Nostalgia Sunday – Dubon

May 24, 2009 - 9:22 PM by Rachel Neiman · 5 Comments
Filed under: History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, War

See this guy? See the jacket he’s wearing? It’s called a dubon and, in the Seventies, whether you were in the Israel Defense Forces or not, this was your winter coat in Israel. It wasn’t simply a matter of fashion. The dubon was all there was to wear.

My significant other did some spring cleaning the other day and decided to donate his dubon to charity. This gave rise to some sentimental sighs and a discussion about the pros and cons of this iconic coat. First of all, there was the name, which means “teddy bear” — a perfect combination of playfulness in the service of the ferociously serious military function of keeping soldiers warm.

Then, there was the jacket itself, designed for the Israeli winter. For someone like myself, coming from New England ski country, the dubon was no match for a down parka or something called a “snorkel” that was all the rage for a couple of years (it zipped up over your nose).

But, as was pointed out to me, what the dubon lacked in insulation, it made up for in acreage; it covered every exposed centimeter of your upper body and was, therefore, perfect protection against the elements of the Israeli winter. Which boils down to a lot of chilly rain and not enough central heating.

The fact that there were only men’s sizes to be had just added to the dubon’s glamour. For example, a Scandinavian kibbutz volunteer — looking much like the fantasy version pictured here — traipsing around the communal kitchenette in wooden clogs, chain-smoking “Noblesse”, baking apple cake and hogging all the baking pans, while casually sporting an oversized dubon — the kind with the really good lining — was also sending a very clear message that she had access to men with dubonim. Bitch. You know who you are.

In fact, most dubon-wearers looked more like these guys here. Men and women, all wore standard issue dubonim, available in small, medium, large and extra large. To this day, girl soldiers look like they’re swimming, nay drowning, in their dubons. But, as my friend Efrat put it, “Of course I had one. Everyone had one. It’s the most Israeli you can get.”

If you were in the army, you wore olive drab. If you were in the navy, you got blue. Air force guys got polyester bomber jackets. (The camouflage version didn’t show up till the Nineties, after the first Gulf War, when loan guarantees required the IDF to procure a certain amount of gear from US manufacturers).

And if you served up in the Golan, you got the brass ring, the uber-dubon called the Hermonit, after white-capped Mount Hermon, which provided total body coverage against the snow. Again, as someone from New England, I can only sniff and say, “You call that snow”?

And here’s that Scandinavian babe again! But believe me, she was never issued one in real life. You had to do a lot more than bake cakes to score a Hermonit.

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