Last week I voluntarily enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces. I add "voluntarily" because Israelis find it hard to believe that those legally exempt would willingly commit themselves to military service.

I'll try to explain why I did.

I'm a dual citizen, born in upstate New York to Israeli parents. I lived there all of my life except for two years in Israel about ten years ago. I came here in January on a Birthright trip (mainly for the free flight), packed apples at Kibbutz Bar-Am for a while, and somewhere along the way decided to stay in Israel. I'll be 24 in a few weeks.

One morning last week I went with my father (my parents are here visiting) to the Tel HaShomer recruitment center. The plan was to ask a few questions about my service--where and for how long it would be, what kind of things I might do, etc. That was the plan. Instead, I left the place enlisted.

That's how it looks at first glance, anyway. The truth is I had been thinking of enlisting for years.

I harbor no illusions that military service is either noble or fun. It will probably suck. But it will also probably be the biggest challenge I've yet encountered in my life.

What's more, I'm proud of Israel and want to do my part for it. I still cling to that love-this-country-and-want-to-serve-it patriotism (dare I drop the Z-word?) which Israelis consider so old-fashioned these days, if not downright embarrassing. I admit that this country has problems, aggravations, and sins for which it must atone (what country doesn't?). But none of these has compromised my fundamental belief in Israel.

So that bright morning I approached the gates of Tel HaShomer, shoulders back and head high. I was realizing my childhood ambition, that of every redblooded Jewish kid who dreams of defending the daughters of Jerusalem from the rapacious Philistine and Amalekite. In that arduous journey from Israeli-American to American-Israeli, this would be my first step.

I gave my Israeli passport to the soldier at the gate (I didn't yet have an ID card). Immediately he noticed my birthplace: "USA."

"What are you, crazy?" he said in Hebrew. "Why'd you come here?"

I wasn't sure if he was referring to the recruitment center or to Israel. I searched for an acceptable excuse ("I like the weather...I have an Israeli girlfriend, pretty serious."). I considered treating him to one of those florid Zionist seminars to which I spontaneously subject unsuspecting friends when drunk.

Instead, I stood there mute, grinning unconvincingly. My comrade-in-arms returned my passport, sizing me up with scorn.

"Get in line. You're making a mistake."

I waited a while until a clerk called me in. I told her I had come only to get some questions answered, and she agreed. At my age, she said, I'd have to serve for only six months instead of the usual three years. After that I'd join the reserve pool, which means I could be called up for a few weeks a year until I'm about 40.

"If you want, we can start today," she said. "You wouldn't commit to anything--we'd just open your file and run some tests."

"Sure," I said. "Can't hurt."

I ate my free sandwich (they want your belly full for the medical exams) and took a place at the end of a line of 17- and 18-year-olds. Most were draftees, but there were also a few ultra-Orthodox who had come to receive exemptions on religious grounds. Sitting there, I noticed that while I was hardly popular with either group, it was the prospective soldiers who were watching me with deeper suspicion. Maybe they thought I had come for the exams given to prospective officers, and that I might end up their CO.

I began to doubt myself.

"Do I really want to go through basic training with a bunch of 18-year olds? Do I want to do reserve duty for years, and have to ask permission to leave the country? What am I getting myself into?"

A soldier seated inside called me in for medical exams.

"Here for officer exams?"

"No, I'm enlisting."

"Enlisting?" She looked up from her forms for the first time, thought for a moment, and handed me a urine sample cup.

I walked into the restroom and did my business, but my doubts lingered.

Why volunteer for something that most would do anything to get out of? What can the future hold for a country in which pride is passe? And why, with this personal sacrifice I'm making, do these soldiers hold me in such contempt?

Suddenly it was clear. I was, in their eyes, a freier.

"Freier" is Yiddish and can be roughly translated as "sucker." But it goes deeper than that--a freier is one duped into doing something to someone else's benefit while receiving nothing oneself. To the Israeli, no swine, no creeping thing is lower or more vile than the freier.

Leaving the restroom, I realized the cup was still empty. In my confusion I had relieved myself into the usual receptacle, and it was evident that despite my efforts, no more sample material was forthcoming. I turned on the faucet and drank deeply. Half an hour of this and I was at last able to produce a minimal sample. The soldier seemed not to have noticed the delay, likely chalking it up to the urinary problems of old age.

She sent me to a large room with young, mostly female soldiers at computers. One of them asked me questions in rapid fire about my education and job experience, and tested my Hebrew. She then produced a document with space for a signature at bottom.

"By signing this you become enlisted," she said.

She had caught me off guard.

"That's a big decision," I said sheepishly.

She smiled politely while filling out a form. I could tell she was in a hurry to catch a bus or have a smoke or something.

I stared at the signature line, the way they do in movies.

"Yallah," I heard myself say, and signed.

With a swipe of my pen I had forfeited my freedom to a faceless bureaucracy for the next 10-15 years of my life, and taken only a slightly shorter period off of my mother's.

She gave me an intelligence exam, and then told me I could go home.

"So when do I start?" I asked.

"You'll hear from us," she said, almost pushing me out of the office, "but maybe this summer."

I called my father, who all this time had been waiting outside.

"Dad, I think I just enlisted," I said with a laugh.

Dad wasn't impressed. He had been captain of an artillery battery and always spoke of it as a valuable experience, and though he didn't object to my serving, he felt the decision wasn't properly thought out.

"And Mom will have a heart attack."

We went back to my parents' hotel. The following day was filled with my mother's impassioned phone calls to various military offices, trying in vain to undo what I had done.

But I was content. I had done something I'd wanted to do since childhood, something I should have done earlier (before the urinary troubles set in). I had resisted those who claim to know my interests better than I do, those who would keep me from marking my own path in life. Is anything more important?

After all, I'm no freier.