The Shades We Speak To: Israel's Memorial Day 2016

The Shades We Speak To

In Memory of Israel’s Fallen Defenders

Yom Ha-Zikaron 2016

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

23,447.

That’s how many Israelis have lost their lives since the State of Israel was born 68 years ago, in defense of Israel or as victims of terror attacks against her.

23,447.  This unbelievable number stands before my eyes today—Yom Ha-Zikaron in Israel.  Memorial Day.

Not one family in Israel is spared.  Everyone knows someone whose name is on that list. 

On this day, all Israel is one family, grieving for its sons and daughters, for fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, lovers, friends.  Their shadows accompany us today wherever we are, wherever we go.  They smile at us; they reach out a hand to us, as if to say, “How could you think we left you?”

We sit by their graveside and share the latest.  Sports, gossip, news.  We see them at our side, we talk to them.  We talk about who was born, who passed on. We laugh at old, familiar jokes; we feel that intense joy and relief we felt every time they walked in from school, from basic training, from their watch in the night, from the battlefield.  We hold them close, and they look around, to see who might be seeing the tears of happiness that well in our eyes, that choke our throats, as we feel their warmth, their heartbeat next to us yet once again.

23,447 of the finest and best.  For 24 hours, they walk with us.  They are with us again, at our side.

When this day is over, we know, they will be gone.  So we hold on to today, to every minute, to every second.  Soon enough, we know, the emptiness and silence will return, and we will watch the shades line up again, to continue their march forward, to eternity, to join the many hundreds, thousands, millions others…

But today they are with us.  They accompany us wherever we go.  We see them alongside us.  We hear their footsteps next to us.  It’s everyone else who doesn’t.  We do.  And the others—they don’t understand why we stop and argue with no one at all, why we stop to talk to the air, try to catch an echo of something whispered in our ear, in our ear alone.

On this day, we see shadows.  We hear footsteps that fall as lightly as a fallen leaf.  We stop to hear a name called, to face a memory that suddenly appears, as though by magic, to see a face materialize out of nowhere.

Somehow, they never stopped being 20-something, while we have aged half a century or more.  How is that possible?

Don’t leave yet, we beg.

And they say, we never have.  We never will.  Not as long as you remember us.  When you rejoice, think of us, and we will dance beside you.  When you fight, we will fight alongside you.  When you sleep, we will watch over you.

Tomorrow—Independence Day.  Live free, you who were my friend, my brother, my father or my mother, my husband, my child, my beloved, my lover, my friend.  Sing free, laugh free, be free, only BE! That’s what we insist on. Don’t give up.  Don’t give in to darkness or overwhelming sadness.  Make our great experiment in history work.  Make Israel strong by living, by creating, by loving.  Bring meaning to our untimely death by teaching your children about us.  Tell them who we were, how we lived and how we died.  Let them know that where we sleep lie buried the seeds of their existence. 

And you—you who are grieving for us!  Know that we are always with you.  Grieve tonight, grieve for the lives we never lived, for the families we never raised.  Grieve for what was, for what could have been.  But then, when this day is over, turn to tomorrow and live your life.  Live it to the fullest.  Live twice as strong, love twice as deep, sing twice as loud, laugh twice as hard!

I will hear you, of that you can be certain.  Listen well, and you will hear me too. Know that I am there, at your side.  Again.  Forever.

23,447 strong.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman