Note: Merrill Jackson is currently in the process of converting to Judaism. He has given JDL permission to publish the fascinating story of his decision and determination to become a Jew.

On April 14, 1982, a military formation had mustered at the southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula, at Sharm-El-Sheikh on the Red Sea shore. The formation was for a flag raising ceremony, a military ritual that varies little from one country to the next. This ceremony, however, had a decidedly international flavor. In addition to Egyptian and Israeli uniforms (in the same formation for the first time in modern history), there were also American, Dutch, Fijian and Italian members of the Multinational Force and Observers present. The MFO was an international peacekeeping force that had been formed and stationed in the Sinai as a stipulation of the Camp David Accords of 1979.

One other important aspect distinguished this ceremony from the usual military flag raising. Coming down the flagpole was the blue and white Magen David of the Israeli state, and in its place the Egyptian golden eagle against red, black and white stripes was being raised. There were speeches in English, there was military pageantry, and there was a strong sense of history. But there was something else, at least for me. I don't know if anyone else felt it, but I felt a deep sense of wrongness. I wasn't sure why, but something was wrong about this exchange.

Israel was beginning what would later be referred to as a "land-for-peace" policy, and the ceremony marked the relinquishing of the Sinai to the Egyptian government. As an American paratrooper with the 82d Airborne Division, my job here would be to remain strictly neutral. But I did not feel neutral, nor did I feel disloyal to my own country for not feeling neutral. I felt betrayed, but I did not know why.

I knew of the heroic push by Israeli forces to capture Sharm-El-Sheikh in June of 1967 (coinciding with the retaking of the holy ground of Old Jerusalem), but until now these had been brilliant military feats to me, studied from the soldier's perspective. I had not attached any particular spiritual or personal significance to the events. Still, something was corrupt here, at Sharm-El-Sheikh, in 1982.

Later that day, just before sundown, I was climbing among the coral cliffs above the Red Sea with Gomar, an Egyptian. Gomar was a merchant who was setting up a shop in the beachfront area, and he and I got along pretty well. Like many Egyptians, he was fascinated with American culture, and we frequently talked about politics, philosophy, the war-weariness of the Egyptian and Israeli people, and other topics. We encountered three other Americans who I knew from the MFO base. Two of them were Carole and Lisa (whose last names I cannot for the life of me remember), civilian employees of the construction company that was still working on the as yet uncompleted military base. The other was Timothy Wesley, my roommate in the paratrooper's barracks where we lived on the base.

Our three acquaintances were having a basic American beach party, with a cooler full of beer and a boom box to provide entertainment. Macabee beer, a muddy concoction available only in Israel as far as I know, never appealed to me so I passed on an offer of a bottle. But we did get into one of the many deep, serious philosophical discussions into which the Sinai seems to drive its visitors.

Gomar hated war. He had nothing against Israelis, he often stated, and I believed him. He told us about how his older brother had been killed not far from here in the Six-Day War. From the cliff where we sat, we could see out over the Straits of Tiran, a narrow, deep (2,000 feet) passage that marks the entrance to the Gulf of Eliat. Gomar explained how the Egyptians had started the Six-Day War by blocking the straits, and some of the wrecked ships left from that incident were still visible on the edges of the straits, stuck on top of a coral shelf that marked the sheer 2,000-foot drop that was the channel through which all shipping to the port city of Eliat must pass.

Egyptians are not, as a general rule, particularly fond of the Sinai. To them it is little more than a big, hot, basically worthless desert, valuable only for strategic military purposes. As Gomar lamented the death of his brother, there was an element of disgust in his voice as he gestured with a broad sweep of his hand toward the darkening Sinai Mountains in the inland part of the peninsula.

"Who would die for this?" he asked no one in particular.

As Gomar finished his story, he excused himself and left to go back to work at his shop on the beach. The other three also left, and I stood alone on the fossilized coral cliff with my back to the Red Sea. Over my left shoulder I was aware of the reflection of the neon moon's platinum streaks across the black, waveless straits of Tiran. As I watched the sun set toward the interior of the peninsula, I thought about Gomar's parting words, and I remembered the peculiar feeling I had experienced during the flag ceremony earlier that day.

Sunset in the Sinai is more of a crash landing than a setting. The sun's nightly splashdown is a spectacular union of heaven and earth, exploding in a giant mosaic of pure, unfettered life force. As the fiery solar disk begins its descent toward the jagged moonscape that is the Sinai mountains, it appears to splatter like a giant paintball against the terrifyingly beautiful peaks, splashing waves of purple, red, orange and blue lava into every possible space among the dark, towering silhouettes.

The mountains themselves change colors throughout the day -- bright silvery gray until mid-afternoon, then red, flowing into blue and deep purple, which at day's end fades to a pitch black, with the irregular silhouettes of the mountain peaks casting gigantic shadows in front of the ocean of stars beyond the endless horizon.

As I watched the stars blaze to life above the mountains of the peninsula's interior, I thought, "Yes, I would die for this. . . ."

The First Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the United States Army's 82d Airborne Division (abbreviated 1/505, nicknamed "First-oh-Five") is historically one of the toughest conventional fighting forces in the U.S. Army. The 1/505 led the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944, by parachuting behind German lines and cutting Nazi communications before the main landing force hit the beach.

Since World War II, the 1/505 has been the spearhead unit in numerous high profile U. S. operations, including the Granada rescue mission (1983), the Noriega capture in Panama (1989), and the Persian Gulf War against Sadam Hussein and his much touted "million man army" in 1991.

In the Persian Gulf, the 1/505 and other units from the 82d Airborne, a force numbering less than 5,000 and armed with little more than rifles and machine guns, stood directly in the path of Sadam's massive force for 48 hours until the main United Nations forces could arrive. The Iraqi army, knowing who was in their way, refused to attack, so feared was the reputation of the American paratroopers.

An astounded American commander stated afterward, "If they had attacked us with a force that size at the beginning, we would have been little more than a bump in the road."

In April of 1982, I was a member of the 1/505, and we had been deployed in an unusual mission for this unit, that of peacekeepers. As part of the Multinational Force and Observers (MFO) in the Sinai Peninsula, we were the main American detachment in place to assure that no new hostilities would break out between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai. This operation was one of the stipulations insisted upon by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat when he agreed to the Camp David accords.

Sadat believed that no one in the Middle East would challenge the 1/505, and that this was the best guarantee of a peaceful transition. Since that first occupation, numerous American military units have rotated into and out of the Sinai in six month intervals, but the first was the 1/505. We were a proud, tough, and well disciplined group.

The Sinai duty turned out to be pretty easy, by the standards to which we were accustomed. Although Israel became involved in the war in Lebanon shortly after our arrival, the war actually had little effect upon our mission. We were garrisoned over 300 miles from the combat zone at Sharm-El-Sheikh, the very southern tip of the Sinai, and the only effect we felt from the war was that of extremely tight security in travel and off-duty time.

I had joined the army in 1980 primarily to escape a dragging economic recession in the States. As a journalist and musician, I was finding it more and more difficult to make ends meet, and the army at this time was in a build-up phase in combat arms units because of the Iranian hostage crisis. For a while, the army offered a $2,500 bonus to anyone with a high school diploma or higher who would enlist for infantry service.

After some research, I decided, at the age of 32, to become an infantryman. I volunteered for airborne duty, because the army recruiter who processed my enlistment told me that if anyone was sent to invade Iran, it would most likely be the 82d Airborne Division. I wanted to be where the action was. Although I never made it to Iran (the hostages were freed while I was in airborne school, the day after Ronald Reagan was elected president), this decision proved to be one of the most critical in my life.

Once I completed infantry and paratrooper schools, I was assigned to the 1/505. When we were deployed to the Sinai in April, 1982, the budget had not allowed for a journalist on the mission; however, I had already written several articles that had been published in Army Times, and as a result I became the 1/505's Sinai correspondent, with an air conditioned office in a trailer and no desert patrol duty. I was, to put it mildly, quite contented.

In early June, 1982, when we had been at Sharm-El-Sheikh approximately two months, we had a morning formation after our daily six mile run (in the desert in 100°F+!). Our commander, Colonel William ("Wild Bill") Garrison announced that we would have some weekend pass options available soon. We could chose two places to visit from a list of four. The choices were Tel Aviv, Eilat, Cairo and Gebel Musa, which was labeled "Mount Sinai" on our military maps.

I was still thinking about my experience after the flag exchange service several weeks earlier and had hoped to go to Jerusalem, but the Holy City had been ruled out because of security risks. I had also tried every way possible to engage in discussions of military matters with some of the seasoned Israeli IDF troops who were still in the area (soon to be replaced by the ragtag teenagers who comprised the Egyptian navy forces that replaced the IDF infantry troops -- there was no comparison in troop quality). However, the United States government was adamant about not giving the impression of plotting anything militarily with the Israelis, and both IDF and 1/505 personnel were closely scrutinized to insure that this policy was maintained. We were only allowed minimal social interaction such as pick-up soccer matches and occasional campfire parties on the beach with the Israelis. We were remarkably alike, though, and I regretted that the IDF forces had to pull out of Sharm-El-Sheikh a few weeks after we got there.

Another thing I missed was the company of the beautiful Israeli women who had been stationed at the IDF bases. The Israeli army, unlike the American army at the time, tended to deploy significant numbers of female troops along with its male combat soldiers. The women did not participate in the actual combat arms operations, but they were spirited and dedicated young soldiers, mostly college-aged, serving their mandatory military service after high school. They were excellent company, and I developed a great deal of respect for them.

I often wondered if, sitting around a campfire on the beach in this place so far from my home in Georgia, I might be flirting with a future Golda Meir or Karola Ruth Siegal (Dr. Ruth Westheimer). Dr. Ruth's notoriety in the United States had only just begun to extend to Israel, but I had discovered the little known fact that she had been an underground agent in the Haganah in Palestine in the late 1940s. My familiarity with Dr. Ruth and her theories made for some lively campfire discussions indeed with the female IDF soldiers I met. I still have a special place in my heart for Israeli women.

I had seen travel brochures for Tel Aviv and Eilat, and after being in the desert for two months Tel Aviv's night life did seem appealing, but Cairo had night life as well as the Pyramids. Sharm-El-Sheikh had its own beach, so Eilat did not offer much appeal to me. I opted for Cairo and Mount Sinai -- Cairo because I wanted to see the pyramids and Mt. Sinai because I wanted to climb it.

The Cairo trip was first. I saw the pyramids, and by bribing the Egyptian security guards at 1:00 a.m. one morning, I got to climb the Great Pyramid. I went to discos, dodged hordes of beggars, and came back to Sharm-El-Sheikh. The Mount Sinai trip was the one I really anticipated with a great deal of excitement, and I was not to be disappointed.

Before we departed upon the trip to the mountain, Tim Wesley, my roommate who was also going on the trip, and I spent a great deal of time learning as much as we could about the history of the area. Soldiers, if they are inclined toward academic pursuits (believe it or not, a few are), tend to be history buffs. I believe this is because armies make history, history makes heroes, and soldiers have to have heroes in order to continue believing that what they do has any justifiable purpose --getting paid to kill people can be difficult to live with, no matter how much you believe in the cause. Moshe Dayan, when once asked how he would deal with a certain group of Arab belligerents, answered, "Unfortunately, we must kill them." He was sincere in his misgivings.

I learned that in this "great and terrible wilderness," as the Sinai is called in the book of Exodus, at least 50 invading armies had fought for control of the unforgiving land. Welsey and I became fascinated with the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and in particular the brilliant military mind of the rugged Sabra General Ariel Sharon. We both had studied a great deal of military strategy in our army training classes, but we concluded that Sharon's flanking of the Egyptian third army and the destruction of thousands of tons of Egyptian war machinery was one of the most brilliant maneuvers in military history. He had literally saved his country from annihilation.

"Man, this guy is right up there with Hannibal," Wesley said one day as we soaked up some treasured time in front of the air conditioner in my office. When we had flown in to set up our camp back in April, we had seen much of the junk Sharon's forces had destroyed in 1973 still lying in the desert around the Suez Canal.

"But Hannibal didn't have F-14's," I answered.

I had also developed the habit of reading the Jerusalem Post, which we was delivered to our base, and I noted that Sharon was still very much in the news. As we spoke, he was ordering air strikes into Lebanon in an effort to destroy the PLO. His high-handed techniques were causing spasms in the American media, but the Jerusalem Post was intensely anti-PLO (as was I), and I followed the offensive in Lebanon closely.

How proud I would have been, I thought, to have served under such a great soldier. I was familiar with other Israeli leaders such as Moshe Dayan, David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin and Menachem Begin, all of whom had faces familiar to American television audiences. Dayan's death less than a year earlier had been a mournful event for many Americans. But there was something special about this warrior Sharon that inspired in me the intense respect that soldiers throughout history instinctively feel for the truly great of their kind.

"You're starting to sound like a Zionist," Wesley grinned. "A Zionist with a Georgia accent."

"So, we don't have Zionists in Atlanta?" We had a Jewish mayor in '68 through '72, Sam Massell." Besides, the South has never been nearly as anti-Semitic as the North. The Secretary of State of the Confederacy was Jewish."

Wesley, who claimed to be Native American (Comanche), thought this was hilarious. I never was particularly crazy about the rebel flag-waving stereotype of southerners that people from other parts of the country had pictured, and Tim, who was from Arizona, frequently ribbed me about it.

"So I suppose he had a Star of David on the front of his Klan robe, huh?"

"The Klan wasn't formed until after. . ." I began, and then stopped. This could go on the rest of the day, and Wesley knew how to annoy me with the usual southern cracker jokes. It was friendly, but still, well, annoying.

"Anyway, the man's name was Judah Benjamin, and he was from New Orleans. There were a lot of Jewish people in New Orleans before the Civil War."

"OK, OK," Welsey laughed. "Cajun Zionists, then," and changed the subject.

"You know, you have got it made in this air-conditioned trailer -- no patrols, just writing stories to send back to the Fort Bragg paper and to Army Times. Why would you want to leave here and spend two days in the desert just to see a big rock?" he asked me.

"Why would you?" I volleyed the question back to him.

"Because it gets me out of two days of patrolling," he answered. "At least we get to ride in jeeps instead of walking twenty miles a day in this God-forsaken desert. Now, what's your excuse?"

I pondered his question for a minute, and I answered, "Well, think of what you just said. Is this place really God-forsaken, or God-favored? If you believe the Bible, God came to earth here. He never did that in Arizona. And if the story is true, on top of that mountain is where he came. I want to climb it, and see for myself what it feels like up there, like maybe you get some kind of weird buzz or something. I don't know, I just know it's something I have to do."

During these philosophical times, we had a tendency to drink a lot of high-octane Dutch beer, which we could get at the commissary on the base for $8.00 a case. I no longer drink alcohol, but in those days, and at those prices, it was a natural part of the barracks lifestyle. The army didn't care as long as we were not on duty. The longer we talked, the more we drank, and the more we drank, the more philosophical we got.

"How do you know God never came to Arizona? Wesley asked. It depends on what God you are talking about. My people's gods never left there."

I remembered that Wesley believed in the animistic religion of the Comanche, and he had some hideous scars on his chest from something called the "ceremony of the sun," an initiation that involved inserting hooks made out of buffalo bones behind the pectoral muscles and being strung up in a tree for three days or some such nightmarish mutilation ceremony. I never was interested in the details, but I had the opportunity many times to listen to Wesley explain the scars. The beach at Sharm-El-Sheikh was popular with European college students, and the girls always asked him about his scars. He had his explanation down pat, including embellishments in regard to the glorious history of the Comanche people. The girls always seemed impressed, I had to admit. The ceremony was a right of passage having something to do with a buffalo god, as I remember, and Wesley's pride in his heritage was sincere. I must confess to feeling slightly envious during these pronouncements of his, but the part about the scars had no appeal whatsoever. To me, climbing Mount Sinai made much more sense as a religious statement.

"If nothing else, I just want to say that I climbed Mount Sinai," I said.

"Sounds good to me," Wesley answered. "I'll give it a shot, too."

We had a few more days to plan out trip, and we read some more about the Sinai. There was a small library at the MFO base camp, and the army encouraged soldiers stationed there to know as much as possible about the region. As a result, I had access to a fairly good bit of information about modern Jewish heroes.

There were miracles such as Ben-Gurion's masterminding of the 1948 counterattack against the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, all bent on the destruction of the infant Israeli state that had been formed only days earlier. This particularly interested me because it started on July 6, 1948, the day I was born. The taking of Sharm-El-Sheikh in the 1969 Six-Day War, the securing of the entire Sinai, and the humiliating defeat of the forces of Egypt's arrogant, overconfident Gamal Abd al-Nasser and his Soviet equipped military was another incredible military accomplishment.

Studying these heroics brought back my sense of anger and betrayal for the return of the Sinai to Egypt. I have never been disloyal to the United States of America, but in my mind I questioned my country's judgment in backing the Camp David Accords. This mass of rocks and sand contained dry rivers of Jewish blood. To me, it would never be anything but Jewish.

By the time the day came to depart for Mt. Sinai, I had ceased wondering whether Gebel Musa was indeed the holy mountain or not; I believed that it was. If it wasn't, then I was wrong. Somehow, this no longer seemed important.

The trip from Sharm-El-Sheikh to Mt. Sinai is only 50 miles on a straight line, but it was 50 of the roughest miles I have ever seen. We traveled in a convoy of ten jeeps with three or four people in each one. The trip took from pre-dawn until mid-afternoon, and along the way we saw very little except for rocks, sand, and a few desert birds -- crows, I believe -- that occasionally circled above us. We did encounter one oasis with a surrounding Bedouin village, and I wondered how people could live in such a remote area.

I thought that we must surely look like invaders from Mars to the villagers, but they were friendly and waived as we went by. Then a gaggle of children began to run alongside our caravan, waving their right hands in front of their mouths in the dangling, universal sign of the Middle Eastern beggar. We threw out a few boxes of army C-rations and the children scrambled for them like minnows chasing breadballs in a pond. One of the boys wore a New York Yankees baseball cap. Where in the world he had gotten it, I'll never know.

The next discernible object we saw was the Santa Katharina Monastery, a Greek Orthodox enclave that had been located here for centuries. Our leader on this exposition was a somewhat slow-witted lieutenant named Moore, who walked up to the monastery to negotiate with the monks regarding the possibility of our staying the next two nights in the hostel that they maintained for travelers.

Tim Wesley and I talked over the ideas we had regarding the terrain that surrounded us.

"You could hide several divisions in these rocks," Tim noted. "No wonder so many armies wanted to occupy this place."

"And it is no wonder why the Egyptians want us here so badly, I added. " You know, Sharon's still around. He could bring the whole IDF through here and no one would ever see a thing."

We could not help exchanging fiendish grins at the prospect.

Lieutenant Moore returned from the monastery and informed us that the good monks would indeed find room for us, but it seems that they had -- like many people in Middle Eastern countries who have something that American tourists want or need -- what we had come to refer to as an "American schedule." In essence, the prices go up exponentially at the sound of American English. The monks wanted $90.00 per night per person -- such humble hospitality from true men of God. We had camping equipment with us, so we passed on the monks' kindly offer.

Lieutenant Moore had met several monks who spoke English, and from them he had gotten what he thought were the directions to path leading up Gebel Musa. He had sketched them on the military map that he carried (and frequently had trouble reading). However, either the monks had not told him, or he had not understood, that Gebel Musa is very close to Gebel Katharina, a different mountain entirely, and the terrain in the area does not have road signs or discernible trail markers. It was, as we would soon found out, possible to start up the wrong mountain.

At this point, we broke up onto small groups to set up campsites and decide how to spend the rest of the day. Only Wesley, myself, and a squad leader named Sergeant Asher actually planned to climb the mountain. The three of us started up the trail that Lieutenant Moore pointed out as the correct one, and we climbed for about two hours before I thought that something didn't feel quite right. According to Lieutenant Moore's instructions, we should be seeing some landmarks that we were not seeing.

Sergeant Asher was a sharp-eyed infantry veteran who had served several combat tours in Vietnam, and he suggested we stop and get out bearings. As we rested and drank water from our canteens, Asher looked around the confusing, jagged walls of rock that surrounded us, and then he said, "Men, I think I may have bad news. Look up there," and he pointed at what looked to me like nothing more that the topmost point of one of the spires of gray rock that surrounded us and seemed to reach to the sky.

"Look closely," he repeated. I strained my eyes, and still I saw nothing to distinguish the point to which he referred; height, distance and depth perception are completely lost in this type of environment. "There is some type of monument up there," Asher said. I strained my eyes once again, and then I saw what he was talking about.

At a distance of what I would later learn was about two miles away, I saw the tiniest object, with a gray color different than that of the rocks, and having a barely discernible rectangular outline. From our vantage point, it appeared to be about the size of a period on a typewritten page. Asher had a sharp eye.

"That is where we need to be, I would bet my life on it", Asher said. "We've climbed the wrong mountain!"

After two hours of hard climbing, I wilted. I was already soaking wet with perspiration, and there was nowhere to go but back down. What a defeat. Wesley and I looked at each other, but neither one of us said a word. We silently began to sulk back down Mount Katharina.

Climbing down was much easier that climbing up, and we reached the base of Gebel Katharina in about an hour. Since we were not technically on duty, we were all free to pass the rest of the day however we saw fit. Asher started back to the campsite, and Wesley went after him. It was approximately 4:00 in the afternoon, meaning we had about four hours of daylight left. At this point, I said to myself, "I came here to climb Mount Sinai, and I am going to climb Mount Sinai, if it takes until midnight and the army has to send a search party after me." My thoughts would turn out to be startlingly prophetic.

As I stated before, the terrain around the base of these mountains is confusing, even to trained professional soldiers with experience in mountain navigation. My total experience in this area consisted of gazing at the Sinai Mountains out the window of my office back at the base camp at Sharm-El-Sheikh, and I realized the danger of getting lost. However, something stronger than my fear of disappearing off the face of the earth drove me to wander in a generally eastward direction. I did have the good fortune to havoc remember to bring my compass with me, and a strong impulse told me, "Head east."

By some miracle, I found another trail in about thirty minutes, a much better, easier to follow trail than the one we had recently vacated. This trail seemed to be rising gradually and winding around in a counter-clockwise, corkscrew-like pattern. In a short time, it lead into another trail, man-made and well-maintained with terraced step-ups and a hand rail on the right side. To the left of the trail was a dry gully about three or four feet wide, and it seemed to followed the trail upward in a steep leftward curve.

I instinctively took this trail for another hour or so, and then as I looked over my right shoulder, I saw a beautiful sight. Far below, I made out a large, green garden, immaculately kept and laced with rock walls and hedges. This, I thought, must be something that the monks maintained. I was on my way up Mount Sinai, and nothing stood in my way except nightfall and several thousand feet of rough climbing. I was already nearly exhausted from the false start earlier, but I would let nothing stop me now.

As I climbed, I noticed the temperature getting noticeably cooler and the humidity noticeably higher. In the thinning air, I was also rapidly getting fatigued beyond anything I had ever experienced in any of my military training. Despite the drop in temperature, in the high humidity I was still perspiring heavily. I realized with a sense of foreboding that I was running out of water.

Still I climbed on, beyond the point at which my two liter desert canteen ran dry. Somehow, I would make this climb, or pass out in the attempt. After three hours or so, I noticed darkness began to fall, but I pressed on and on. Then I rounded a turn in the trail and saw a flat area about a half-mile away. There were two small stone buildings, shrines, one at each end, and I knew I had reached the top.

Then I collapsed in my tracks. The combination of the thin air, the dehydration from the high humidity, and the fatigue of the intense physical exertion of all the day's climbing had combined to overwhelm my mental determination. Unable to walk, I crawled on upward toward the plateau.

About one hundred yards from the first shrine, I raised to a sitting position and tried to regain some strength. I had enough foresight remaining in my addled brain to begin to worry about how I would get back down from here. I had no water, no energy left, and it was getting dark.

Then I experienced something I will never, ever forget as long as I live. I felt a tingling in my body from head to toe, as if I had touched an exposed electric wire. The jolt jerked me to my feet, and I lurched to the left edge of the trail, falling at the edge of the dry gully that had traced the trail's path all the way up the mountain. Then, it began to rain! Huge cold, indescribably wet raindrops fell on my head, rolled down the back of my neck, and resoaked my already sweat-drenched army fatigues with the cleanest water I have ever felt, seen or, most of all, tasted!

There were many small indentions in the rock trail that quickly filled with the drenching downpour, and I buried my face in one and siphoned it dry. Then I moved to a second, still flat on my stomach and chest but feeling stronger by the second. In a matter of minutes I was strong enough to raise myself to a sitting position, looking down the trail with my back to the top of the mountain. For some reason, I did not want to look upward just yet. But I glanced to my right and beheld the magnificent sight of the formerly dry gully now transformed into a raging waterfall, with torrents of clear, cold water cascading down its ancient path.

I rolled over and ducked my head under the icy, life giving stream, and drank in what felt like gallons, until my swallowing mechanism could no longer function. Renewed, I stood up, feeling as if I had arisen from a sound eight hours sleep. I stretched, yawned, and jogged the rest of the way, in the pouring rain, to the monument at the top of the mountain. I felt no more fatigue whatsoever.

I looked into the small building -- it had an arched doorway that was low enough that I had to duck down to see inside -- but something told me not to enter. I then walked to the other building at the far end of the plateau-like area where I stood, and I looked inside it as well, still not going in. The second building was slightly larger than the first. Both were simple rectangular structures with ornate oriental rugs covering the floor inside.

I dropped to my knees in front of the second building and said a special, secret prayer that seemed to be dictated to me from a source deep inside my very soul. The source also told me that this prayer would never be repeated again until a special time, a time when I would know that it was right. In the fourteen years that have passed since that evening, the time has not yet come.

I started back down the mountain, and an hour later I heard voices and saw the beams of flashlights on the trail several hundred feet below. I called out, and I recognized Wesley's and Asher's voices answering me. "Jackson, is that you?" I called back that it was, and shortly I was listening to an excited -- and very loud -- lecture from Asher about getting lost, disappearing into this endless maze of rocks, search parties (I think he said there were three), and several proclamations referring to the vast amount of money the army had invested in me and my training.

We were still at a rather high altitude and Asher soon ran out of breath (and expletives), and he and Wesley, along with the three other members of their search party, sat down to rest. It was still raining, but not as hard as it was earlier. From this point on the trail, we could see out into the blackness of the night enough to make out the jagged profile of the " strange and terrible wilderness" described in Exodus.

Nothing will ever naturally grow here, I thought. Life will only exist here in a temporary, artificial state, such as the carefully tended shrubbery that the monks had managed to cultivate in their garden through centuries of hard labor. The monks, I decided, had special license, perhaps. But man did not belong here for any extended time, in this -- The Land Where God Touched The Earth.

Returning from Mount Sinai to the MFO home base, I was greeted with the news that the United States government had participated in escorting Arafat and his murderous band of thugs out of Lebanon. Very few of the American soldiers at the MFO base agreed with this capitulation to the PLO terrorists, but we could say very little beyond barracks discussions. I was strictly forbidden to write anything in my Army Times articles that criticized this disastrous mistake. Was Munich so long ago (1972)? I was outraged.

The rest of my tour was uneventful, and in September of 1982, I was back at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the 1/505th's permanent home. I was due for discharge the following January and I had no desire to re-enlist, so after my discharge I returned to Atlanta to decide what to do with the rest of my life.

There was little demand for live music, disco still being the rage, and I was unable to find steady work as a guitarist. The newspaper business was at its lowest ebb in the 20th century, and journalists were being laid off in droves. I still followed the news in Lebanon, and when President Ronald Reagan (never my ideal of a military genius) got 241 United States Marines slaughtered in Beirut in an attempt to continue his capitulation to the Arab terrorists I so despised, I slipped into an alcohol-lubricated depression that lasted nine years. During this time, I forgot my experience in the Sinai and entered into a personal "dark ages." I survived on a few music gigs and a lot of menial labor jobs, but I remember very little from 1983-1992. I do know that I never got arrested, never got a DUI, and there is no doubt in my mind, in looking back on this period, that God was watching over me the whole time. Why, I don't know, but He was. In 1992, a miracle happened that equalled (or perhaps resumed) the Sinai experience.

I decided, at age 42, to quit drinking and return to college. I went through rehab and full-blown delirium tremens -- something I would not wish on my worst enemy -- and began to put my life back together. As I mentioned before, I really hadn't bottomed out as badly as I could have. No police record, no DUI's, I didn't have any debts, and I was in surprisingly good health. I returned to the strict physical routine of running and exercise that had been required in my paratrooper days, and in a few months it was as if the last nine years had been merely a bad dream. I was fortunate, and I think that there was a special reason that I survived this nightmare.

One afternoon in August, 1993, the fall semester of my second year back in college was about to start and I went for a drive in order to think about what classes to take in the upcoming school year. I now lived in Nashville, Tennessee, having moved there from Atlanta in hopes of finding opportunities in the music industry, and I drove across town to West End, an area of Nashville with which I wasn't very familiar. It was a beautiful neighborhood, with huge hardwood trees and hundred-year-old mansions, and I was enjoying the drive. Then, from "out of the blue," I felt an overpowering need to seek the company of a rabbi. To this day, I do not know why, ten years after leaving the Sinai, this feeling would engulf me, but it was as powerful as the feeling I had that evening so long ago on top of the Holy Mountain.

I did not have any idea where any of Nashville's synagogues were, but soon I came to Temple Sherith Israel, Nashville's only Orthodox synagogue. I pulled into the driveway, and at this point I did not think at all about what I was doing; I moved without conscious effort.

Entering the synagogue, I the receptionist if I could speak with the rabbi. She looked rather startled, and at first told me that he wasn't available. In thinking back on this scene now, I have to laugh, even though it might seem irreverent. I was wearing cut off shorts, a T-shirt and tennis shoes, looking like what I was -- an overage college student fooling around on a free afternoon. Then the door opened to the rabbi's office, and an imposing figure loomed in the doorway. I did not know it at the time, but this was Zalman I. Posner, the only Orthodox rabbi in Nashville, a highly regarded Jewish scholar (not only in Tennessee but worldwide), and someone that even other rabbis found intimidating.

Rabbi Posner gave me a bemused look and invited me into his office. He beckoned me to sit down, and in a pleasant tone of voice asked me what he could do for me.

Before I thought about what I was saying, I told him that I wanted to convert to Judaism, and asked for advice. When I had left my house earlier that day, this thought had not been evenly remotely on my mind, but I began to speak without thinking at all about what I was saying.

"You see, I had an experience in the Sinai a few years ago, and it suddenly came back to me today. I'm not sure exactly why I'm here, but I know it is the right place to be. I climbed to the top of Gebel Musa and. . . ."

"O.K., hold on a minute," Rabbi Posner stopped me in mid-sentence. "Have you been reading or studying anything to help you make this decision?"

"Well, the Bible," I answered. I did read my Bible regularly, although it was a Christian version. I only read the Pentateuch section, though, and I explained this the rabbi. He took out a note pad and pen and wrote something on it.

"Get a copy of this," he said. "You can order it through any bookstore, and it will get you on the right track. Call me if you need any help, and good luck. You will find that you have started on a long, difficult journey, if you are sincere."

The title he had written was This Is My God, by Herman Wouk. I thanked him and left, going straight to a nearby bookstore where I put in my order for the book. My copy arrived in two days, and since then I have read it through several times over as well as referring back to it hundreds of times. I have not spoken to Rabbi Posner since that day, except to write him a letter from time to time and let him know that I am still working on my conversion. I decided that I would know, just as I knew when to go to him, when the time would be right for a second visit. That time I believe, is almost here.

After the meeting with Rabbi Posner, I decided to register for an honors course in Middle Eastern Studies at school. Since sobering up and getting back into the routine of studying, I found that I still had pretty good sense, and I was holding on to a precarious 'A-minus' average, thereby making me eligible for the honors program.

The peace talks between Israel and the PLO became public knowledge on the same day the class began and our professor decided to change the syllabus of the course to focus on this. As a result, I was fortunate to be able to study the process in an intense atmosphere with six other students, all of whom were on the Dean's List and ranked in the top 15% of the student body. Among the seven of us were majors in economics, international business, pre-law and one double major in mass communication and criminal justice (myself). It was an interesting, bright, and extremely thoughtful group of young people, and the class was the most interesting one I had in all of my undergraduate studies.

I was completely negative regarding the land-for-peace plan, and so were two other students in the class. Two were in favor of the plan, and two were neutral. It was an excellent balance, from an intellectual point of view. The professor, a Canadian who had also lived in the Middle East for some time, was decidedly pro-Palestinian. The class soon knew that I was studying for my conversion, and this added still another element to the atmosphere.

This particular school, Middle Tennessee State University, at the time had 26 Jews on campus (I suppose 26 and 1/2 including myself) out of a combined student-faculty population of 20,000, and there were none in the Middle Eastern Studies Class. Therefore, I became by default the resident Jewish spokesperson. I relished this position, and I still look back with great satisfaction upon the way I was able to defend Israel's position from a Zionist point of view (thereby greatly annoying the professor), with the previous knowledge than I had. I frequently had to think quickly among such bright young people, most of whom were barely half my age, and the challenge forced me to focus carefully upon Jewish history and what I said in class. It was a great opportunity to solidify my beliefs.

The class was tough, consisting of daily panel discussions around a huge oak conference table, four extremely involved essay tests lasting three hours each, four 15 page research papers on assigned topics. We monitored the negotiations daily by Internet links, and our final exam consisted of a joint collaboration between all the students in which we developed a peace plan of our own. I was quite proud of our effort, and I still have a copy of the plan.

To summarize what I learned, as briefly as possible: My first research assignment was on the Balfour Declaration, and through this I learned of the formation of the World Zionist Organization, Theodore Herzl, the organization's first leader, and his magnificent work Der Judenstaad, which laid the groundwork for the modern Nation of Israel. Other great Jewish heroes I studied during this research project included Lord Walter Rothschild, Chiam Weizman, and United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who carried great influence with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. In essence, I learned about the birth of modern Zionism and how deceitful and self-serving the British were in their dealings with the Jews.

My second assignment involved the events of 1948 and the actual formation of modern Israel. I was familiar to some degree with the military side of this story, having read a great deal about it while I was in the Sinai, but during my research for this project I immersed myself with the writing of David Ben Gurion, who I still consider my number one Jewish hero. What an incredible human being! I studied Memoirs and Letters to Paula as earnestly as I did my religious material. To me, these were almost as important as the 613 commandments.

My next project covered the "Sinai I (1974)" and "Sinai II(1975)" agreements. I took a militant stance, not retreating from my position that the Sinai will always be part of Israel. I emphasized Arik Sharon's heroics, much to chagrin of my pro-Arab professor, and drew heavily upon my own personal experience in the Sinai.

The fourth personal research project was an overview of the land-for-peace idea, as it had developed from the Sinai beginning into the plan that Rabin and Arafat were working on at the time our class was in session. I hated it, I hated the idea of negotiating with Arafat, and I wrote from that perspective. Nonetheless, I received an 'A,' as I had on all my previous papers in the class.

All of this segued into our class project -- a total peace plan and future economic development plan for the Middle Eastern region. I made two major contributions to the project: (1) I convinced our student group not to give up any of Jerusalem (no easy task); (2) I designed a plan to make Israel a future world economic leader by gaining the lead in solar energy research and sea water desalinization.

From previous studies in economics and the physical sciences, I knew that the world would run out of fossil fuels in 25 or 30 years and, as a result, I believed that whoever invested in solar energy research will be economically and politically powerful in the future. Israel is already in the vanguard of solar research -- I learned this during my army tour when we used Israeli solar energy plants on the MFO base. Using what I remembered from studying the power plants on the army base, I had already designed several solar devices in an environmental science class I had taken earlier in my college studies. I used versions of these same designs in my plan for Israel's future economy.

I made an 'A' in the course, and despite the professor's incessant prattling about Arab rights in the former Palestinian territory, he admitted that my plan was one of the most "clever" (his term) research projects he had ever seen.

My next academic adventure in pursuit of my Jewishness occurred the following semester, Spring 1994, when I registered for another honors course, this one being an intense study of the Holocaust, or Churban, as I have come to call it. At the same time, I began to attend synagogue in Nashville at Congregation Micah, one of two Reform congregations in the city.

The Holocaust course was nothing like the Middle Eastern Studies course. First of all, the class was bigger, with fifteen students as opposed to seven. The same academic credentials were required as far as grade point average (Dean's List status -- 'A-minus' or better), but where Middle Eastern Studies had been composed of pre-law, business, economics and mass communications majors, the Holocaust students were from liberal arts disciplines such as literature, history, and women's studies. Out of the fifteen students in the class, I was one of only two males. The instructors were both Jewish -- one male, from the Art department, and one female, from Women's Studies. The male instructor was Jewish from birth, the female by conversion, resulting from her marriage to an Israeli professor. None of the other students were Jewish, although one was debating whether to convert from the Church of Christ, because she was dating a Jewish man and they were beginning to contemplate marriage.

The academic atmosphere was much more free-form than Middle Eastern Studies had been, possibly due to the liberal arts orientation of both the students and the instructors. We were given a great deal of leeway to define the course in terms of our own personal reactions to the material, and we had a large number of guest lecturers.

To me this was an emotionally draining experience, as we had some incredibly moving speakers. There was Rosemary May, a camp survivor who as a child had also experienced Krystallnicht; James Garner, a local Tennessee resident who had been in the liberation force at Dachau; Dr. Peter Haas, writer, professor (Vanderbilt University) and rabbi, who wrote one of our textbooks, Morality After Auschwitz, and who was also a member of Congregation Micah where I attended synagogue.

In the process of the studying the Holocaust, I became convinced of one principle -- Never Again! -- although I had no idea at the time that this was also the belief upon which the Jewish Defense League was founded.

During the course, I also became aware of the proliferation, particularly on the Internet, of the modern neo-Nazis who claim that the Holocaust never happened. I did a great deal study in this area, ultimately concentrating most of my research on the subject. I was fortunate to hear an excellent lecture at Vanderbilt University by Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, and I left the lecture with a new enlightenment toward the seriousness with which modern anti-Semitism must be viewed.

I tended to clash somewhat with the female professor in the class, who was trying to teach the course and at the same time conduct a crusade against what she insisted was ingrained sexism in Judaism; this duality confused me somewhat, and she did not like Rabbi Posner, believing him to be misogynistic. I knew nothing of his attitude toward women, but I knew that he had opened a glorious gate for me, and I defended him, causing no small amount of friction between the professor and myself. I also felt that she had loaded the class with her favorite Women's Studies students, and frequently she seemed to be "preaching to the choir" about sexism in the Jewish faith. What this had to do with the Holocaust, I still haven't figured out.

I got along with the male professor quite well, although he was a little wary of my Zionism.

For a writer, this course was a veritable feast. I studied Elie Weisel, Avigdor Dagen, Simon Wiesenthal, Hannah Arendt, Cynthia Ozick -- the list goes on and on. My writing improved 100%, and I learned much more by reading these works of surviving writers. I learned of a special kind of strength, something I would later come to know as the fifth principle of the JDL: Bitachon -- Faith in the indestructibility of the Jewish people.

I wrote my final research project on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Passover 1943, the formation of Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, and two of the Z.O.B.'s leaders, its Supreme Commander Mordecai Anielwicz, and Unit Commander Yitzhak Zukerman. I could particularly relate to Zuckerman, known by his nickname Antek, because despite surviving the war, he, like myself, battled alcoholism much of his life.

The Z.O.B. proclamation that stated the organization's position read in part, "Jewish masses, the hour is drawing near. You must be prepared to resist. Not a single Jew should go to the railroad cars. . . . Our slogan must be: All are ready to die as human beings!"

In this statement, I again saw something that I would encounter in the philosophy of the Jewish Defense League -- the fourth principle,Mishmaat -- Discipline and unity.

Unfortunately, Mishmaat was not practiced by many of the Judenrat, or Jewish councils, of many of the European Ghettos. The Talmud clearly states, ". . . If idolaters tell Jews: 'Give us one of yours and we shall kill him; otherwise we shall kill all of you'; all should be killed and not a single soul should be delivered for death." But many of the Judenrat caved in to Nazi demands and turned over large numbers of their people to be deported, with the hope that some would be saved in return. The disastrous results of this violation of Talmudic law are history. When the Nazis showed up to liquidate the entire Warsaw ghetto, the Judenrat committed suicide en mass. Similar horrors occurred throughout Europe.

Never Again!

I made an 'A' in the Holocaust course, to go with my 'A' in Middle Eastern Studies, and I believe that it was my fate that these two courses were offered in sequence as they were, and at a time when I happened to be at this obscure school hundreds of miles from my actual home. Neither course has been offered at the school since then.

I graduated from undergraduate school as a member of Gamma Beta Phi, a national honor society, and proceeded directly to graduate school. I am now working on a double master's degree in Mass Communications and Criminal Justice, the same double major in which I had obtained my bachelor's degree. I also publish a neighborhood newspaper here in Nashville, and I am making final preparations for my conversion.

As I mentioned several times before, in addition to formal conversion to Judaism, I also want to join the Jewish Defense League. I believe it is reasonable to be expected to present reasons why I am worthy of being accepted as both a Jew and a member of JDL. I stand before you with the following qualifications:

First, I believe in my heart that I was meant to be Jewish. I have never committed to any other religion, and therefore do not have to disavow any previous beliefs. I am from a liberal religious background, where most of my family worshipped in the manner of the less fanatical Christian denominations such as Episcopal, Presbyterian and Methodist. I was never pressured to join a church and, although I studied Scripture, I was never baptized into any faith.

I believe that my experiences in the Sinai, particularly the episode at the top of the mountain, were signs for me to follow. When I neglected to follow the signs for nine years, my life went into a steady downward spiral, although I seemed to have had extraordinary good fortune in avoiding outright disaster during the dark period of 1983-1992.

I believe that my meeting with Rabbi Posner was no coincidence. Since that meeting, my life has been in a steady state of improvement in almost every respect. I have had the requisite number of heartbreaks and misfortunes (death of two beloved family members, a major robbery of my home and office), but I have found strength through my faith, strength that enabled me to endure these tribulations.

I have, in my studies for my religious conversion, tried to become much more than a practitioner of Judaism. Learning about Jewish history, heroes, culture, philosophy, law and politics has made me a more educated, more intelligent, more valuable person in all ways. I will remain a student of these subjects for the rest of my life.

In the Sinai I first felt Ahavat Yisroel, the love of Jewry, when I felt the pain of giving up the Sinai to the Egyptians. I learned of Hadar, dignity and pride, by studying the history of the modern Israeli state, again beginning in the Sinai and continuing through two university courses and leading up to the present moment, as I support the efforts of Bibi in his quest to reverse over 20 years of Jewish compromise with those to whom Israel should no quarter whatsoever.Barzel, iron, I learned from the writings of David Ben Gurion and studying the military heroics of modern warriors such as Sharon and Dayan. In studying Jewish history, I learned of the Macabees (the IDF of their day) and of King David -- his uniting of the twelve tribes, conquest of the Canaanites, and capture of Jerusalem. I became agonizingly aware of Mishmaat, discipline and dedication, when I studied the Holocaust (Churban) in school and saw what happened when Mishmaat broke down in the ghettos of Europe. However, this academic experience, linked with my studies of the modern State of Israel, made me acutely aware of Bitachon, faith in the indestructibility of the Jewish people.

I bring one other quality as I seek acceptance as a Jew. I am a soldier, willing to fight and die for what I believe in: Ahavat Yisroel, Hadar, Barzel, Mishmaat, and Bitachon. In my studies, I have come to realize that a great wealth of scholars throughout history have been Jewish. In science, law, philosophy, literature, music, in virtually every intellectual and artistic field, Jews have excelled. I have some artistic ability, some writing ability, a modest understanding of science and mathematics. But the special quality I bring to Judaism is my belief in Never Again! and my willingness to support this principle with the dedication of the Zealots at Masada.

©1996 Merrill Jackson