ערד

I am in Arad this weekend.  We haven't done much since we got here--Noah and I played a game of chess, and now we are preparing dinner.  I just thought I would post so soon because he and I just had an interesting discussion:

What if we joined the Israeli army at the end of Year Course?

I mean, it's not as if this is something I haven't considered before, but I've never given it any serious thought, to be honest with you.  I only tend to find myself thinking about when I sing or hear hatikva, the national anthem.  For some reason, though, when Noah brought it up just now, we had a pretty cool talk about it.  I could actually see us doing it: if 10 or more Year Coursers decided to be chayelim chobedim (lone soldiers) with us, we would likely be placed in apartments together, then go through the army experience, and then either reapply to colleges in the states or stay in Israel.  The thing about it is, I don't think that I would possibly want to return to college in America after having been in the Israeli army.  It's interesting...everyone who talks about making aliyah someday talks about maybe doing it after college, doing it after getting a job, doing it after establishing a family--doing it after dying, basically, because once you have all of those things in place, what is the likelihood that you're really going to uproot most of your life to move to Israel?

"If not now, when?"
"אם לא עכשיו, אימתי?"

Just something to think about.