Long skirts and guns

A hassidic woman's tale of service in the IDF.

By SAM SOKOL
Orthodox female IDF soldier521 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Orthodox female IDF soldier521
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Fayga Marks sits on the bench outside a bakery in the Ramat Beit Shemesh shopping center and crosses her legs, encased in a floor-length dark skirt, appearing to all the world to be a typical haredi woman. However, as the 22-year-old Chabad Hassid begins speaking, a completely different picture emerges.
Marks, unlike most women from Israel’s insular ultra-religious community, is an IDF veteran. Originally from East Orange, New Jersey, and now a Ramat Beit Shemesh resident, Marks had always dreamed of serving in the military, an act that, among the haredim, is considered taboo for men – let alone women.
Her service as a kashrut supervisor, overseeing dietary restrictions in one of the kitchens in the Negev’s massive Tel Nof Air Force Base, was her way of “fulfilling my dream” of serving her country, she says.
During high school in the hassidic village of Kfar Chabad, Marks recalls, one of her rabbis began discussing how she would get out of the army. When she told him that she intended to enlist, “his jaw dropped.”
“After that day I left that school”, and continued in a secular institution, Marks says. Women who wish to serve are not looked upon particularly well in the ultra- Orthodox school system – even though military service for men is not stigmatized to the same degree among Chabad Hassidim as it is among other haredi groups.
When it came time to enlist Marks went to the draft office dressed as “dosi dosi,” (“as ultra-religious as possible”) and proclaimed that she wanted to serve her country.
Echoing what her father had warned would happen earlier, the soldiers at the draft office informed her that she should go to Chief Rabbinate’s offices to begin filling out the paperwork necessary for her exemption.
One soldier’s glasses “fell off his face,” when she explained that she did not intend to receive an exemption, Marks says. She was sent to wait outside of an office “where all the yeshiva bochurim [students] were signing their draft notices so they could stay in yeshiva and learn.”
Next to her was a distraught mother from the Jerusalem haredi enclave of Mea She’arim telling her son how difficult military service was. Marks recalls thinking that “maybe [he] should try it out. It can’t be that bad.”
Marks says that the IDF has made strides in accommodating the ultra-Orthodox population, but she still does not think it is ready for an influx of yeshiva students.
The Nahal Haredi combat battalion, set up with the express purpose of giving such students as similar an atmosphere to their home communities as possible, has not been expanded in years and is “bursting at the seams,” she says.
However, despite everything, in many cases the army was accommodating.
Among her battles was one over the length of her skirt. Marks managed to receive permission to continue wearing her long, green dress uniform skirt, despite everyone else wearing pants as part of their combat fatigues during training.
When wearing the long skirt in haredi neighborhoods, she says she encountered many looks of surprise.
While there are national-religious women who serve in the IDF and wear skirts, they are not normally in those neighborhoods and she was an unusual sight.
The first time she returned home she recalled, a girl who saw her “dropped a carton of eggs and broke them all.”
“People stopped in the street. What a shock. I don’t think people are used to girls with a skirt to the floor in uniform, with a beret and everything,” she says.
While she was “nervous about coming home,” she seems to have been largely accepted in the more Americanized Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef.
ONE OF the more amusing aspects of her service, Marks says, was when religious women tried to mekarev her (“bring her closer to religious observance”). Nobody could believe that she was religious, she says.
Standing on a bus, she was approached by an Orthodox woman who gave her Shabbat candles and began instructing her on their use.
Marks was told that she had to learn about Shabbat and “taharat hamishpacha”, (“the laws of family purity”), and “all these other things.”
When she replied that she was a hassid from Ramat Beit Shemesh, the woman responded by denying that such a thing was possible and told her bluntly that she belonged in a seminary.
“I understand this isn’t something that someone from the frum [‘observant’] world normally does,” Marks admits. “I did something that was not culturally acceptable from my standpoint.”
Marks does believe that while “there are [Orthodox] girls who are capable” of army service, she doesn’t think that “every frum girl would be able to do what I did.”
Serving in the IDF “was appropriate for me as an individual” but “a lot of girls would get huge amounts of culture shock and it could lead to them ‘going off the derech’ [‘becoming less religious’].”
“The army has to change a lot before a lot of frum girls go in.”
One of the challenges she says that she faced was the issue of modesty. Men on base would sometimes walk around in their boxers, she says. This was obviously an issue for someone from a culture with a strict emphasis on gender separation and modesty.
“It was very challenging for me,” she says. “I made personal boundaries for myself and I’m glad I did.”
However, unlike many in the religious community who say that women have no place in the military, Marks says that “we also have to learn how to protect ourselves. We shouldn’t be vulnerable.”
“Is it always the job of women to pick up a gun? I don’t know. You can say there are modesty issues with it, and I would agree with that, and you can say there are religious issues,” she says. However, she also cited the biblical judge Deborah, who was a war leader. “There are Jewish women throughout history who were warriors, and I don’t want to hear the BS that we can’t do such things.”
WHILE SHE is “not a feminist,” she says, woman can also “play our part in the IDF.”
Marks believes that she has made a positive impact, both in creating a positive impression of the haredi community and in bringing others closer to Jewish observance – something very important to members of her community, which is known for its efforts at increasing levels of ritual observance among secular Jews.
She says that most of what she feels she accomplished came through speaking with people and creating relationships.
“In the army you develop a lot of relationships. You work with the same person every day [and in the end] you’re going to be friends with them 20 to 30 years down the road.”
Marks says that due to her example as someone willing to stand up for her religious values during her service, she had an influence on others.
One soldier began wearing a kippa every day, she says, while her married commander began covering her hair.
“I saw little changes [such as] people going to daven [pray] more,” she says.
One recent development in the battle over ultra-Orthodox enlistment that particularly bothers Marks is the poster campaign calling haredi soldiers “hardakim,” an acronym roughly translated as “stupid haredim” that sounds very similar to the Hebrew word for bacteria. Depending on who you ask, the phrase, whose appearance on posters is concurrent with a rise in haredi violence against soldiers from their community, can also mean vermin or parasites.
This enrages Marks.
“I have a brother in the army, I served in the army. Nobody has the right to call a soldier a parasite,” she forcefully asserts.
“Just because you are in yeshiva you should be called a parasite? They call us nasty names, so why are we doing it back to the others? This is the same baseless hatred that led to the destruction of the Temple,” she says, referring to the Talmudic statement that the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans as a divine punishment for internecine hatred.
She says that one of her friends was even beaten for attempting to pray in an ultra-Orthodox synagogue while wearing a uniform.
“I’m just trying to protect you and let you sleep at night, and this is what you do to me?” she asks rhetorically.
Asked about calls for mass haredi enlistment, Marks grows pensive, saying that there “has to be a middle ground.”
While it is understandable that the haredi community hid itself behind “ghetto walls” in the past, she says, “things are starting to change and we are a bigger community now... and we can’t continue to live the way we are. We cannot continue to have every young man in yeshiva,” as not all are suited for full-time study.
In the meantime, Marks says, she would love to find a way to reenlist.
“I tried to get back in during the last war,” she says.