A whole book about 3 weeks helping the IDF? I am a alum of Sar-El having been in Isreal July and Aug in 1986. What a great program, but you do work. Just like the regular military everyone will have a different experiance.

The group I was with was housed in an army hostel in Jaffa, not on the base. We were bussed to a superbase out side of Tel Aviv. I call it a super base because there were many sub-bases there each with their own purpose. I worked in a parts warehouse that supplied tank and truck parts. What we did during the day was put the parts in their proper place when the were shipped in, and picked orders that went to various other bases about the country.

I did meet other people in the program who were stationed and lived on very remote bases. They did not have as good a time as we did, since we could explore Tel Aviv during the evening after our day was done.

The best part was knowing that our being their helped free up some other reservist to do something a bit less mundane than the job we were doing.

My other memory of my time there was the World Cup final was being played while I was in Israel. I have never seen such deserted streets like I witnessed during the finals.