An Ode to Beards in the IDF

My father has a beard. This is because the week after I was born, he was called for reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces. It was November, and it was cold, and the thought of rushing out to the outdoor sink in his remote desert base at dawn each morning to shave sounded thoroughly unappealing.

In those days, with the wounds of the Yom Kippur War still fresh, discipline was strict, and soldiers were only permitted to grow beards for religious reasons, which meant that once you withdrew the blade, you were committing to the full-on rabbinical look for a long while. By the time my father came back home a month later, he’d grown accustomed to the stubble on his chin.

I was more fortunate. I put on a uniform and marched into the IDF’s induction center just a few months after the famous handshake on the White House lawn between Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin, and Yasser Arafat; young and optimistic, my fellow inductees and I all believed that we were destined to be, to borrow the late Israeli prime minister’s famous coinage, soldiers of peace. And soldiers of peace didn’t need to bother about such mundane things as shaving.

And so, a five o’clock shadow loomed on my face throughout my service, and no one seemed to mind. If stopped for questioning by a fussbudget from the military police, I’d just say casually that I’d decided to let my facial hair grow, and that would be that. Many of my brothers-in-arms went similarly hirsute. It was the 90’s, and the fuzz on our faces neatly matched the grunge music playing on our headphones.

The next generation wasn’t so lucky. By 2009, with the IDF having just emerged from Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the top brass felt the need to once again brandish the razor. A new beard ordinance was passed, requiring that any soldier who desired to let it all hang out on his face obtain an annual written permit from a lieutenant colonel.

These were strict orders, but they weren’t strict enough. The pleasures of an unshorn cheek are many, and many young men in olive-green chose to risk the army’s wrath and succumb to the joy of passing their fingers thoughtfully through the week-old weedy thicket on their chins. The violence from Gaza continued. It was time once again to struggle with the stubble. And this week, the IDF passed its strictest anti-beard measure yet, banning them completely save for strictly observant soldiers with the right note from the rabbi, or strictly sensitive-skinned soldiers with the right note from the doctor. Anyone else wishing to grow a beard for any other reason will have, starting July 1, to apply to one of 15 colonels authorized to issue a no-shave permit. And just like that, the IDF has become the Yankees of armies, a mighty beard-banning franchise. (Speaking of sports, the chairman of NBC Sports mimicked the IDF’s general staff this week when he asked the NHL to ban its players from sporting facial hair during playoffs.)

These are hard times for hard-charging bearded men everywhere, but we will overcome: it’s the beard’s nature to simply grow back, no matter what.