Religious woman soldier has fighting spirit
Haredi-born Rita never thought she would join the IDF, but at the age of 25 she has done just that; she maintains there is no conflict between being religious and a woman soldier in a mixed battalion.
If anyone a few years ago had said to Rita – now 25, but back then a young ultra-Orthodox girl and a pupil at an all-girl ultra-Orthodox school – that one day she'd enlist in the Israel Defense Forces and even serve as a combat soldier in the Caracal Battalion, alongside both female and male soldiers, she would probably have burst out laughing.
Today, with a little more than six months in the battalion behind her, she's already thinking about an officers' course and signing on as a career soldier.
Rita was raised in an ultra-Orthodox family that moved from Jerusalem to Migdal HaEmek, and she went through the ultra-Orthodox schooling system. In 10th grade, however, she began to question her religious upbringing and lifestyle and she returned to Jerusalem to live with her sister.
Nevertheless, the option of military service never entered her mind.
"There was no awareness of the IDF in the environment in which I grew up," she explains. "It's not something that anyone ever spoke about or prepared me for. It simply doesn't exist. No one in my family enlisted."
Rita worked a variety of part-time jobs to support herself, moving from one residence to another, until she ended up about a year ago at Ben-Gurion International Airport on her way to Nepal. But when she got to Passport Control, she was astounded to learn that she was barred from leaving the country due to her failure to serve in the military.
"I was in complete shock," she recalls. "What's with me and the army? What does it have to do with me?"
Rita was taken to the IDF's induction center, and there, due to her age and in light of the fact that she was seen as a lone soldier who isn't in touch with her parents, the duration of her service was reduced to just six months. Rita, however, decided to waive the concessions and opt instead for combat service.
"That's how I got to Caracal," she says. "I signed up to serve for three years like all the other fighters in the battalion, and I've been here for seven months already. Yes, I am older than the commander of my company, but no one makes fun of me because of my age. They admire me for the sacrifices I've made and the path I have chosen."
Surprisingly, Rita has moved closer to religion again since being in the battalion. "There's no conflict of interests between being religious and serving as a combat soldier in a mixed battalion," she explains. "We have fixed prayer times, complete separation between boys and girls, and during the month of the Selichot prayers, I woke at 4 a.m. to pray and they allowed me to make up the hours of sleep."
Rita will be moving to Kibbutz Evron in the Western Galilee in the next few weeks, and she'll become one of the 1,008 lone soldiers from Israel and abroad who have been adopted by the Kibbutz Movement.
"We are happy and proud to participate and play a leading role in such a meaningful enterprise in the lives of many young Jews, for the sake of strengthening the ties between the Jews of the Diaspora and the State of Israel," said Kibbutz Movement Secretary-General Eitan Broshi.
