Happy Yom HaAtzmaut! And if you don’t know what that means, it’s high time you did. It’s Israel Independence Day, which will begin at sundown on May 11 and extend into the next day, celebrating 68 years since the founding of the State of Israel.
Our cover story this week focuses on the many events taking place across the Bay Area. Two large community gatherings, one at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El and the other at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, will feature something new this year: public readings of the Megillat Yom HaAtzmaut, or Israel’s Declaration of Independence, first read aloud and broadcast to the new nation in 1948 by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion.
It is a stirring document, and includes these words: “The right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.”
Jewish community leaders will take turns reading the document at the two celebrations. Like America’s Declaration of Independence, it is a text well worth revisiting, if only to remind us of the blessings of freedom and self-determination.
Notably, Israel has always celebrated its Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron, the day before Yom HaAtzmaut. As one ends, the other begins, underscoring the indelible connection between a country’s freedom and the sacrifices of those who fight to defend it. Whereas Yom HaAtzmaut is always a huge party day across the country, Memorial Day is probably the most somber date on Israel’s calendar, marked with solemn ceremonies at military cemeteries, the sounding of sirens and two minutes of silence.
There are no picnics in Israel on Yom Ha-Zikaron. That’s because not a single Israeli family is untouched by war. Given the country’s small population, nearly everyone is related to or knows someone who has fallen in battle.
Contrast that with Memorial Day in the United States. Perhaps it is part of the luxury of being American that we have turned ours into a three-day weekend and an occasion to shop at big sales. There is precious little memorializing on our Memorial Day.
Perhaps we would be wise to take a lesson from our Israeli brothers and sisters, and start taking America’s Memorial Day more seriously. Commemorating military sacrifices, the loss of so many young men and women in uniform, should not be the sole province of their families, as these soldiers fell protecting all of us. It’s coming up on May 30.