I spent Shabbat in Gaza, and it was the holiest Shabbat of my life.

As an ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jew, it's my duty to serve in the IDF.

photo: courtesy

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This is a guest essay by Rabbi Shmuel Chaim Naiman, author of “Land of Health: Israel’s War for Wellness.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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I got the call from my company commander shortly before sundown on Friday afternoon: “They need someone to help tonight in Gaza. The convoy leaves in 10 minutes. Can you go?”

I had already showered and put on my clean uniform in honor of Shabbat. My six-hour guarding shift at our base near the gates of Gaza was almost over, following a four-hour emergency standby. I was thinking through the Torah idea I planned to share in the base synagogue that night.

But the army was sending crews every evening to install sophisticated security systems on the guard towers of forward outposts inside Gaza. Because the roofs are exposed to Hamas sniper fire from less than half a mile away, they only work under cover of darkness. Every night they wait means another day our soldiers’ lives are endangered, so Jewish law requires the work to continue on Shabbat too.

I grabbed my helmet, borrowed a bulletproof vest, and ran to the mission commander’s warehouse to help load the truck. The commander, a weathered lieutenant colonel who’d been doing this since before I was born, looked me over, pointed to a large box, and barked: “Are you strong enough to lift this?”

I picked up the box and was thus officially accepted for my first active mission in the heart of Gaza, together with two other rookies who had just joined the army with the Shlav Bet program for older ultra-Orthodox volunteer soldiers.

As our Hummer bumped into Gaza, with the last rays of Friday melting into Shabbat, I couldn’t help but laugh at the strangeness of it all. I’m the guy who hires a fix-it man for anything more complicated than changing a lightbulb, and now I was deployed in the world’s most advanced army to secure Gaza — on Shabbat — using cutting-edge sensor technology.

After driving west through one of Gaza’s shattered cities, surrounded by endless piles of smashed concrete and rebar, and beneath us who knows how many Hamas tunnels, we finally reached our outpost and got to work. For obvious security reasons, I can’t share many details, but suffice it to say that on that Friday night I fastened more bolts, anchored more brackets, and ran more wires than in the rest of my life combined.

For the first installation, our colonel climbed halfway up a ladder to show us the process. After that, he stayed below and guided us while we three rookies worked alone in the dark on the roofs of Gaza’s watchtowers.

We were a motley team. The other two fellows were from tank-repair units, loosely related to our mission. One, a systems engineer who’d moved from the U.S. a year ago, knew the work perfectly but didn’t know much Hebrew. The other, a Russian immigrant, spoke decent Hebrew, and could somehow hold a nut with one hand while screwing the bolt with the other.

As for me, let’s just say that handyman work isn’t exactly my strength. But as the night wore on, I found my role in our mission. I translated for the engineer, did most of the heavy lifting and climbing, and even found the courage to bolt some screws.

Under the noses of Hamas, our unlikely group was bonding into a tight-knit team. The urgency, danger, and importance of our mission pulled us together: We barely knew how to shoot a gun, but we were risking our lives to make a significant contribution to the security of our front-line troops and the success of their mission.

photo: courtesy

At some point, we paused to join the outpost crew for Kiddush and the Shabbat meal. As I suspected would happen, the soldier across the table had studied at the same yeshiva where I now teach, and he was delighted to send regards from Gaza to his rabbis from a dozen years ago.

Over the meal, our colonel opened up a bit but still seemed mostly uninterested in his three little helpers who’d been deployed only days earlier. Yet I began to suspect that beneath his armor, he was starting to appreciate our freshness, energy, and camaraderie.

Seven hours after entering Gaza, at 1:30 on Shabbat morning, we pulled back into base. After unloading the equipment, our colonel turned to the engineer, the Russian, and me and growled: “Tomorrow afternoon we’re heading back out to finish the job. We’re leaving at 5 p.m., because we must arrive during daylight to get everything ready.”

As we turned toward the barracks, exhausted and overwhelmed, he blurted, “You have no idea how much I love you guys.”

Our colonel had cracked.

After a few fitful hours of sleep, I was back at my post for a Shabbat morning guard shift. Afterwards, I joined my company for the tail end of the meal. They were shocked to hear my story.

You see, us fresh recruits generally have no business in Gaza, except occasionally as armed escorts for truck guards (with strict orders to never, ever shoot). But our company commander is a man with a mission: He wants all his soldiers to go home and tell their ultra-Orthodox communities about their time in Gaza. He wants their families and neighbors to respect the many religious men who left their homes and jobs to defend our nation.

So whenever the army asks for an armed escort, he sends three.

Still, it’s hard to get these missions. He prioritizes soldiers who’ve been on base for weeks or months, and nobody goes twice in a row. But the army is full of opportunities for those willing to step up. Something in our team’s energy had clicked with our colonel, and he had the rank and pull to bring us back in.

My commander still needed to approve it, because ultimately he was responsible for my safety. If something goes wrong on the roofs of the watchtowers of Gaza, he’d be blamed for sending in a soldier who could count on one hand the days he’s been serving in the IDF. So we cut a deal: He’d let me go again, and I’d cover an extra guarding shift the next morning.

Late Shabbat afternoon, our little convoy was back in Gaza. We unloaded, waited for nightfall, said a quick verbal Havdalah, and climbed the towers. We were supposed to return by 11 p.m., but repairs dragged on, equipment broke, and before long it was midnight and we’d barely begun.

Our colonel, now openly enjoying our night out in Gaza together, fried some eggs while his adjutant chopped salad, and we shared a meal that would make even the Hamas men below us jealous. That night, a brigadier general happened to visit the outpost on a secret tour. Our colonel cornered him, reported on our mission, and introduced his three recruits from Shlav Bet.

The general shook our hands, thanked us, and nearly smiled. Then he vanished into the dark with his finger-on-the-trigger bodyguards, and we climbed back up the towers. We finished screwing in the final sensors just before the first rays of dawn exposed our position. A few minutes later, the local Hamas men peeked from their tunnels and saw an outpost harder to attack than before. I hope that made them sad.

But we were happy, and our colonel was even happier. He said we did in two nights more than most crews do in two weeks, and his adjutant said he’d give us all rank if he could. To my great relief, my commander let me off the morning shift I’d promised to cover. It would’ve been rough after 14 hours on the roofs of Gaza.

My Shabbat in Gaza wasn’t only interesting and exciting; it was profoundly meaningful, and perhaps the holiest Shabbat of my life, just as my army service in general has been one of my holiest experiences.

“You shall sanctify Me among the children of Israel,” reads the mitzvah (commandment) that Rambam presents immediately after the basic tenets of Jewish faith, right at the start of Mishneh Torah. The more dramatic sanctification happens when we give up our lives instead of violating the cardinal sins of idol worship, murder, and immoral relations. And in certain situations, we must die for any mitzvah when there are 10 Jews present.

Why does it make a difference how many Jews are around? Because the Torah prescribes holiness among the children of Israel. In fact, the Rambam taught, we don’t need to die in order to live with God’s holiness. When our public behavior is exemplary, both in our interpersonal relationships and religious observance, then: “everyone praises him, loves him, and longs to follow his deeds, [and] this is one who has sanctified the Name of God.”

photo: courtesy

There are many situations when we can sanctify God’s name and join its holiness. But there are times when the holiness is so palpable that it’s the purpose of our lives on earth, and not only when we choose to die.

In the past two years, hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters have left behind their families and jobs and risked their lives to allow you, me, and 7.5 million other Jews live in relative peace in Israel.

Whenever I do a six-hour guard duty shift on our base at the edge of Gaza, hundreds of these brothers and sisters pass by a rabbi with a full beard, wool tzitzits, and a big black yarmulka, wearing the same uniform as them, toting the same M-16, and take his part in protecting our people. They see that I care enough about them to close my Torah books, leave my students, and do what I can to lighten the tremendous load they’ve been carrying. I’m not better, different, or more Jewish than them. We’re fully in this together.

Every time I wave a car in or tell someone politely they can’t enter, I’m sanctifying God’s name “among the children of Israel.” And when I showed up on the forward outpost in Gaza, surrounded by hundreds of combat troops heading out on dangerous missions, risking my own life to make their little island safer, I was sanctifying God’s name “among the children of Israel.”

Who knows? Maybe the general told his staff the next morning how surprised he had been to meet a rabbi installing sensors on Gaza’s watchtowers, because that rabbi’s Torah had taught him to care for his nation.

This is the simple reason I joined the IDF. But there’s an even simpler reason: By joining the army, I’m joining the Jewish nation. To belong to the Jewish nation, I can’t just perform a bunch of rituals perfectly. Being part of a nation means expanding my sense of self.

I’m not only Shmuel Chaim. I’m one of a people bound by Torah, mitzvot, and our land. Because I am my portion of the nation, I share in its choices and responsibilities. That means supporting and protecting everyone in the community, whether or not they look or think like me. This is a spiritual value, not only a social norm.

The Rambam taught that God judges not only each person, but also every community and the entire world. These three levels — individual, community, and world — mirror the Torah’s first stories: Adam (individual), the Flood (world), and Sodom and Gomorrah (community). Every choice I make isn’t only mine; it’s also the choice of my portion of the community, and my portion of humanity.

Thankfully, Israel today is no Sodom and Gomorrah, but a thriving country where millions of Jews live lives of Torah, prayer, kindness, family, and community. Millions more, though less observant, still strive to live as Jews in their homeland. I own a part of their world, and they own a part of mine. This would be true even in an imaginary Jewish province in Alaska. But it’s infinitely more so in Israel, the land without which our nation could not exist.

Besides being the living body of the Jewish People, Israel is the only place where Torah law recognizes a group of Jews as a community. In fact, the Torah delegates only the sages of Israel with the authority to set the Jewish calendar for the entire world. No calculation done outside Israel, however brilliant it may be, can fix our months and years. Without Israel’s Jewish community, there would be no Jewish calendar.

But the Rambam reassures us: “God forbid that will happen, for He has promised never to erase all traces of our nation.” No Israel means no Jews. So God’s promise to preserve us includes preserving the Jewish community of Israel.

The Rambam wrote these words in the 12th century, when only a few thousand Jews lived here. Today, thankfully, we are 7.5 million. By serving in the IDF, my life expands to reach every single one of them, because I’m taking responsibility for their security.

My brief stint in army service has shown me how practical this principle is. For my first guarding shift, the commander paired me with a veteran to teach me the ropes. As we sat together in the pre-dawn chill, he gave me a piece of advice that I’ve found to be deeply true.

If you want your service to be meaningful, he explained, look for ways to contribute to the company and its mission in any way you can. If you just try to get by with the bare minimum, you’ll see it’s often possible to get away with doing little — and then you’ll go home and tell everyone there’s nothing to do in the army.

The success of soldiering is growing beyond my small self by sacrificing my time and maybe even my life in service of the nation, sanctifying the Name of its God.

The morning after we returned from Gaza, I saw in the news that a terrorist team had been caught and eliminated in the neighborhood we’d been in the night before, so I tracked down our colonel and asked him if it was our sensors that had found and tracked them. He checked with his contacts and saw that it wasn’t.

“But don’t worry,” he added, “the day for our sensors will come.”

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