During my first trip to Israel, I spotted a young woman on Har Herzl wearing an olive khaki skirt, and carrying an automatic weapon. I stared, and she stared back. We did not speak, but I remember my surprise that an observant woman could enlist in the Israeli army. I had simply never heard of such a thing.
Years later, when I needed a thesis topic, I decided to “return” to that woman and explore the world of dati women in the Israeli army. As part of my research, I visited institutions that prepare observant women for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and spoke with students and their teachers and rabbis. On my itinerary were Tokhnit Hadas (a division of Midreshet Lindenbaum) and Midreshet Be’er in Yeruham. In these programs, women spend one year learning before they begin their army service, and then return for another stint of learning after their service. (There is another similar program I did not manage to visit, at Midreshet Ein Hanatziv.) I also stopped at Tzahali, the first mekhina (one-year pre-army preparatory program) for religious women, which, although it has a significant learning component, focuses more on self-development as its goal. The majority of the participants in these programs came from Jerusalem and its environs or from the religious kibbutz movement. They represent one to two percent of the total number of observant female soldiers in the IDF. 1
During my visit, I found that the issue of dress was paramount. The tensions surrounding clothing went far deeper than the choice between pants and skirts—they spoke to the core of the soldier’s religious identities, as well as to matters of autonomy and representation for dati females in Israeli society.
In the IDF, everyone has a work uniform and a dress uniform. Although a female soldier could technically wear a skirt as part of her work uniform, almost no one chooses to do so because of the inherent impracticality of such an arrangement. In fact, many of the women told me that because of the nature of army life, pants are more modest than skirts. Female soldiers may however, request larger sizes of pants and alter them so that they are not as tight fitting as one often sees on other female soldiers. With respect to skirts, a standard-issue skirt is issued when requested. The skirt is notoriously large, long, and shapeless; however, the female soldiers are allowed to tailor the skirt as they see fit. The army makes a distinction between altering for fit and for fashion, permitting only the former. Of course, the line between the two is quite hazy, and here observant women are no different from their secular counterparts in pushing the limits. However, in deference to religious preferences, the army is significantly less likely to challenge the alterations made by a dati female.
I found it fascinating how many conversations there were about lengths, slits, and fit of army skirts among the women I visited – especially as their date of enlistment approached. It seemed that these conversations, which lasted for hours about the minutest details of tailoring, were a way for these women to allay fears about their upcoming service. By focusing on slits instead of army placements, these soldiers could concentrate on matters under their control rather than worry about their military service that both excited and terrified them. In addition, the loss of individuality that accompanied joining the military was partially offset by wearing a personalized, unique khaki skirt, different from any other army uniform.
The issue of work uniforms for religious women in the army is fairly uncomplicated. However, it is with respect to the dress uniform that the real controversy arises. This uniform is worn to official ceremonies, when a soldier is officially representing the army at meetings, and other important functions. Here too, female soldiers have a choice of skirts or pants. The religious institutions mentioned earlier strongly recommend that women choose skirts, whereas a significant group of female soldiers prefer dress pants. The concern of the schools is not only for modesty, although that undoubtedly plays a role. They also want these observant women to be easily identified as female religious soldiers – and the donning of a skirt links these women to the observant community, thereby challenging the community to consider these women as belonging to it. Moreover, the schools believe that when religious women wear skirts, Israeli society recognizes that these obviously observant women can fully serve their country just like their secular counterparts, challenging both religious and secular notions of equality and civic duty.
But it is exactly this equation of skirts with religiosity to which many of the soldiers object. Many of the women I spoke to did not normally wear skirts, except for Shabbat. Yet, they considered themselves full-fledged members of religious society and felt Torah and halakha were incredibly important to them. They resented the notion that, to be identified as observant to the religious and secular public, they needed to wear skirts. They further spoke of functional (rather than legal) modesty – the tzniut associated with a pair of loose pants that would enable them to engage in more tasks while exposing much less of their body shape and skin to the outside world than a skirt would. Additionally, many women told stories about how wearing pants enabled them to challenge perceptions of religious women, and how the absence of a visible “signifier” of religiosity gave them a freedom to grow in ways unimaginable in their earlier, isolated lives in religious communities.
I was told of a time when a group of pants-clad female soldiers on their way to a Hanukah party stopped at a gas station to daven Minha by the side of the road. (The women were in their work uniforms, having come directly from their army base.) They attracted a considerable amount of attention from people who were only used to seeing men pray by the side of the road – a quintessentially Israeli prayer experience. A group of haredim approached the rabbi who was traveling with them and asked him what was occurring. Bemused, he explained that the soldiers were praying. The haredim objected, for they simply did not understand how women in military uniform, wearing pants, were capable of prayer. The rabbi again explained that the women were religious soldiers. By this time, the women had finished their prayers and overheard much of the conversation. In relaying this story to me, one of them commented that she was proud to be part of a group that demonstrated that Judaism was not the sole domain of those who demanded that women wear skirts. By wearing pants and praying publicly, she felt that she was challenging prevalent perceptions of religious women in the public sphere.
I want to make clear that observant people are not the only ones to make assumptions regarding the religious lives of these women. Many of the pants-wearing religious soldiers reported that they often had a difficult time convincing secular army commanders that they were indeed observant and therefore eligible for Shabbat accommodations and time off for prayer. One soldier told me about a friend who had married immediately before entering the army. When she arrived at the base, her hair covered with a brightly colored scarf, she was told by her commander that olive green or black were the only acceptable colors for head covering. She reminded him that men could wear whatever color kippah they desired and that she deserved that same right. He then relented, and she served with many differently colored scarves. A similar interaction was captured in a documentary about religious women in the Israeli army made by Peninah Greitzer, an Israeli filmmaker. In the film, Greitzer followed the women to the enlistment base, where all new soldiers are processed and receive uniforms, and shows an interaction with a clerk who is distributing military fatigues to the women. Each soldier is entitled to three sets of clothes. One woman asks for two pairs of pants and one skirt. The clerk explodes in anger: “You’re either religious or you’re not. Black or white. You can’t be Sabbath observant and smoke a cigarette.” He refuses to accommodate her request, and a supervisor has to be called to convince this very angry secular clerk that the request was legitimate.
The debate over which uniform an observant female soldier should wear is ultimately linked to the question of who claims these women: the religious world or the larger Israeli community. Are they the success stories of the religious Zionist world or the shining example of a diverse Israeli society? Although both sides wish to claim them, perhaps these women represent a new path in Israeli identity – a combination of two worlds. However, I would like to think that the choices of uniform will be made by the female soldiers themselves, rather than by their seminary teachers. As part of their religious development, it is crucial that these women become their own ritual actors and decide themselves what they should wear in pursuit of their life’s work – whether in the battlefield or anywhere else.
Through my research, I came to realize that I too had to revise my earlier perception of the world of religious women and the Israeli army. Although the woman I saw on Mount Herzl was visibly observant, she may very well not have been the first religious female soldier I encountered. I too was guilty of placing people in boxes based solely on physical appearance and their associations, ignoring the complex lives of the observant women who serve in the IDF. Indeed, the controversy over observant female soldiers goes much further than skirts and pants. To me, its crux lies in the identification of warfare with masculinity; therefore (potentially) rendering the army uniform a form of forbidden cross-dressing for women. It is not only the pants that are masculine, but rather the entire enterprise. The Babylonian Talmud states in Massekhet Nazir 59a: “From where do we learn that women should not go to war with a weapon? The Torah states ‘A woman should not wear that which pertains to a man’” (Deuteronomy 22:4). 2 Similarly, the controversies regarding the uniforms of religious female soldiers are manifestations of larger questions involving gender, religion, and nationalism in the State of Israel. I suspect that as long as these battles rage, the debates regarding khaki skirts will continue.