In Israel, Yom HaZikaron is observed the morning before Yom HaAtzmaut. Sirens go off in the entire country and for two minutes, everything grinds to a halt as citizens stop to commemorate those who died in Israel’s wars.
At San Francisco’s Congregation Sherith Israel, Remembrance Day was observed with the traditional silence, as well as music, poems and a talk by Mort Levinson, an American veteran of Israel’s War of Independence.
The event, which drew about 200 people, was the first S.F. community Remembrance Day celebration in many years. It was co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation’s Israel Center and the Jewish Community Relations Council, with funding from the Jewish Community Endowment Fund.
“It was a very significant thing in my life to participate in the creation of the state of Israel,” Levinson said after the ceremony, held Tuesday of last week. “It formed the framework for my whole attitude.
“I was raised as an idealist” said Levinson, who grew up in a Jewish neighborhood in Boston. He was a member of the Habonim Zionist youth movement and later president of IZFA, the student Zionist organization at the University of Oklahoma.
Many of his maternal relatives were killed in the Holocaust, one of the factors motivating him to join the 7th Brigade at 18 during the War of Independence.
Though he acknowledges that Israel has many problems to work out, Israel’s 50th anniversary is an occasion of pride for him.
“The fact that Israel is celebrating the 50th anniversary gives a spine to every Jew in the world.”
Cantor Martin Feldman of Sherith Israel and Julie Egger performed music at the service; Marco Rosen and Harriet Newman said Yizkor in Hebrew and English.
“I thought it was tasteful,” said Ryan Dulkin, 25, who attended the ceremony.
“Yom HaZikaron is so much out of our consciousness all too often,” said Dulkin, who was recently accepted to rabbinical school. “However, I’m interested in the way that God was absent.”
Jenifer Cutler, 27, was in Israel last year for Yom HaAtzmaut during a nine-month course of study in Safed. The Sherith Israel service evoked similar emotions for her: “sorrow, respect, a sense of loss, but at the same time it wasn’t for a lost cause.
“The lost life led to the birth of a nation.”