Why?

I've gotten this question a lot since I got back. Two questions actually.

"Why did you go to Israel?" and, "Why did you volunteer to work with the Israeli Defense Forces?

I've got no shortage of answers. I'm a Jew. I'm a Zionist. I've got plenty of interest in military stuff, and I look good in a uniform. But those are all surface answers. They're the kind of answer that leads to more questions without really answering what you're asked.

"So you're Jewish, that doesn't explain why you (Someone who isn't very religious at all and tends to be a bit down on those who are.) would fly halfway around the world."

The more private answer is to pay off some old debts. Let's go back ten years shall we?

I was sixteen. I hadn't started shaving, hadn't learned to drive or how to get a girl to let me kiss her. I'd just gotten my first AP credits and I thought I knew damn near everything. For six weeks in the summer of 1998 I was with a group of around 30 other American Jewish teens and I got a hell of an education. Turns out I didn't know shit. Not about how the world worked, how people worked or how I worked. Turns out I was a whiny little dirt bag with some anger problems. (Yeah, go figure.) I was a whiner, a jerk and a dumbass. I got bullied, was a bully, fell in love, was heartbroken and generally got about a year of high school social stuff crammed into six weeks of youth hostels and Egged buses.

But when I came back with a really dark tan, lots of photos, some peach fuzz on my cheeks a slightly different walk and a sense of self that I didn't have. Maybe it was the people I was with. Maybe it was the place. I think it was both. But I felt like I'd done some things wrong. I'd done them wrong by the people I was with and by myself. So I resolved that within ten years i'd go back. After I'd grown up some, gotten myself reasonably squared away I'd go back and show my people, show myself what I could really offer.

Mission accomplished.

I did good. I didn't complain. I put myself in adversity and I triumphed. I put myself in a dangerous place and I didn't flinch.

So why did I go? Why did I do what I did?
To prove it to myself. And, simply because I said I would. Promise made, promise kept. As for the politics, Zionism, religion, etc. I'm simply not accustomed to explaining why I believe what I believe. Just that I haven't drank the Kool-Aid just yet.