Yom haZikaron

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

Sorry, but I lack the interest in posting these days. Between the heavy feel of this coming Yom haZikaron, and the fact that I will board a plane in a few minutes to go be with friends who are mourning a horrific loss, I just don't have it.

Here is an excerpt from a Yom haZikaron post by Jameel, though; please read the complete post here:

Before my reserve duty, I picked up a small 2 volume set of books by Rav Yosef Tzvi Rimon, that discusses Jewish observance issues in the IDF. Over Shabbat I had the opportunity to read part of it, and I found this story particularly meaningful.

Rav Rimon quotes a story from Chief Rabbi Lau’s book, “Light of the World” (Oro shel Olam), page 380, and Rav Rimon says he also heard the same story from many other people as well.

“A student in the Kol Torah Yeshiva in Jerusalem, approached his Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and asked him the question: May I leave my Torah studies in the yeshiva to go [for a short visit] and pray at the graves of tzadikim (righteous people,) in the Galil (Northern Israel?)

Rav Auerbach answered, “It is better to say in yeshiva, and study Torah”

The student replied, “Isn’t there a time I could go to visit the graves of tzadikim? Doesn’t Rav Auerbach go and pray by the graves of tzadikim?

Rav Auerbach answered, “In order to pray at the graves of tzadikim, one doesn’t have to travel up to the Galil. Whenevr I feel the need to pray at the graves of tzadikim, I go to Mount Herzel, [the national cemetery for fallen IDF soliders in Jerusalem], to the graves of the soliders…who fell “Al Kiddush Hashem” for the sanctification of G-d.”

This Yom Hazikaron, Israel Memorial Day, I urge you to take a few minutes to honor the memory of the brave IDF soldiers who fell in battle in the creation and ongoing struggle for the safety and security of the State of Israel. There are also many, many wounded soldiers and victims of Arab Terror who are also remembered on this day…and we need to remember them and their families.

Yom haZikaron, Yom haAtzmaut, and something larger than ourselves

I always cry on Yom haZikaron [Israel's Memorial Day], and this year was no exception as I listened to Cheryl Mandel, mother of Daniel Mandel z"l, speak at our local commemoration.

I am always moved to joy on Yom haAtzmaut [Israel's Independence Day], and this year was no exception to that, either.

But I did learn something new this year. I think I now understand a little bit more than before about why these days grab at me so, why aliyah grabs at me so, and even why the rabbinate grabs at me so.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski talks about how people harbor a hunger to give of themselves to others, to be more than just a machine that eats and sleeps and takes care of a myriad physical functions today in order to do them again tomorrow. (Or maybe he doesn’t talk about that, and it’s just what I’ve made up, hallucinating he said it. But it rings true regardless.)

We want to be part of something greater than our own small survival, and the feeling grows as we age and realize just how inevitably doomed that small survival is. It's a feeling that inspires people to build families, to volunteer for organizations, to give philanthropically, and so on. It's what some people call a 'search for meaning.'

I feel that. I get seriously depressed when I think about a self-centered existence, my own as well as that of others. It’s so… futile.

I think that’s one of the major reasons I went for the rabbinate, to be a crucial part of families and a community, something greater than myself.

And I think that’s one of the major reasons why aliyah calls to me: the desire to be part of that ambitious enterprise, the return of our people to our home.

I know the feeling of “part of something greater” wears off pretty quickly for an oleh as he gets cut by another "part of something greater" on a long line, or deals with the bureaucracy of "something greater" in an office, and so on, but I’m on the other end right now, and from here the idea of being part of this nation Israel is very attractive.

It tugs at me on Yom haZikaron, and Yom haAtzmaut. I am jealous; I want to be part of that greater entity, with all of the pain that it brings, as well as the celebration, the crying as well as the joy and dancing.

Oh, but these days are a great antidote for my inner cynic.

Yom haZikaron: Remembering and Honoring our Techelet

(I always get melodramatic around Yom haZikaron, so please excuse my purple prose as I anticipate tonight's annual Memorial observance.)


“Techelet resembles the sea. The sea resembles the sky. The sky resembles the Divine throne.” (Sotah 17a)

“And you shall see the strings and remember all of the mitzvot of HaShem your Gd, and fulfill them.” (Bamidbar 15:39)

Since the twelfth century, the biblical techelet dye has been lost; in some parts of the Jewish world its last appearance was centuries earlier. Numerous attempts to reclaim this bluish color - key ingredient of the tzitzit, the tallit, the uniform of the kohanim - have been launched; some have claimed success.

But, for me, none have managed to reclaim the message of that marine color: A fish, a snail, some lowly sea creature may yet resemble the Divine throne. Flesh and blood, mortal, material life, can reflect the light of the Divine Throne itself.

Perhaps some look at the murex identified by the Techelet Institute, or the indigo dye identified by the Radziner chassidim before them, and are indeed inflamed with the knowledge that we, too, can reach such great heights. Perhaps they become more aware of the mitzvot surrounding us, and fulfill them.

But I am not so sensitive, or I have not seen the right color; this dyed wool does not move me in the same way.

I have my own techelet, though. My techelet are the chayyalim of the IDF, who fight for our nation, who stand guard against attacks and defend the lives of our families.

I do not glorify war, or violence, or martyrdom. I do not suggest that every soldier, or any soldier, is a perfect model of Judaism and its ideals. I certainly do not endorse every decision made for the frontline soldier by Knesset politicians.

But the chayyal who stands guard on the border, the soldier who inspects bags at a shopping center, the officer who leads a platoon, or parachutes, or drives a tank, these flesh and blood human beings convey the message of techelet.

This techelet, too, was lost for a long period in Jewish history. Due to circumstance rather than lack of will, the past millenium saw relatively few examples of Jews who defended the lives of their brethren with their own.

This techelet inspires with the message that we can mirror Gd, providing great chesed as does the Creator, protecting life as does the Creator.

This techelet calls to mind the mitzvot, reminding us that a human being can accomplish so much, can achieve greatness.

With this techelet, we again see that flesh and blood, mortal, material life, can resemble the Divine throne itself.

May we always remember the techelet who have fallen, and honor the techelet living among us.

Yom haZikaron: The Value of Memory without Action

They shouldn’t have died. They shouldn’t have been murdered.
Infants, children, mothers, young men and women, elderly, handicapped…
They should be here with us today, enjoying the sunshine on their faces.
So whom can we blame?

-Ourselves, for wanting to live in the land of our ancestors, the land of the Torah and the land of mitzvos, the land taken from us by force, the land promised to us by Gd? We are seeking that which we have always sought, that which we need for our survival, both physical and spiritual.

-Jews around the world, for becoming a latter-day Babylonian Jewry, sitting at home comfortably under their grapevines and fig trees, occasionally popping in for a visit or writing a check or engaging in “political action” while their surrogates bleed? Yom haZikaron is the worst day of the year for me, questioning for the nth time what I am doing outside of Israel.

-Gd, for arranging a no-win situation in which we would be expected to return to our land, but without clear Divine “air support” for that return?

-The Arab world, for acting greedily as human beings always act upon losing something they believe is theirs, for not believing the Torah’s account of our right to Israel, for their bloodthirsty embrace of death?

-The world’s nations, those United Nations, for their realpolitik self-interest, the way they kowtow to Arab oil and petrodollars, the way they always seem to find ways to beat down the scapegoat Jews even as they insist there is no Anti-Semitism?

We can always find reasons to blame, particularly when there is blood everywhere. Our fingers are flexible; we can point in every direction, and we do. But it brings no satisfaction.

At the end of the day, all the blame in the universe doesn’t bring a single soldier, a single bombing or stabbing or shooting or stoning or lynching victim, back to life. All of the petitions and protests, all of the anger and angst and Never Again, may have some impact on the future, but no human hand can reverse the past.

Which, I suppose, is why it’s important to have a Yom haZikaron, a day not to blame, but to remember.

A day not to politicize and criticize and pontificate and castigate, but to look at photographs of faces, to say tehillim and recall the long, long list of names, to cry for men and women, young and old, to remember them not so much for how they died but who they were, how they lived, whom they loved, what potential they never had a chance to express.

It’s hard to remember without following up with retaliatory or compensatory action; it seems so depressingly pointless. This lack of bombast does not satisfy any need for revenge, does not serve any eschatological drive for redemption. But I think there is a point: To ensure that what is past does not become distant past, that in our drive to move forward we do not lose the souls of those who cannot be with us. To recall the merit of those whose lives were cut short.

Memory, we are taught, is the sum of our identity. It sums up what we have experienced and how we have acted, where we have been, what we have thought and believed. It is, in a sense, the most powerful, certainly the most encompassing, force in our lives.

And in devoting this most encompassing force to those who have been taken from us, we guarantee that their souls are צרורות בצרור החיים, bound up in the bond of life, in the most literal meaning of Avigayil words.

יהי זכרם ברוך, their memory is blessed, and is a blessing.