Friday, June 01, 2007

And My Paka"l is...

I don't know why, but everything in the army is called a paka"l. Not sure what it stands for, but everything is either a paka"l this, or a paka"l that. A paka"l kissim is something you put in your pocket to hold everything. To do paka"lim is to do push-ups.
When people get paka"lim, that's the thing that they're going to be doing for their service. For example, some people got the Ma"g (big huge machine gun), some got the Negev (also a machine gun, but a better version of the Ma"g). Some become the drivers, some get the GPS thing, some become mefakdei chulyot (a chulya is 4 people). So the question is, what is mine?

Well, Thank the Lord, I got what I wanted. I will iyH, become a sharpshooter. I got the gun on Wednesday, the M4, what Israelis call the Flatop. I mean, it does have one. It's pretty much just like the M16, just without the bridge, which is why it's flat. Since I'm a sharpshooter though, so it's not just blank, instead of the bridge, I get the Trijicon, the scope. It multiplies the distance by 4. 40 meters looks like 10, 400 looks like 100, etc. It's so cool, I have to say.

After I've told people that I want to be a sharpshooter (kala in Hebrew), they've been like, doesn't that mean that you have to kill people? "Yeah, so?" It doesn't bother you?

Listen, the midrash says that when Kriyas Yam Suf was happening and the MItztiyim were dying, the angels were giving praise and HaShem said, "My creatures are dying and you're praising me?" So, obviously it bothers me a little bit (or at least it should I guess), but it CLEARLY doesn't bother them to kill us all the time. And it's a mitzvah -- "I'm ba l'hargicha hashkeim l'hargo--If someone comes to kill you, get up and kill him (Sanhedrin 72a or around there). We have to do all mitzvos with hapiness, or try. And I'm positive that getting rid of someone who could potentially hurt me would make me really happy. How about you?