Teens in Israel: Girls and Hesder?

Dear Batya,

I'm very sorry about the months it took me to reply. Bagruyot (matriculation
exams aren't fun).

Baisically from what I understand, your dream is a religious framework for girls in the army. There are. Two. One is called Tarbut Toranit, and the other are these "Hesder" groups.

Tarbut Toranit is work with citizens in very certain areas:
1. immigration
2. development towns
3. dorm schools for kids from broken homes
4. tour guides.
Getting into the program is a joke, you just have to prove that you're serious. For tour guides you have to get accepted separetly and it's really hard. For the rest of the jobs, getting accepted to the Tarbut is enough.

There are two kinds of tour guides. Eretz Moreshet has an added side of  community work, but it is more of teaching afterschool classes. The other group of tour guides is the SPNI (Chevra Lehaganat Hateva). There is a lot of overlap between the Tarbut Toranit and the Sheurt Leumi and the girls often work together, because both kinds of tour guides exist in the Sherut, and the rest of the jos in the Tarbut are community work, which is what the Sherut girls are doing.

The hesder programs are essentially Nachal groups that go to study instead of going to work on Kibbutz. The program exists exactly one year. My year is the second group. There are two midrashot that offer hesder programs. Ein Hanatziv is the midrasha of the Kibbutz Hadati. It is located on Kibbutz Ein Hantziv in the Beit Shean valley. The other midrasha is Midreshet Bruriah, otherwise known as Midreshet Lindenbaum or Brovenders.
(Yes, the Brovenders many of your friends might be going to).

The hesder girls are confined to one or two job, depending on the midrasha. Bruriah girls can only be Mashakiyot Hora'ah. In Ein Hanatziv they can be both Mashakiyot or Madaniyot. Both are part of the education corps.

Mashakit Hora'ah: Basically, Tzahal educates its soldiers, and the teachers are the Mashakiyot Hora'ah. There are three groups of soldiers who go through education courses in the army.

1. new immigrants are taught three months of hebrew
2. people without 9 years of basic education - dropouts
3.(connected often to 2) soldiers who are known to have adjustment problems.
Usually it overlaps with 2, but not always.The mashakiyot are essentially teaching commanders. The job is of course really tough, but really satisfying job. For some reason, irreligious girls tend to not want to enter the education corps, and especially not Mashakiyot Hora'ah. About 80% of the Mashakiyot are religious!
Madanit: These are the girls who run the bases of the gadna.
These bases are bases where kids come to try out the army. The job is important because the kids who spend a week in gadna come out with much higher motivation to serve, and especially in frontline volunteer units (how do you translate kravi units?).

The vast majority of the kids who spend a week in Gadna are 11th and 12th graders, but there is a large variety of other kids who end up there. From American kids on summer programs to the kids who are part of the international Chidon Tanach, but those side grops are rare. Most of the work is with the 11th and 12th graders.
In hesder, there are interveiws to get into the Midrashot (each midrasha holds a day of interveiws). Those who get accepted to the midrashot are sent to a day of test in the army. Those who pass the army tests (the regular test for the education corps), are accepted into the nachal groups that make up the hesder. The interveiws with the schools are mainly to sort out the girls who aren't serious kids. Almost everyone who passes the interveiw with a school passes the army tests also.

In my eyes, both are good frameworks. But the most important question is your level of hebrew? How will you do the acceptance tests for the various jobs, they take place after all in Israel, and they are defiantly mandatory.

The other option besides the army is of course Sherut Leumi. The sherut is pretty disorganized, but it is a looser framework, and might be easier to deal with from the states.

What do you know about the draft process?
Good Luck,
Tamar M
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