Rabbi Dor Biton - New Zealand - Part 1

00:21 Speaker 1 Dor Biton, shalom aleichem.

00:23 Speaker 2 Shalom uverachah.

00:25 Speaker 1 You’re a shliach, together with your wife, of course, and your children, in Christchurch, New Zealand.

00:32 Speaker 2 That’s right.

00:33 Speaker 1 A place that’s certainly one of a kind, and a little far away too. Before we get into the stories of the shlichus itself, we’d like to get to know you. Who are you? Where do you come from? What’s your family background? Where are you based, in Israel or elsewhere in the world? Tell us a little about your childhood.

00:55 Speaker 2 Gladly. Uh...

00:57 Speaker 1 Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d, King of the universe, by Whose word everything came to be.

01:00 Speaker 2 Amen. First of all, let’s say l’chaim—shall we say a little l’chaim?

01:06 Speaker 1 Yes, please. Let’s say l’chaim. We’ll drink, we’ll drink l’chaim, l’chaim, l’chaim together. It’s a little Benedictine, Chabad’s national drink.

01:27 Speaker 2 L’chaim, l’chaim! Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever.

01:30 Speaker 1 L’chaim, and may there be blessings! L’chaim, l’chaim! Long live our master, our teacher and our Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever. To everyone listening as well.

01:37 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem.

01:41 Speaker 1 L’chaim, and may there be blessings.

01:43 Speaker 2 Well, I grew up in Arad. Uh...

01:48 Speaker 1 Where’s your family from? Where...?

01:50 Speaker 2 Originally, my father and his family came from Jerusalem. He moved to Arad in ninth grade. Until then, he grew up in Jerusalem. Even as children, they studied at Beis Yaakov in Jerusalem.

02:06 Speaker 1 Beis Yaakov is a girls’ school, isn’t it?

02:08 Speaker 2 No, but there was a—I know, that’s what he called it. It was a religious school for boys too.

02:14 Speaker 1 Ah.

02:14 Speaker 2 Yes. His father actually came from Morocco; they immigrated from Morocco.

02:20 Speaker 1 Do you remember which city in Morocco?

02:22 Speaker 2 No. To be honest, I don’t know.

02:24 Speaker 1 All right.

02:25 Speaker 2 When they came to Israel, he and his family settled in Jerusalem. To this day, most of my grandfather’s family—those who are still with us, of course—and most of the grandchildren and everyone are still in Jerusalem. They moved to Arad when my father was in ninth grade.

02:46 Speaker 1 Okay.

02:47 Speaker 2 I remember one particular detail my grandfather told me: when they sold their house in Jerusalem, they got about sixteen thousand liras for it. That’s what they received for the house, and...

03:03 Speaker 1 About what year are we talking? You said you were in ninth grade.

03:07 Speaker 2 No, not me. My father was in ninth grade.

03:10 Speaker 1 Ah.

03:11 Speaker 2 Yes, when my father was in ninth grade...

03:13 Speaker 1 Ah, when your father was in ninth grade, they moved to Arad.

03:15 Speaker 2 Exactly.

03:16 Speaker 1 I see.

03:16 Speaker 2 So they sold the house in Jerusalem for sixteen thousand liras, and when they got to Arad, a shop there cost three hundred liras. But they were Moroccans of the old school; they didn’t have much of a head for business or anything like that. At least, that’s how I heard it in many stories. They didn’t buy one; they only bought a house. Little by little, the money was spent, and—today half of Arad could have been theirs.

03:41 Speaker 1 Well, in theory, sure.

03:45 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem. So, there are six of us children. Actually, it’s a little more complicated now, but there were four children born to my mother and father.

03:59 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:00 Speaker 2 When the fourth child was little, still a baby, my parents divorced and my mother moved from Arad to Kfar Saba. In short, it was a mess. I remember a divorce that wasn’t very pleasant and went on for about seventeen years.

04:18 Speaker 1 At that age, too.

04:19 Speaker 2 Yes. In any case, it affected me a great deal. I was a somewhat restless child. I remember my father having to sit beside me at school for many, many hours. They wouldn’t take me on school trips. In short, I was very restless. They even sent me once to a juvenile offenders’ institution to see whether I belonged there. Yes.

04:48 Speaker 1 Wow.

04:48 Speaker 2 That went on for a very long time, until ninth grade. In ninth grade, we were supposed to move up to tenth, when you start splitting into different academic tracks. Of course, I grew up in a family that wasn’t religious, but we were traditional. We would go to shul on Friday night. I remember it very well: we’d go to shul, and when we got back, we’d race home to see who could get to the computer first.

05:16 Speaker 1 Not religious.

05:17 Speaker 2 I remember that whoever got to the computer first, we’d tell him, “Hey, you can’t sit at the computer—you’ve got a kippah on your head.” So he’d say, “You’re right,” take off the kippah and start playing. Innocent Moroccan kids, that’s what we were. That’s how we grew up, with a lot of faith in our hearts, and that was it. Anyway, in ninth grade they told me I had to make a decision. We were in the last third of the school year, and I had to decide whether I wanted to improve my grades. They were very, very low—my average was around twenty. They told me that only if I brought it up to eighty could I enter the Mabar track, where some of my friends had been placed. So I really did spend many, many hours studying, and I managed to get my average up to eighty-seven.

06:07 Speaker 1 Wonderful. Well done.

06:09 Speaker 2 I did get into Mabar. But I had this tendency to gravitate toward the kids who tested the boundaries. We liked testing the school’s rules and all kinds of limits.

06:23 Speaker 1 And your parents’ limits.

06:24 Speaker 2 Yes. I dealt with that through twelfth grade. But in the end, Baruch Hashem, I managed to complete all my matriculation exams, which was what my father had always wanted, and we started preparing for the army. Uh...

06:42 Speaker 1 Age eighteen, twelfth grade.

06:43 Speaker 2 Age eighteen, twelfth grade. I went to Acharai for a while.

06:47 Speaker 1 Which Acharai? The one founded by Omer Bar-Lev?

06:51 Speaker 2 Uh, probably. I don’t remember.

06:52 Speaker 1 Listen, that’s interesting. Omer Bar-Lev was a soldier under my command. I set up the team he was on, and afterward he started that movement called Acharai. Very interesting. All right.

07:03 Speaker 2 It still exists today. Actually, a few months ago—

07:05 Speaker 1 Yes, yes, it still exists. He left it because he became a politician, but it carried on and continues to this day. Nice, nice. What did you do there? Was it preparation for the army?

07:15 Speaker 2 Basically, a lot of it was physical training and mental preparation. You learned not to quit. No matter what happens, you keep going. Even when it’s hard, you can slow down, you can do whatever you need to—but you don’t stop. It’s a lot of mental work.

07:30 Speaker 1 Right.

07:31 Speaker 2 That was really a motto my father always taught me: why can the people ahead of you keep going? The people behind you—well, those who quit, quit. But always look at the ones who are still moving forward. Why can they do it and you can’t? Always look ahead. Even if it’s hard, eventually it ends. That motto has always stayed with me: if someone ahead of me can do it, I can too.

07:55 Speaker 1 Wonderful.

07:56 Speaker 2 He was talking about the army selection trials, but it helped me in life in general too. So, in twelfth grade there were selection trials for Shayetet 13, the naval commandos, and I went. It was a five-day Gadna camp, where you did a diving course, went through the selection trials themselves, and learned various things about the unit. I did fine in the selection trials, but in the water I really wasn’t good. They even called me the worst of the top performers in the water. I didn’t get along with the water very well. I remember we were—

08:36 Speaker 3 Too wet, too deep.

08:38 Speaker 2 Exactly. Each of us was called by a number. Those were our names, so to speak. But as the water tests went on, the instructor started saying to me, “All right, Biton, that’s it. I don’t know what to do with you anymore.” He’d stopped calling me number 118—I remember that was my number. He was calling me Biton already.

08:59 Speaker 3 You became a person, not a number.

09:01 Speaker 2 Completely, completely. They nearly had to rescue me from drowning, and I held up the whole team every time we went in the water. But again, I didn’t quit. I always kept going. But, yes.

09:13 Speaker 3 Was that in a pool or in the sea?

09:16 Speaker 2 There were tests in the sea and tests in a pool. In the sea tests, for example, we had to swim four hundred meters out to a buoy and back. I wasn’t a very good swimmer.

09:28 Speaker 3 Four hundred meters each way.

09:29 Speaker 2 Each way, yes.

09:30 Speaker 3 That’s quite a distance.

09:30 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:31 Speaker 3 Quite a distance.

09:31 Speaker 2 No, it’s not a short distance.

09:32 Speaker 3 Of course.

09:33 Speaker 2 I remember that while I was still halfway out, most of the team was already on the way back. By the time I got to the buoy, everyone else had finished. I remember trying to keep going, knowing I still had to swim all the way back. Every so often my muscles would cramp. I’d stop, sink a little, come back up, and each time the boat beside me would say, “All right, Biton, get in. That’s it, you’re not going to make it.” I told them, “No way.” Everyone else finished in about fifteen to eighteen minutes, and because of me, they all waited another quarter of an hour.

10:08 Speaker 3 Wonderful.

10:09 Speaker 2 Ah, that was part of it too. In the pool, you had to put on black goggles you couldn’t see through and collect metal rings.

10:20 Speaker 3 Oh.

10:20 Speaker 2 So I remember, you could collect as many as you could, for as long as you wanted, as long as you could manage...

10:26 Speaker 3 And you’d come up, breathe, and go back down?

10:27 Speaker 2 No, no. You went down once, collected as many as you wanted, and came up. There were lots of rings, so you’d start—

10:33 Speaker 3 But you can only stay underwater for a minute, half a minute.

10:36 Speaker 2 Something like that, yes, roughly. Some people can stay down a little longer, but you collect as many as you want. They were spaced a little apart, so you’d move along and feel for them. I remember collecting and collecting and collecting. I got to the point where I really needed to come up, but I’d collected so many that they were heavy and I couldn’t get up. Still, I didn’t think of letting go of them, and I was on the verge of—

10:56 Speaker 3 What a combination.

10:56 Speaker 2 ...until one of the divers jumped in and saved me from nearly drowning. In short, that was one of my experiences with the naval commando selection process. In the end, I wasn’t accepted. I think—I don’t know why—probably because of what happened in the water or something like that. But I completed everything. Then I finished twelfth grade and started going to selection courses. There was the selection course for the elite units. Again, my father always pushed me—and my brothers too. There are several of us, and most served in elite units: the Givati reconnaissance unit, the paratroopers’ reconnaissance unit, a paratrooper company. That was always the direction. So I went to the elite-unit selection course, passed it, and qualified for the General Staff reconnaissance unit selection course. But first there was a psychologist. In short, I didn’t pass the psychological evaluation. You can’t know why. Then I was sent to the paratroopers’ selection course.

11:52 Speaker 3 Cool, cool.

11:52 Speaker 2 Yes. I completed the paratroopers’ selection course too, and I wasn’t accepted there either. I felt a bit discouraged, because each time I got through the course, but—

12:01 Speaker 3 The naval commando selection course, the General Staff selection course, this selection course, that selection course.

12:05 Speaker 2 Yes, and I wasn’t accepted. Eventually my enlistment date arrived, and I wanted to join Givati and get into its reconnaissance unit. My brother had served there, so I really wanted that, but I’d been assigned to the Border Police, and I didn’t want to join the Border Police. My brother told me, “Don’t get on the bus. No matter what, don’t get on the bus.” They told me, “Don’t worry, this bus is going to Givati,” and so on. In short, thank G-d, I didn’t get on the bus. I spent three days in detention on the base, and then my service was deferred. I had a four-month deferment. Those four months were good; I worked. Then I enlisted in Givati, and anyone who wanted to could go to the reconnaissance-unit selection course.

13:01 Speaker 3 After you enlist, there’s another selection course?

13:03 Speaker 2 No. The selection course for the reconnaissance units of the brigades—Givati, Golani, the paratroopers, Nahal—comes afterward. Sorry, let me explain: the paratroopers are the only ones who have a selection course just to get into the brigade. Then there are special units like the General Staff reconnaissance unit, the naval officers’ course, the naval commandos, and so on. If you want to get into the Givati reconnaissance unit, or one of Givati’s other units, you first have to enlist in Givati. Then there’s a five-day selection course.

13:34 Speaker 3 A special selection course for those reconnaissance units.

13:35 Speaker 2 Exactly. Anyone who enlisted in Givati could take part. So we began—I remember there were about three hundred guys at the start. It was a very, very intense selection course, very difficult.

13:52 Speaker 3 Right. What’s an example? What do they make you do?

13:55 Speaker 2 First of all, there’s the way they treat you. You’re just a number, and they keep showing you they don’t need you. You can quit whenever you want. “Don’t worry, there’s a transport truck right here. Get on it. There’s food and drink. Why do you need this?” That alone gets to you. Then there’s a lot of physical exertion: lots and lots of running, crawling, carrying sandbags, crawling with a stretcher. A lot of things that wear your body down and are very hard. There are competitions between the recruits. Sometimes you have to come first, and sometimes you have to work as a team and help each other. But you don’t always think about helping one another; you want to be first. I remember that on the second day I sprained my ankle very badly. It swelled up and I couldn’t walk. They told me, “All right, get on the transport truck. You’re done.” But I remembered my father saying, “Why can the guys up front keep going while you have to stop?” So I told them, “No. I’ll limp if I have to.” And I did continue the selection course like that, limping a little during some of the longer runs until it eased up a bit. Afterward, though, it turned out to be a very serious sprain. That’s how I got through the course.

15:22 Speaker 3 And...

15:25 Speaker 2 So, thank G-d, I finished it successfully and was accepted into the Givati reconnaissance unit. I remember one thing in particular: I don’t think my physical fitness was especially good, but one of the values I grew up with, something I was taught, was always to help one another. There was, for example, a march of about sixteen kilometers with the team’s stretcher, and supposedly the commanders weren’t with us.

15:51 Speaker 3 Was that before or after the sprain?

15:53 Speaker 2 After the sprain. It was right near the end.

15:55 Speaker 3 They didn’t put you on the stretcher itself?

15:56 Speaker 2 No, of course not. They put sandbags on it. If you wanted to lie on a stretcher, you could go to the transport truck.

16:02 Speaker 3 Got it. Go on.

16:03 Speaker 2 So anyone who wanted to carried the stretcher. There were also two very heavy loads of water and communications equipment. Whoever wanted to carry them did, and otherwise the other guys carried them. Supposedly there were no commanders, so there was no one to put on a show for—“Look, I’m helping.” But actually, or so they told us, they were watching us. It was a long march, several hours. I remember that there, at least, I kept trying to get under the stretcher and help. A few other guys tried to help too, while you could see some standing a little more to the side. In the end, I really was accepted into the Givati reconnaissance unit.

16:47 Speaker 3 All right, let’s pause here. Next time we’ll talk about the reconnaissance unit and everything you did there. L’chaim, l’chaim.

16:54 Speaker 2 L’chaim, l’chaim. L’chaim and blessings.

16:55 Speaker 3 Long live our master, our teacher, and our Rebbe, King Moshiach, forever and ever. A fascinating, interesting story, [unclear]. L’chaim and blessings.