Since my last article shortly after Passover, Israel has marked three national days: Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day), and Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day). Back in the States, these days did not carry the same weight for me as they do here, where the entire nation pauses to remember the fallen martyrs and soldiers on the first two days and then celebrates what those sacrifices were for on the last.
In Houston, the Jewish community would run programs featuring speakers to commemorate Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron, then host a large event at the JCC with Israeli music, flags, and falafel. Sometimes I attended, sometimes I didn’t, depending on my work schedule. Here in Israel, these are national days.
The stores close for part of the day. Sirens sound throughout the country, and people stand at attention to remember the sacrifices that were and continue to be made for us to live in this great homeland after millennia in exile.
Our new tradition on Yom HaZikaron is to attend the ceremony on Har Herzl, where my cousin Uriel Liwerant, z”l, is buried. Uriel’s parents, my cousins Aaron and Joni, made aliyah from Queens shortly after they married in the 1980’s, becoming among the original settlers in what is today the burgeoning Jerusalem suburb of Efrat in Gush Etzion. I had attended Uriel’s bris (circumcision) while on a gap year after high school.
Uriel was a tank commander involved in a fatal training accident on the Golan Heights back in 2009. Uriel saw that his tank was about to flip on the bridge it was crossing. His last words and actions were for his crew to take cover. He saved them, but not himself.
Since that fateful day, my cousins and their daughters have joined the ranks of the bereaved of this nation. During the year and certainly on the day of Uriel’s yahrtzeit, the family and friends come to visit him. But on Yom HaZikaron, thousands of families come to Har Herzl to mourn, to visit, and perhaps to take solace in the community of the bereft, a painful but real part of this nation’s story.
Uriel’s mother, my cousin Joni, was sitting by his grave with her three daughters and said how happy she was to have all her children with her at that moment. On Yom HaZikaron, Uriel is also visited by former classmates as well as soldiers from his unit, including those who were in the tank when the accident happened. Their lives have moved on with wives and children and careers, while Uriel remains frozen in time, a forever hero, one of thousands of soldiers buried on Har Herzl and in war cemeteries throughout the country.
US Memorial Day 'far less personal'
In the States, Memorial Day was far less personal for me. I know that many, many American servicemen and women have sacrificed for their country. But for many people in my generation, that connection feels distant. In a country as large and as vast as the United States, with a purely voluntary army, it is unlikely to feel as closely connected to one of them as I am here with my cousin in Israel.
Yom HaAtzmaut follows on the heels of Israel’s somber and sobering Day of Remembrance. In many communities, there is a special prayer service that captures this transition. This year, we had the honor to attend such a service with our friends from Nes Harim, located high in the Jerusalem hills. It felt like the entire moshav community came together to sing songs, both soulful and mournful, that somehow smoothly transitioned into a lively, festive Hallel song of praise once the sun went down and the new day had begun.
Aliyah was the right choice
The next day, my husband and I visited a group of our Houston friends, one of whom had hosted a barbecue with Texas-smoked brisket for the Houston crowd. It was a gathering from the old country here in our new country. We shared stories of challenges and successes and reminisced about old times in the bayou city, while agreeing that leaving the Lone Star state of Texas and coming here to the Jewish Lone Star state was not just the right choice but the one that finally felt like home for all of us. Am Yisrael Chai.
The writer is a new immigrant from Houston, Texas. Formerly a professor of English as a second language to international students at Houston Community College and the University of Houston, she is currently a lecturer of English at Bar Ilan University and Ruppin Academic College.