Tefillin on the Berm Between Iraq and Syria
I recall the loneliness I would feel while standing on the berm separating Iraq from Syria, staring across the desert and dreaming about being in Israel only a couple hundred miles away. I would laugh to myself how I could drive there and back in a day and nobody would have to be the wiser. So close, but a world away. It was like a kind of torture. Maybe Moses felt similar when he wasn’t permitted to enter Canaan. I hope not.
As an imbedded trainer among 1,500 Iraqi soldiers, I had to conceal my identity twenty-four hours a day. In the eyes of the Iraqis that I was training, I was just another blue-eyed, Christian American.