Chaplain
Chaplain Rabbi Dovid Gutnick
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Bio on the way!
Read his Diary from Duntroon below.
Diary from a Rabbi in Duntroon
Day 2: Saturday Morning
Its 5:45am Shabbat morning. A slight mizzle is falling from the dark sky. Clearly, when G-d instructed this as the Day of Rest, the Army wasn’t listening. Or didn’t care. It’s my first morning in Duntroon and I’m starting to show some signs of cracking already. There’s this big Sergeant up ahead with a bit of an emu sticking out of his hat (worn by Cavalry and Light Horse I later found out) yelling totally unintelligible commands. “ARRF ARRUF ARRF ARRUF ARRF ARRUF ARRF.” I’m sure nobody knows what he’s talking about, yet I’m the only one out of step with the march. I desperately do a quick jig to get back into step.
“Rabbi, you’re not auditioning for Riverdance” Sergeant A yells in my direction. “And pick up your head and stare the rain in the eye…How you gonna be when there are bullets whizzing past your nose?!”
How come I wasn’t warned about this? Did my father do this when he was an Army Chaplain? Somehow I don’t think so.
We arrive at physical training. A rabid PTI Sergeant is forcing us to adopt and hold bizarre positions as a punishment because too many of us had our keys in our pockets. “It will take you three minutes to bleed to death when your keys rupture your carotid artery,” she yells fiercely as my hamstrings spasm violently. Why would my keys do that? As we warm down, one of my fellow trainees makes some unflattering comments about my aerobic ability. I’m wholly miserable and begin plotting my escape.
There is a cheerful interlude as a more ‘mentshlech’ Warrant Officer wishes me a ‘Shabyte Shalom’. How did he know that? Because whilst doing Peacekeeping for the ADF in Sinai, he met an Israeli girl, promised her Australia was the real land of milk and honey and eloped with her to Puckapunyal… and they say the Israelis have chutzpah! Later in the day I discover a Jewish lady from Adelaide on course as well. My natural instinct is to start counting for a minyan.
Day 5 – Tuesday morning
To date I’ve managed to squeeze my daily prayers into the allotted break times. That’s a pretty fair effort considering some breaks only lasted a half an hour. I’ve also been pretty private with my prayers. Only my roommate has observed me praying and is careful to give me a wide berth when I’m adorned with my tallis and tefillin. This morning however, there is a break in protocol. Robby, an intelligent if not slightly eccentric bloke, has been observing me keenly for several days. Yesterday he enquired about my ‘hamlukah’. Today he has noticed me in tallis in tefillin through the open door of my room. I hear him talking excitedly in the hallway. “The Rabbi’s wearing this black torch on his head, give me another look, will ya,” he pleads with my room mate.
Several days following, another trainee, David, approaches me with glee. “Rabbi, I’ve been meaning to thank you - the prayers that you did with the Collingwood shawl worked wonderfully, Collingwood beat Adelaide by five points!”
Day 8 - Friday Evening
It’s Friday afternoon, my second Shabbat in Duntroon is fast approaching. Capt B pulls up. “Rabbi, grab your things, you’re coming with me.” Capt B is everything I am not: fit, tough, confident, his hair comes to a perfect square on top like a shtender (pulpit) for a Gemarra.
Capt B has taken it as his personal responsibility to make sure I get up to the training complex before Shabbat, as the rest of the course will be travelling there tomorrow morning on buses. Friday evening in Majura away from all the angry sergeants and inquisitive trainees is most blissful. I pray a wholesome Minchah and Maariv as the Canberra sun sets amongst the trees, and several kangaroos view me quizzically. Later, I make Kiddush and share war stories with Capt B. I listen to his recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and I tell him some of my experiences growing up as an Orthodox Jew in Australia.
In the evening, a Digger of New Zealand origin asks with some scepticism as to why I had to come down earlier then everyone else…surely there were no cars around when Moses got the bible, so how could I claim it was forbidden for me to drive? Capt B answers with perfectly acceptable Talmudic logic: “The principles are timeless it’s the application which varies depending on the era.” Capt B has well and truly passed the test and is added to my ever expanding list of Righteous Gentiles.
Day 9 - Saturday Afternoon
Shabbat is winding down and every person bar a handful on course have commented on the fact that I’m the only trainee without a weapon, which of course I couldn’t carry because it was Shabbat (unless my life was in danger which it clearly wasn’t). In my slight annoyance I’m starting to become very creative with my answers to the perpetual questioning. I’m a conscientious objector, I am a follower of Ghandi and will refuse any form of violent struggle, I am privy to a Krav Maga special type of Israeli self defence that doesn’t require weapons to overpower the enemy, etc.
As I make my way into the mess for dinner, Sgt E, an otherwise mild mannered, laconic individual is severely agitated. He walks right up to me. “Rabbi, I am so sorry your kosher meals have not yet arrived.”
I try and diffuse the situation. “Hey Sgt, I’m not upset, I’m used to going hungry once in a while.”
“Well you should be upset Padre, because the way I see it is like this. If I came to a place where all they ate was dog s**t and I didn’t eat dog s**t, I would be entitled to get a meal of non dog s**t and if they couldn’t come up with non dog s**t and still kept giving me dog s**t, I’d be pretty upset!”
Fair enough.
Day 13 - Wednesday Evening
We are preparing to go bush for the last few days of the course – baby bush, they call it, because it only lasts for a few days and they carry your 30 kilo packs to and from camp for you. As everyone is readying their items and painting their faces with cam paint, it dawns on me that the metal containers on the army webbing used for heating up rations are not new and so need koshering via the method of Hagalah (boiling water). For about an hour I sit outside my room, feeding these white hexamine tablets into a feeble and wholly ineffective fire .
“Rabbi, I’m not sure what it is you’re trying to do, but whatever it is, it ain’t working”, comments Sgt A (minus his emu feathers).
After an abridged summary of the laws of kosher and the theory of ‘kboloi kach polto’ (the way something absorbs is the way it will release), Sgt A interrupts me. “Hold that thought, Rabbi” and dashes off. A minute later he’s back with this massive jet burner in his hand. “This is how we kosher things around here, baby!” Thirty seconds later and hot water is violently frothing in every direction. “What do you say Rabbi, kosher enough for you now?” “Looks pretty good Sergeant”, I admit. As he walks away I hear the Sgt commenting: “Well would you look at that, I just koshered the Rabbi’s dishes…me mum would be proud.”
I’m sure she would be.
Day 15 - Friday Evening
It’s my final Shabbat on course and we are out bush. This is going to be the hardest Shabbat yet. My section has divided my items amongst themselves so that I wouldn’t have to carry anything on Shabbat. (The laws of carrying on Shabbat state that an eruv will not be effective if there are large amounts of uninhabited forest land etc within the fence. So I can't carry anything at all). The sun is just about setting when Sgt E arrives with a steaming hot package of Klein’s gourmet Shabbat food, chicken, rice, etc for me. He claims he just opened a new box of food packages, but I reckon he did some research and found out what Jews eat on Shabbat. Either way I am most pleased. I promise Sgt E I would pray to my G-d for him.
Sgt E raises a good point.
“But isn’t it all just one G-d Rabbi?”
I decide now is not the time nor place for a theological discussion.
While the others sit down to dinner of condensed milk and canned tuna, I chant shalom Aleichem made Kiddush and sit down to a fine seudas Shabbat. Slowly a small crowd of trainees gathered around my ad hoc Shabbat table.
“So how exactly does one become Jewish?” one of them asks cautiously.
Day 17 - Sunday Afternoon
Just as I am beginning to enjoy the whole business, the training module draws to a close. Several trainees will be staying on for module 2. Alas, Rosh Hashanah beckons and I will head on home. We wish each other heartfelt goodbyes. We’ve developed a quirky but warm kinship within the course and staff. I feel in many instances barriers have been broken and characters have grown.
Alan, a chirpy native Zimbabwean whose grandfather apparently had almost as many wives as Solomon, comes running over to me.
“Rabbi, where are you going?”
“Home, Alan, to celebrate the Jewish New Year with my family and congregation.”
Alan is concerned, “So who will be our Rabbi now?”
“Who was your Rabbi before I came?” I quip,
“Before I didn’t know Rabbi, now I know…”
I guess if he’s planning to marry as many as his zaida he could do with the odd rabbi around.
To conclude the course, two Warrant Officers debrief us and ask us for feedback on the course. I let them know how well my religious needs have been attended to and thank them.
“When word gets back, your next course will have twenty Rabbis in it.” In my head in envision various overweight rabbis panting through a Physical Training exercise.
“I’m not sure that’s what we’re after, Rabbi” the Warrant Officer smiles.
No, I’m not sure that’s what they’re after either.
Although I reckon Alan from Zimbabwe would be happy.
