Sunday evening, May 12, is Yom HaZikaron / Israel’s Memorial Day.
Monday evening, May 13, is Yom HaAtzma’ut / Israel’s 76th Independence Day.
תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: בֵּין הַשְּׁמָשׁוֹת סָפֵק מִן הַיּוֹם וּמִן הַלַּיְלָה
.סָפֵק כּוּלּוֹ מִן הַיּוֹם, סָפֵק כּוּלּוֹ מִן הַלַּיְלָה
Our Sages taught:
Bein Ha-Sh’mashot, twilight, is a place of uncertainty. Day or night?
It is uncertain if it belongs to the day or if it belongs to the night.
(Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 34b)
The Israeli national calendar does something rather extraordinary: it juxtaposes Memorial Day and Independence Day, so the former segues directly into the latter.
“We find ourselves in a twilight place between memory and freedom.”
I’ve often wondered, as an American, how each of those days in our calendar would be more profound and meaningful if our national holidays were similarly positioned. As it is, the American Memorial Day, the last Monday in May, mostly becomes a three-day weekend of barbecues and the informal beginning of summer—unless, of course, you happen to be in a military family. And the 4th of July becomes a day of fireworks and beachgoing. Physically separated by five-and-a-half weeks in the calendar, these days are distinct and isolated from one another. Imagine how the meaning of each day would be deepened if they weren’t so far apart.
By contrast, in the Israeli model, the two days are inextricably connected, and each throws light upon the other. In other words, Israel’s fallen soldiers (and victims of terror) are remembered in the context of paying the ultimate price for everyone else’s gifts of freedom.
The flow from Yom HaZikaron into Yom HaAtzma’ut is organic, meaningful, and solemn.
This year, that seam between the two days seems to be the profoundest metaphor of the condition of Zionism. We truly find ourselves בֵּין הַשְּׁמָשׁוֹת / bein ha-sh’mashot, in a twilight place between memory and freedom.
Please, please this year take a moment on Yom HaZikaron to remember. Remember not only the victims of Israel’s wars and the terrorist onslaughts she has faced throught the decades. Remember, too, the Hamas butchery of innocents on October 7: 1,139 people who were murdered, including the 364 who were killed at the Nova Music Festival in the desert, and the others from the kibbutzim and towns where the terrorists ruthlessly went door-to-door, executing children, elders, women, and men.
Remember that 250 people (in some situations, several generations of a single family; toddlers and grandparents) were kidnapped and held hostage in the dungeons beneath Gaza.
Remember that many of these women were raped and assaulted by the terrorists, and then their humiliations were sadistically posted to terrorist social media (with beheadings, torture, and more).
Remember that 128 people remain hostages today. May they be returned home before the holidays conclude on Tuesday.
And yes, we have room in our hearts to remember ALL the victims of war and terror, including the innocent Palestinian victims in Gaza. We have not forgotten, and we weep for all the victims. By mourning all the innocents, we assert that we are of a different moral caliber than our enemies.
But we also remember that there are such things as just wars, and we did not seek out or choose this war. The massacre of innocents and the hostages who are still behind enemy lines, without any Red Cross lifelines: we remember them, and we will not forget, until every one is brought home.
Our Day of Memory will segue into our Day of Independence. And it may be hard to celebrate this year. But even acknowledging our diminished joy, I believe it is incumbent upon us to observe Yom HaAtzma’ut this year; to say in awe: “My G-d! We live in a generation that knows a State of Israel. What would our great-great-grandparents have said to us, to remind us that we live in one of the most extraordinary moments in all of Jewish history?”
Included in that sense of wonder is this: The reminder that Israel represents our refusal to be victims ever again. We have known pogroms and hostage-taking before in Jewish history. But the difference in our generation is the agency to fight for our freedom, to stand for justice and decency and independence and not to wait desperately for “deliverance from another place” (as Esther 4:14 would have it).
With that agency, of course, comes grave responsibility. A just war must be fought with just means. And the internal debates and wrestling that are going on within the Jewish community are (mostly) fair and, in the very fact that they are happening, a fruit of Independence.
As the world seethes—as antisemites aggressively spew their hate on college campuses and hypocrites dominate the opinion pages, as Jews are threatened once again from every quarter and every political angle—it occurs to me: I will observe Yom HaAtzma’ut with a renewed sense of vigor this year.
Observing Yom HaAtzma’ut with gratitude, commitment, and no small amount of wonder, will demand a certain amount of intention:
It will be an act of commitment to truth, which is in ever-diminishing supply.
It will be an act of pride in all the marvels that make up modern Israel.
It will be an act of solidarity with Jews everywhere, who continue to look towards Zion in hope.
It will be an act of rededication to working towards building the democratic and free society that is described in its Declaration of Independence:
The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
In other words, celebrating Israeli Independence this year will be an act of countercultural DEFIANCE that is at the heart of the Torah and Jewish tradition.
It may be hard to tell if this moment between memory and freedom belongs primarily to day or night, as the Talmud (above) would have it. But Israel and its extraordinarily resilient people continue to shine the light of courage, and I for one will raise a glass this year with my community to celebrate that unextinguished hope.
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