A Hard Day

Last Monday was Yom Hazikaron, or Israeli Memorial Day. While like most American Jews I've always been vaguely aware of Yom Hazikaron, always exactly before Yom Ha-atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), I admit I've never paid much attention to it. It is one of the trio of "modern" Jewish holidays (although considering the fact that two of these days commemorate tragedies for the Jewish people - Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha-Shoah, "holidays" doesn't seem like the correct word) that we in America are accustomed to noting with some kind of programming if we're affiliated with a Jewish institution, but aside from that generally pass with only minor notice by more attentive and affiliated American Jews, and without much notice at all by many.

My experience here was, perhaps needless to day, entirely different. It was so different that it kind of sneaked up on me and I found myself unprepared not only for the patterns of observance here, but by the deep emotions the day brought up in me.

Let me start by saying that for the first time in my life, a day of remembrance for fallen victims of national conflict actually conveyed, on a collective level, the depth of pain that it is supposed to. Never have I been so pointedly aware of how far from showing actual respect and dignity for those we are supposed to be remembering in our corresponding American days of remembrance -- Memorial Day and Veteran's Day -- we have gone in American society. I'm not placing blame, I'm simply observing. For me, like I'd wager most Americans who have not lost any family members in conflict (which, today, is MOST Americans, period -- and the serious implications of that deserve far more space than I can devote here), aside from very basic and frequently unobserved pieties, Memorial Day is simply a day off to take advantage of sales.

Not so here. Yom Hazikaron started, startlingly for me, with a minute-long siren at 8 pm sharp. For those who have not heard these sirens, the sound is hard to describe. It is sharp, scary, loud, and dissonant due to the fact that there are several sirens sounding at once at slightly different pitches. It is an uncomfortable experience -- and even if it isn't by design, the effect is appropriate for the sentiment of the day. Normal life is disrupted in small but obvious ways. Take television: at the siren, all normal Israeli programming went off the air, including on the cable stations (we have Hot, and all of the Hot stations -- that is, the cable company's stations that are not part of the Israeli networks). On many of the stations, a message screen that read "יום הזיכרון לחללי מערכות ישראל" literally "Day of remembrance for Israel's Fallen Soldiers," usually with an image of a Yizkor candle and an Israeli flag in some form. The only "active" broadcasting was a combination of coverage of the various official tekesim (assemblies) in honor of the day. The last, and to me most poignant broadcasts were of "sartei zikaron," memorial films. These were videos made in honor of a specific soldier, including long interviews with the families and loved ones.

One of them I watched at length, and it was about 20 minutes long. It described a bicycle ride throughout the entire country that was done by the brother of a fallen soldier, an avid cyclist. The whole film was moving, but there was one moment that hit me powerfully. The cyclist spoke for a moment about his feelings about his brother's death, and the raw emotion of the comments, coupled with the simple poetry that Hebrew, unlike any other language I know, can convey even in the most basic statements. One sentence struck me. "כעסתי -- כעסתי על הארץ הזות, שאוכלת יושביה". "I was angry -- angry at this land that consumes its inhabitants." The source of this sentence -- or the last clause rather -- is Bemidbar (Numbers) 13:32, and are among the words used by the spies sent by Moses to scout out the land of Israel to denigrate the land. These words and the rest of the report doom all of the generation to wander for forty more years in the desert.

Here, they are the anguished words of a grieving brother. Although I've read them countless times in their original context, never have they hit me so powerfully.

My regularly-scheduled Hebrew session with my friend and Hebrew instructor Shira was supposed to start at 10, which would have meant that it ended at 11, the time of the second jarring siren that sounds for a minute of silence. This is what most Americans who have any sense of what happens in Israel on Yom Hazikaron know about -- it is during this siren that all activities in the country stop, all stand -- even those who happen to be driving a car at the sounding pull of the road and step out of their cars, which are among the more familiar images one sees in the newspapers.

As it turned out, we didn't get started at 10:30, and the siren went off just as we were beginning to go over the talk about Birnbaum I've been translating into Hebrew. Two sentences in, and the sirens sounded. We stopped, obviously, stood up. The siren went on for what seemed like a very long time...it's amazing how long a minute can seem.

It is strange and moving for me to be in a place where a day like this affects everyone, on every side of the political spectrum, so deeply. In Toby's case, the school had (as all, I believe, do) a tekes, an elaborate assembly which included, apparently, in addition to the more somber remembrances, re-enactments of battles. This I found deeply disturbing. Although I am generally quite happy with Toby's experiences at Yehudah ha-Levi, there are moments that I realize the distance between myself and the da'ati community here and at home. One of those moments came when I asked Toby what he thought about the tekes; his response? "The battles were really cool...the kids looked really realistic when they died" [then brief demonstration of the facial expression of one of the dying "soldiers"] "and the Arabs looked really realistic." Yikes. Disturbing doesn't quite begin to describe my feeling at this response; still, he is seven, and it provided a good moment to discuss why this whole setup was a bit problematic.

Let us look forward to the day when Yom Hazikaron is a day that we are able to remember the dead -- all the dead [המבין יבין] -- with sadness at the losses, but with a reasonable expectation that more will not be added to their numbers. Utopian, I know, but if we can't hope, what is this day for in the end?