Yom Ha-Zikaron Reflections.2020

Yom Ha-Zikaron Reflections

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

April 28, 2020

Today is the hardest day of the year for me.

I thought Yom Ha-Shoah was, and it still is in some ways.

But not like Yom Ha-Zikaron, Remembrance Day for the Fallen Soldiers of Israel and those felled by acts of terror.

The Shoah—the Holocaust—was about all of us—my parents and their parents and families, the entire Jewish People, even about all humanity. The Shoah is about the depth and desperation of human suffering, as it is also about the human potential for cruelty, the descent into hell, the purposeful turning to evil, turning a blind eye and deaf ear. Two sides of the coin of suffering: Those who suffered, and those who inflicted the pain. And we are all—the entire world—survivors, the whole shattered into pieces still waiting to be redeemed.

Yom Ha-Shoah is about the entire universe, about God, and about humanity.

But Yom Ha-Zikaron is a private, personal pain. It’s about me, and about my brothers and sisters. It’s about my homeland, and the children I grew up with, and the spirits of those who never made it past the bullet that pierced their heart. It’s about the guilt of my sitting here, in front of a window overlooking the beautiful Front Range, snow-covered mountains, and a blue sky dotted with clouds, and birds flying about their business—while my heart breaks inside me and the tears flow freely. Because I wasn’t there with them and for them; because I am here and they are not.

I know I shouldn’t feel guilty. But I don’t know how to feel anything else right now, except for intense sadness. There’s no room for anything else, no comforting, no consolation, no words of release and compassion.

People tell me that they—the fallen—would have wanted me to live, because they couldn’t; that I should laugh and love and be joyful, because they can’t. But I can’t. Not today.

I know I have dedicated my life to memory and preserving all that is good from turning into chaos. The ceremonies, the candles, the sirens, the flags at half-staff—these have transformed the grief within me into something holy. Yet it is grief nonetheless, and on this day, I walk through the door into that dark and sad room and see nothing but shades and shadows:

The children who grew up without parents, the families whose dinner tables are missing a plate; the voices booming their greetings, “I’m home!” that echo only inside our minds—these are all I see and hear right now, all that is conjured before my eyes even as I look up to the mountains, seeking my help.

And the bereaved parents. The furrowed faces with eyes no longer tearing, screams of hurt, of disbelief, of unbearable pain, no longer exploding uncontrollably, now only looking with silent longing at the faded beret; at the black and white photographs that capture an endless moment and smiling eyes that have never dimmed; fingers that caress the thorn that once was stained with a drop of blood. They look at me, startled, but see someone else. They look right through me without recognition.

But I am here.

Don’t ask of me any words of consolation today. I have none. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, said God. But I, I have no words. I choke on my silence as the pain climbs up to my head and gathers between my eyes.  

I know that 10 thousand miles away, in my homeland of Israel, ceremonies have begun in celebration of Yom Ha-Atzma’ut, Israel’s Independence Day. I am being urged to unite in the joy of freedom and independence, while my darkness here still reigns supreme.

And Aaron was silent. I will stay silent and offer no words of comfort or even of prayer. I will sing no song of halleluyah or praise. When the time comes, I’ll step out into the light and listen the songs of joyful victory.

Because we are here, despite all, we are here.

In sadness, in pain, in grief, in hurt, in guilt. With the light so far, so far away yet.

© 2020 by Boaz D. Heilman