Joshua and Judges

11. This Season You’ll be Wearing God: On the Manning of Gideon and the Undressing of the Israelites (Judges 6:1—8:32)

11 This Season You’ll be Wearing God On the Manning of Gideon and the Undressing of the Israelites (Judges 6:1—8:32) Meir Bar Mymon In this essay I shall examine the process that shaped Gideon into being a Man. The process that made a Soldier Man out of him did not end until Gideon wore God the warrior, and God wore Gideon (Judg. 6:34); moreover, the process was fully realized only when Gideon undressed himself from Yhwh by creating the ephod, reducing God to the level of a scorned image and shifting his own male image from a fighter back to a Man, self-made. By so doing, Gideon reduces God to the status of uniform, the temporary clothing that has shaped him to a certain category of masculinity. In other words, I wish to shift the cultural signification of the image of Gideon from a soldier back to a citizen, hoping that one day I too can finally undress myself from my uniforms in the hope of becoming a civilian. When Men Were Warriors The winter of 1996 was the winter that altered my life, or at least nearly did. It was the winter in which that fragile “I” of mine—the “I” of an Israeli teenager who had just finished high school and was clueless about his identity or the world of identities that surrounded him—entered the Israeli identity pressure cooker for a fast cook-and-serve of the new Israeli “I,” the “I” that will cling to the body forever, the “I” that will mark any Israeli wherever he is, the mark of Cain, the “I” of the soldier. 191 The damp winter day and the irritating tiny drops of rain that fell on the olive gray military compound did not discourage the thousands of cheerful Israeli children who hopped onto the buses that would take them to the ‫בקו“ם‬, BAQUM, the acronym of the army “absorption and categorization camp,” the almighty Israeli army base in the center of the country that classifies most of the Israelis, men and women, and puts them into the ‫חיול‬ ‫שרשרת‬, the preliminary “chain of soldiering.” This process gives the new recruits uniforms, vaccinates them, takes x-ray shots of their teeth in case this is all that’s left of them in battle, and has them sign an insurance policy that grants their parents money and benefits if their soldier offspring dies. I was neither exactly cheerful nor quite gloomy. I was shocked, perhaps even terrified, of this unknown process, at the end of which awaited a monster whose name I did not know, but whose presence hovered above me all my life, a monster that for years was hiding in the closet, under the bed, in the classroom, and in the Israeli history books, and was waiting quietly and patiently to be uncovered. And this monster was revealed indeed; by the end of the soldering process, after I had put on my uniform and learned how to cuff the low hem of the pants to the boots, I dared to look forward. There I saw an image reflected in the mirror and looking at me; and on the mirror frame, there was an engraved sentence emphasized with yellow paint: “Soldier, improve your outfit!” At that moment I saw a new “I,” an “I” that had been dormant in me for eighteen years, carefully fed and nursed by the Israeli Zionist cultural system: a self that had been an “I” cocoon was now articulated and ready to take control over me. During the neophyte process I felt how my breath was sucked out of my life, how the blood left my veins, how my body turned docile and united with a greater body, the body of the Israeli army, controlled not by my own mind but by the collective mind. I saw how this “I” took control over the newly born soldiers, I saw how it was fed and nurtured, and how, gradually, the previous “I,” the childish, playful “I” had been changed into a different one, still childish but with a mission: to guard the beloved country and its Holy City, the Woman Jerusalem; and I was determined to resist. The Guard of the Walls I am standing on the wall Standing in the rain, all by myself And the entire old city 192 | Joshua and Judges Is laid on the palm of my hand...