The 188th Crybaby Brigade: a skinny kid from Chicago fights Hizbollah KFAR Jewish Arts Center

Comedian and IDF veteran Joel Chasnoff reads from his hilarious new book, the 188th Crybaby Battalion, an account of his army service in Tzahal.


02/21/10 - 02/21/10

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Comedian and IDF veteran Joel Chasnoff reads from his hilarious new book, the 188th Crybaby Battalion, an account of his army service in Tzahal.

At 24, Joel Chasnoff, graduate of an Ivy League university. decided it was time for a serious change of pace. Leaving behind his amenity-laden Brooklyn apartment for a plane ticket to Israel, Joel trades in the comforts of being a stereotypical American Jewish male for an Uzi and dog tags in the Israeli Army.

As a member of the 188th Armored Brigade, a unit trained on the Merkava tanks that make up the backbone of Israeli ground forces, Chasnoff finds himself caught in a twilight zone-like world of mandatory snack breaks, battalion sing-alongs, and eighteen-year-old Israeli mama's boys who feign injuries to get out of guard duty and claim diarrhea to avoid kitchen work. More time is spent arguing over how to roll a sleeve cuff than studying the mechanics of the Merkava tanks.

The platoon sergeants are barely older than the soldiers and are younger than Chasnoff himself. And all this while his relationship with his tough-as-nails Israeli girlfriend (herself a former drill sergeant) crumbles before his very eyes. The lone American in a platoon of eighteen-year-old Israelis, Chasnoff takes readers into the barracks; over, under, and through political fences; and face-to-face with the reality of life in the Israeli Army.

It is a brash and gritty depiction of combat, rife with ego clashes, breakdowns in morale, training mishaps that almost cost lives, and barely containable sexual urges. It's an on-the-ground account of life in one of the most em-battled armies on earth. With equal parts irreverence and vulnerability, irony and intimacy, Chasnoff narrates a new kind of coming-of-age story -- one that teaches us, moves us, and makes us laugh.

The 188th Crybaby Brigade is a hilarious and poignant account of Chasnoff's year in the Israel Defense Forces -- a year that he volunteered for, and that he'll never get back.

Author
Joel Chasnoff

Performers
Joel Chasnoff

Tags: Literary, Rest Of The World, 2010