Anyway, that clinched it for me.

She was dealing with a young mommy a few hours after birth and she's talking to her as if this mommy is a recalcitrant soldier on an army base.

Completely unacceptable.

So, yeah. What you said.

Thanks, Elisheva.

Leah

26/6/2019 05:44:50

Wow, it's like a whole other life in there it sounds like...I can picture the female wardens screaming. Guys are probably like, Yeah, we've seen this at home. Yaaawwwnnnn.
It's a whole other sub-culture.
we definitely need Moshiach!!!!!

Myrtle Rising

26/6/2019 10:02:20

Yeah, extra kavanah in davening for Mashiach! Thanks for your comment, Leah.

Hava link

28/6/2019 10:15:30

Myrtle, I'm taking a shot at presenting the American perspective clearly enough in contrast with the Israeli, from a civilian's POV, as follows:

In America, a military person (usually male) who can't make the mental switch from military to civilian probably won't make it in civilian life. Example: once my (pre-aliyah) American work unit interviewed two men, one military (who wore his uniform to the interview. Even though he was polite enough, it was tough to see through the starch in his demeanor...) and one who was clearly civilian. We hired the civilian.

Prior to this, a military man who didn't wear his uniform to the interview got hired in another department.

(I have no work experience with formerly military women, that I know of.)

In Israel, apparently military is the predominant mentality. Since it's assumed that most people, both men and women, have been through the army, a lot of post-army workers are women -- unlike America.

Concerning our intern: Where was the sensitivity (hers and/or her superiors')? I'm surprised by her behavior, and I hope she didn't get cleanly away with upsetting a new yoledet.

Her bosses could have deemed her inappropriate for the job at that stage. (I have a woman cousin here who was in the army and trained men -- the whole 9 yards -- and yet she doesn't seem to have that type of personality -- or at least she knows how and when to tone it down appropriately. A native Hebrew speaker with American English-speaking parents, she's a public school-level English teacher now, married with 3 children, ken ayin hara.)

I get that having "shared the burden" she would be favored. However, it is no favor to afflict the public with medical personnel who can't tell the difference between an army base and a maternity ward. Straighten up and fly right, or find some other kind of job, willya!

Shabbat shalom umevorach!

Myrtle Rising

28/6/2019 11:01:24

Hi Hava,

Your anecdotes are very interesting and revealing. Yes, some people don't make the mental switch regardless of gender.

To me, the problem is that because military life naturally rejects innately feminine qualities like gentleness, tenderness, refinement, nurturing, emotional expression, and so forth, it basically means that women cannot fully express their positive feminine qualities -- their basic inborn nature.

Furthermore, women are not hard-wired to disconnect in the same way that men are. This is a good thing when raising children, particularly small children & babies, but it has a downside in other areas, as with the intern.

As a side point, one of the valuable aspects of having a mother & father raise their children together is the constant tug-of-war being the father's tendency to disconnect and the mother's tendency to connect. (In other words, compartmentalization vs. decompartmentalization.)

Children need one or other at different times, and having a parent of each gender provides that balance (although maybe not a perfect balance, depending).

Anyway, once a woman is conditioned to military life (especially at such young age, from 18), it's harder for her disconnect. Not impossible, but harder.

Having said all that, some men struggle to make the mental switch while some women seem to make it easily enough, as shown in your examples.

A woman might also need to make a conscious & committed decision to behave in a completely different manner, whereas with a man, it might be a more natural transition. Yet there are always exceptions.

Also, military life is about conditioning people to think a certain way.

Certainly, American military men home from duty don't always transition into the father-husband role immediately. And some don't at all. But that's because they feel that the military life is right for home life too.

(In Israel, they seem to make the transition much better. I don't hear the same stories as I do of US servicemen imposing military discipline on their families.)

So there is active mental conditioning in the military in addition to situational needs.

And to answer your concern: No one complained about the intern as far as I know, though I wish I had. Right after birth, I always have a very hard time being assertive at all, leaving me with regrets later.

The way you expressed your opinion in the last paragraph made me grin. Thanks for that!

Thanks for sharing all this.

Shabbat shalom umevorach to you too!

Hava link

28/6/2019 13:26:45

"To me, the problem is that because military life naturally rejects innately feminine qualities like gentleness, tenderness, refinement, nurturing, emotional expression, and so forth, it basically means that women cannot fully express their positive feminine qualities -- their basic inborn nature."

I agree, that is the problem. Real femininity is not valued. Feminism's goal is to make women equal to men outwardly, but those who follow it neglect to make women's traits equal.

It's often argued that women shouldn't be on the battlefield in combat units because we're weaker than men. While that is true, it might help more to highlight how traditional women's traits as you've listed them here (and more, I'm sure) have as much value as the masculine ones men embody.

Somebody has to be there to help make the family, and to maintain it once it's made. If that isn't valuable, what is?

Myrtle Rising

28/6/2019 13:54:26

Hi Hava,

Thanks for your suggestion to highlight the non-physical reasons why women aren't suited for combat. I'll be writing a post on that topic and this suggestion is helpful for that.

I agree with your observations of feminism's faltering in this area, and that traditional feminine traits are equally important to traditional masculine traits.

Unfortunately, as society becomes more materialistic, hedonistic, brazen, and militaristic (not necessarily with the military, but extreme Leftism), traditional feminine qualities are seen as less worthy.

Refinement, faithfulness, faith, modesty, comfort (both emotional & physical), nurturing, civility, tenderness - all these (and more!) beautiful & necessary qualities appearing naturally in women are now mocked or despised in modern-day society.

And as for your last point: Because modern society really doesn't value the making & maintaining of a family (although it gives lip-service to the idea), we're seeing a lot of rotting at the core of society.

Thanks very much, Hava.

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