When it was still unusual for people to live to triple digits, Moshe Katsav, during his presidency, hosted an annual reception for senior citizens who had reached such advanced ages, as well as for people in their nineties.
Together with the National Insurance Institute and the Joint Distribution Committee, Katsav set up the project Seva Tova (A Good Age), aimed at enabling senior citizens to live out their lives with dignity and maximum independence, and at stimulating activities to prevent their brains and bodies from vegetating.
Katsav was an outspoken advocate for the rights of the aged, including the right to remain at one’s place of employment as long as one was still capable of working. The people invited to these senior citizen receptions came from diverse backgrounds, nationalities, and religions. What they all had in common was resilience, which over the past two and a half years has become one of the most important words in the Israeli lexicon.
It surfaced big time this week, with the honoring of Holocaust survivors at ceremonies around the country. Aged from their late eighties to 100-plus, they are all prime examples of resilience, particularly those who went to Poland to participate in the March of the Living.
Although the total Israeli representation was much smaller than usual, it was heart-warming during a period of renewed vicious and viral antisemitism to read that total participation from around the world, including Christian and Muslim delegations, numbered 7,000 people, including 51 Holocaust survivors and 25 Muslim leaders from Pakistan, Morocco, Syria, and elsewhere.
Perhaps their presence is indicative of the tentative beginning of a new era. One of the American Jewish participants, when interviewed on television, enthused that what had once been a death march was now a march of life.
No less important, it is a march of Jewish resilience and of triumph over the failure of the Nazi “solution to the Jewish problem.”
The Jewish People survive
Throughout the centuries, all attempts to wipe Jews off the map have failed. There have been appalling atrocities and terrible tragedies, with most of the perpetrators left in the dust of history, while the Jewish people continue to thrive and survive.
One would think that intelligent antisemites would wonder how come the Jews have outlasted all their enemies, and would realize that perhaps there may be a biblical truth in the answer. This was evident in the fact that marchers included Holocaust survivors, former hostages of Hamas, and survivors of the Bondi Beach shooting, as well as survivors of other attacks against Jews. They were people of different generations and nationalities, but with a common link. Am Yisrael Chai!
The main ceremony honoring Holocaust martyrs and heroes is held at Yad Vashem, and in addition to Holocaust survivors and their families, chief rabbis, the president, prime minister, chief justice, ministers, members of Knesset, and other dignitaries are attended by representatives of all the foreign embassies in Israel.
Because this year’s ceremony was filmed in advance, the diplomats were absent, but on Tuesday morning representatives from the Philippines, Panama, Albania, Guatemala, Greece, Poland, the European Union, Norway and other countries attended the 24th annual ceremony jointly hosted by the B’nai B’rith World Center and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, commemorating the heroism of Jews who risked their lives to save other Jews during the Holocaust.
Many child Holocaust survivors owe their lives to Jews who hid them or took them to Christian friends, monasteries, and convents, always instructing them to remember that they were Jewish. Some of the survivors hidden in convents have said that during the day they recited Catholic prayers, but at night, before going to sleep, they said Shema Yisrael.
Over the years, Yad Vashem has honored thousands of Christians who risked not only their own lives, but those of their families to save Jews, to hide them, and to feed them. For whatever reason, Yad Vashem was reluctant to do the same for Jews who rescued other Jews, though that policy changed some 15 years ago.
But B’nai B’rith and JNF thought that it was important to demonstrate that there were Jewish heroes beyond those who participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and launched an annual ceremony to honor and highlight the extraordinary courage and humanity of the Jewish heroes of the Holocaust, and also invited the ambassadors of the countries of those heroes, as well as other members of the diplomatic corps.
The initiative to honor these heroes was born out of a desire to correct a misconception that all Jews went like lambs to the slaughter. According to Alan Schneider, director of the B’nai Brith World Center in Jerusalem, 667 such heroes have already been recognized.
This year’s hero was Haim Moshe Shapira, whose heroism was emulated by his great-grandson Aner Shapira, who was killed by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
In an emotional address, Aner’s father, who is also called Moshe Shapira, related to the findings of an IDF investigation that concluded that before he was killed and after he had already been seriously wounded, Aner, from his shelter in Re’im, threw back 11 grenades at the terrorists – nine of them before he was wounded and two after.
“A direct line connects my grandfather’s heroism in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust and Aner’s heroism in defending other young people seeking refuge from Hamas murderers during the Simchat Torah/October 7 massacre,” said Aner’s father.
Diplomats galore, including ambassadors, also showed up at Magen David Adom headquarters in Ramle, where they were briefed on rapid response and new technologies. Impressed by the state-of-the-art equipment that they saw, most took photos.
The visit was organized by the Foreign Ministry and the Ambassadors’ Club of Israel, and was attended by Gil Haskel, the chief of state protocol, Yitzhak Eldan, the president of the Ambassadors’ Club and himself a former chief of state protocol, and Gilad Erdan, the global president of MDA and former Israel ambassador to the United Nations and the United States.
On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in his office with Yehuda Dua, the head of the Katzrin Local Council, and Uri Kellner, the head of the Golan Regional Council, to discuss ways to strengthen the country's north. The PM presented them with a plan for increased development and said, “We are coming with a massive development surge.”
That may well be his intention, but northern communities have been listening to unfulfilled promises from both left- and right-wing governments for more than half a century, and have their doubts about whether the latest promises will be kept. Part of the reason for skepticism is the continued attacks against Kiryat Shmona, Metulla, and Nahariya, where property damage has been extensive, but thankfully, there have been relatively few fatalities and injuries.
The plan presented by Netanyahu calls for 3,000 new housing units in Katzrin, a university branch in Kiryat Shmona, a veterinary hospital, and other significant institutions.
It’s a wait-and-see situation. Hopefully, it won’t take too long. Meanwhile, residents of the North who grew up in cities, towns, villages, kibbutzim, and moshavim, which were frequently under attack and continue to be, are fed up with the government, which they say is not doing enough to prevent the next generation from living with the same fears and anxieties that were experienced by their parents and grandparents.
Kupat Ha'ir is a haredi charitable organization run by several rabbis who, in their fundraising efforts, bring the plight of the ultra-Orthodox poor to the attention of the wider public.
They quote Rabbi Yisroel Meir Shushan, who, speaking from the Bnei Brak site struck by shrapnel from Iranian missiles, says that 82 Bnei Brak families have lost their homes “and are left with literally nothing.”
After it was postponed due to the war, the annual Jerusalem Marathon is on today (though the full 42-km race has been canceled due to the heat wave, and the other races have been moved forward), a factor that will delight the capital’s sports enthusiasts. What will delight them even more is an announcement by Mayor Moshe Lion that, unlike in other municipalities across the country, Independence Day events will go ahead as planned.
Although Jerusalem is not immune to Iranian and Hezbollah missiles, the damage wrought cannot compare with places such as Tel Aviv, Haifa, Menara, Bat Yam, Petah Tikva, Ramat Gan, Bnei Brak, Arad, Dimona, and Beersheba, and several kibbutzim in both the North and the South. Actually, not everything will go ahead as planned – only those things over which Jerusalem City Hall has jurisdiction.
The annual Independence Day reception at the President’s Residence, at which 120 outstanding soldiers from all the branches of the IDF are honored, will be filmed in advance in the presence of their families. Other than a few politicians, the IDF top brass, and a number of journalists and camera crews, that’s the usual attendance, so what difference does it make to continue with tradition, with the possible exception of the IAF flypast?
There will be some nostalgia in the musical interlude to mark the 20th anniversary of Shoshana Damari's passing, the beloved songstress of the army.
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