בס”ד
I lament my lack of blogging
these days – just a lot going on and it’s hard to sit down to write. Here I’m going to reflect on the
experiences I gained commemorating three important events of Modern Jewish
History, all of which are significant when commemorated in Israel.
Yom Ha’Shoah
Holocaust Remembrance Day
is becoming more and more irrelevant to people of this generation because
survivors are dwindling in numbers and we don’t see the effect of the Holocaust
and its implications. Yet it still
has plenty of prominence in Israeli society. In the evening, streets are clear of cars and arsim, and people commemorate the
Holocaust in one form or another.
Nativ had its own program
in the evening. I believe it was
well executed. It included Megillat
Ha’Shoah – the liturgy published by the Conservative Movement for Yom Ha’Shoah*
- as well as discussion groups and a presentation of Holocaust in media such as
music, graphic literature (Maus by
Art Spiegelman), art and sculpture, and a movie clip. Each mode of expression had its own merits, and some were
more controversial than others.
Without detailing each mode of expression, people shared interesting
perspectives on the way different types were effective or appropriate or did
justice to the things up for comparison.
We all had a Yizkor candle to have at home in the end.
In the morning, I went to
minyan early. I was of the
philosophy over the course of the Yom that as we cry out to God on behalf of
those who were murdered, it’s important to have unity and daven with a minyan
and make sure our voices are truly heard.
At around 10 a.m., per Elkana’s recommendation, I went over to the
yeshiva high school to hear the siren, which was followed by speeches and
discussion of heroism. While most
people expressed sincerity during the morning, overall I did not see an
entirely different mood there.
To conclude Yom HaShoah,
we traveled to Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, near Ashkelon, for the ceremony that took
place there. It’s one of two
official closing ceremonies of the State of Israel for Yom HaShoah (the other
is in the north). Yad Mordechai is
named after Mordechai
Anielewicz, a martyr of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The speeches included personal
anecdotes and praise of heroism – Ehud Barak was among the speakers. Also there were dances, videos, song
(Shlomo Gronich sang), and though a bit long, the ceremony was definitely an
important Israel experience.
Yom Hazikaron
Unlike Yom Ha’Shoah, Yom
Hazikaron for Israelis is not about the past, but rather about the
present. What makes this
remembrance day different from the one from the week before is that it this day
marks present realities, as just about every Israeli knows someone who has
fallen on behalf of the State of Israel.
The total number of fallen soldiers has reached over 22,600. Because it is such an emotional day for
Israelis, we did not participate in Yeruham’s ceremony (tekes) Sunday
night. A Nativ va’ad planned a
tekes for us, which included Yizkor and candle lighting, learning about
different soldiers and heroes, and discussing our relationship to Yom
Hazikaron.
Monday morning, we departed
to Jerusalem for a 36-hour stay to include the commemoration of Yom Hazikaron
and the celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut.
In the morning, we went to the tekes at Har Herzl, the big military
cemetery in Jerusalem, which was packed with over 10,000 people. I walked around with Ariella and Elkana
in the 1948 section, and we were near a lot of areas with names on tombstones
but the bodies were in unknown locations.
It was expected that the newer areas would have lots of people
remembering, but not that many people have direct connections to people who
were killed in the beginnings of the state. While being at Har Herzl gave us an opportunity to witness
Israeli society commemorate Yom Hazikaron and to be a part of that
commemoration, it’s hard as Americans to relate personally to the
ceremony. Yet, my feeling is that
these are the fallen soldiers of the Jewish people, fighting for the army of
the Jewish people, and we have a place standing in solidarity with the Israelis
as well. The ceremony included a
speech by Bibi Netanyahu. We ate
lunch at Beit Nativ, and following that we heard from Michael Levin’s parents
(z”l) about the impact of the heroism of their son and the experience they’ve
been through since his death. I
won’t detail it here, but it was a touching story. He has become an icon of not just American Jewish Zionists,
but of the Israeli army as a whole, and lone soldiers as well. After that speech, we heard from Elkana
about a soldier who had worked under him that was killed in the Lebanon War and
was in the same tank as Gilad Shalit (but that was after Elkana left the
army). We watched a movie
afterwards that was documents family whose son was near Beit Lyd at the time of
an explosion and their waiting to hear news about his status. I had seen it once before in Hebrew
class.
Yom Ha’atzmaut
I’ve been to a few
ceremonies before that mark the transition between Yom Hazikaron and Yom
Ha’atzmaut, but here it was different.
The in-thing among the religious crowd is to go to schul. They have a tekes to mark the end of
Yom Hazikaron but then transitions into a festive Ma’ariv, done in the festival
prayer melody. I’ve never been to
schul before on Yom Ha’atzmaut in the evening. I went to Shira Hadasha, where one could not move due to the
large crowd of worshippers. Here
is the description I wrote at B’yachad about Hallel, which was one of the
longest ever:
The
piano and flute roar as people lift their voices to the heavens, the most festive
Hallel I had ever seen. Almost all
psalms were sung out loud, sometimes continuing on and on, in praise of the
miracle of the State of Israel. A
couple of things were done to the melody of Hatikva, connecting the saying of
Hallel to the reason why we say it.
After schul, I saw Brenna
and we headed towards downtown. Rechov
Ben Yehuda was packed as ever.
Music blared, and people were going around bopping each other with
inflatable hammers and spraying foam on each other. I bought a hammer for the heck of it for 10 shekel. The atmosphere was of course very
festive, and we had a good time walking around. People of all ages were out. After a while, though, it became just sort of a big party, a
Thursday night at Crack Square magnified, with lots of drunken people and
hip-hop music and that was disappointing.
But in the morning I went to schul at Yakar, which was also festive in
its davening when it came to Hallel, and then we had a mangal (BBQ) at
Independence Park for the sunny afternoon. That’s an extremely Israeli thing to do – after all, after
eight months of being here, we should act somewhat like Israelis.
Kol Tuv,
Judah
No comments:
Post a Comment