High Holidays in April

I'm going the slightly lazy route this week. The following is what I just submitted to my synagogue newsletter about the recent holidays...

An email went out last week to the entire HUC first year class with a subject line that read “the High Holidays of Israel.” In the email was information about three upcoming holidays, Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day), and Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). At the time I thought the subject line was almost inappropriate. It’s a Jewish country! How could anything other than the fall holidays be considered the most important and holy part of the year? And then I noticed that all of a sudden, the Israeli flags on the streets and buildings had multiplied. Hotels had at least a dozen flags across the roof. Cars had flags hanging out the windows. Apartments had flags across the porches. In many of these places, there was a giant (not actually burning) memorial flame as well. And then I realized:

In Israel, these three holidays are the most significant days of the year.

At 10 in the morning on Yom HaShoah, the entire country stops for two minutes. A siren sounds nationwide, and everything stops. Traffic comes to a halt, and drivers turn off their engines, step outside their cars, and stand at attention. Construction workers turn off their incessant jackhammers a minute before, and during the siren, they stand at attention on the tops of unfinished buildings. Tourists marveled at the fact that for two minutes, an entire country mourns, reflects, and thinks. As soon as the siren stops, life resumes. Cars start honking, construction resumes its banging, and the day goes on, but in a different mood. Israel has a lot of survivors and a lot of children of survivors, and some feel that Israel owes its nationhood to the enormous tragedy. Remembering the Holocaust takes center stage for those two minutes, but the feeling continues all day long. Radio stations either play no music or they play sad, slow music. Restaurants and other entertainment venues are closed. There are too many remembrance ceremonies to count. The whole country remembers.

One week later is Yom HaZikaron. The only quality it shares with the American Memorial Day is its name. The day starts, of course, the evening before with a ceremony at the Kotel, the Western Wall. The ceremony starts not with an important speaker trying to quiet the crowd, but with another siren. Two more minutes of silence and memory; from 8:00 until 8:02, the country thinks of the lives lost, the children whose lives were cut short fighting for the right of this state to exist. Once again, businesses are closed and the country remembers, so it certainly is not a big sale day in the stores. This holiday is commemorated with ceremonies at high schools all over the country. At first we were surprised that it was the high schools that hold these ceremonies. And then we realized: citizens enter the army at age 18, within months after high school graduation. Before the army, this was their last community. We attended one of these ceremonies, and visited the memorial hall that was set up to remember this high school’s approximately 138 students who had fought for Israel, from the war for independence to the second Lebanon war this past summer. I have never seen so many high school students so silent.

Yom HaZikaron ends at sundown, and immediately transitions into Yom HaAtzmaut. The entire atmosphere changes. We have respectfully remembered and mourned for those who made this country possible, and then the celebration can commence. And Israelis definitely know how to celebrate their independence. I was at one Jerusalem celebration, an enormous free concert in the middle of downtown. There were teenagers, families with young children, older adults, and everything in between. There were kids with shaving cream walking around spraying. There were enormous inflatable hammers that squeaked when you hit people over the head. There was everyone, dancing, singing, celebrating, watching fireworks. That was just the evening. Everyone has the day off for Yom HaAtzmaut. Some friends of mine organized a barbecue in a big local park. I arrived and had to call to find out where they were; there were so many people barbecuing, picnicking, throwing Frisbees, and just enjoying the holiday that it was hard to find the particular group I was looking for. Yom HaAtzmaut really felt like more of a holiday than the 4^th of July, even though in theory they celebrate similar events. Because of the setup of the calendar, the whole country thinks about the sacrifices that were made for the country, and then seems to appreciate the country that much more.

Happy 59^th Birthday, Israel!