The Journey of a People, the Creation of a Nation, the Sorrow and the Celebration—From Passover to Independence Day

The below is adapted from a speech given at my synagogue’s celebration of the transition from Yom Hazikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day) to Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day).

We have now arrived at the end of an incredible three weeks. A period of time that starts with Passover and ends with Yom Ha’atzmaut.

On Passover, we retell and relive the figurative birth of the Jewish people as a nation, the creation of “Am Yisrael” (the “people of Israel”) and we conclude our Passover Seder as we have done for millennia with the famous words, “Shana Haba’a Be’Yerushalayim” (“next year in Jerusalem’), making Passover arguably our most Zionist religious holiday.

It’s no accident that shortly after Passover we go through the incredible and turbulent rollercoaster of emotions of Yom HaShoah (Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day), Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut.

Yom Hazikaron is a reminder of the cost we have paid, and sadly continue to pay, in order to have a Jewish State, while Yom HaShoah is a reminder of the cost of not having a Jewish State.

In honor of Yom Hazikaron, I watched a special from Channel 11 in Israel (Kan 11) featuring one of my favorite musicians, Hanan Ben Ari.

In the special, Ben Ari, one of Israel’s most popular and successful singers and songwriters, met with children of some of the men who recently died serving in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Ben Ari spoke with the children about the loss they experienced, and he composed songs with the children to honor their fathers.

One of the children interviewed had lost her father, who was a helicopter pilot. As she described her father and why he chose to continue to serve in a combat role long after he had to, she also spoke movingly about her sapta (grandmother)—about how she was a Holocaust survivor and how her grandmother’s experiences and losses always served as a motivating factor for her dad.

In that moment, on the screen appeared an image of her sapta at an Israeli Air Force ceremony, with her arm, bearing a Nazi concentration camp tattoo, waving up at her son (this girl’s father) flying in an Israeli Air Force helicopter above her.

What a powerful image.

When I saw it, I was immediately struck by how incredibly this image encapsulates and exemplifies both the miracle of, as well as the need for, Israel.

It also reminded me of a moment back in June of 1982, when Menachem Begin famously said, to then U.S. Senator Biden (who was threatening Begin that the U.S. might cut off aid to Israel):

“I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

In that statement, Menachem Begin provided me—as a then 18-year-old about to join the IDF—with the verbal equivalent of that image of the Israeli Air Force pilot and his Holocaust survivor mother waving at him. It was the very essence of why we have a Yom Hashoah, a Yom Hazikaron, immediately followed by a Yom Ha’atzmaut, where we exuberantly celebrate the return of Jewish independence and sovereignty in the land of Israel.

Seeing that sapta with the concentration camp tattoo on her arm, made me think about my sapta, who along with my saba (grandfather), helped to found Kibbutz Tirat Zvi near Beit She’an in 1937. While she was, as ardent Zionist, literally draining swamps and getting malaria over and over again, the rest of her family remained in the European Diaspora.

My sapta did not yet know it, but by the time WW2 was over she had lost every one of her family members to the Nazis. From her parents and her baby sister, all the way to her third cousins, because she was in Eretz Yisrael she was the only person in her family to survive the Nazis’ planned “final solution.”

Over one third of the world’s Jews, including everyone in my sapta’s family were murdered in barely five years because, as Menachem Begin said, there was no sovereign Jewish country to fight for us, or even one willing to provide us with a safe haven.

A mere three years after the Nazis failed at their final solution, my sapta and saba and every one of the people living in Kibbutz Tirat Tzvi were facing another enemy determined to wipe them off the map. This time it was the Arab Liberation Army put together by Fawzi al-Qawugji.

The battle for Tirat Tzvi, which was fought on February 20, 1948, is viewed by many historians as the first official battle of Israel’s War of Independence. And in many ways, it exemplifies Israel’s entire War of Independence.

In the battle for Tirat Tzvi, a tiny kibbutz with only three dozen adults of fighting age, fought off a far larger and well-armed enemy sworn to destroy it. Just as Israel, with little more than 600,000 citizens, fought off five Arab armies and multitudes of Arab militias, representing an Arab League with over 75 million citizens, in order to win Israel’s War of Independence.

This may explain why Ben Gurion famously said, “In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.”

Today, notwithstanding how miraculous Israel’s very survival was in 1948, most of us are now used to the idea of a strong and successful Israel.

But the Yom HaShoah and Yom Hazikaron sirens that ring throughout the country and stop everyone in their tracks in Israel are there to remind us that this reality is nothing short of the miracle Ben-Gurion described (and that Israel’s war of Independence exemplified), and that while it may be our “normal,” in the history of the Jewish people it is a very “new normal.”

It is a normal that we should never take for granted and that we should understand is not only necessary to prevent future Holocausts, but was also hard-earned with the blood and sacrifice of heroes—many heroes.

This is why Israel’s founders designed Yom Ha’atzmaut to immediately follow Yom Hazikaron—so that all of us, before we turn to the joy of celebrating sovereignty and freedom in our indigenous, historical and religious homeland, as well as us having that safe haven (which Jewish history has tragically proven is so necessary), we pay homage to those who sacrificed and lost so much in order for Jews to have our miracle of a state, after nearly 2000 years of dreaming, longing and praying for it (including at the end of every Passover Seder).

After nearly 2000 years of exile, after nearly 2000 years of persecution, out of the ashes of the Holocaust, the worst attempted genocide in modern history, we, the Jewish people have our own state. It is a miracle worth celebrating joyfully and gratefully.

After nearly 2000 years of exile, after nearly 2000 years of persecution, out of the ashes of the Holocaust, the worst attempted genocide in modern history, we, the Jewish people have our own state.

But when we think about the totality of Jewish history—our journey to becoming a people and receiving a national identity as well as a purpose at Mount Sinai; our development of our nation-state and our indigenous culture and language in the land of Israel for over a thousand years; our repeated battles against Babylonian, Greek and Roman colonialism; our brutal defeat by the Romans; and the fact that we have maintained, unlike other nations defeated by the Romans, our tribal faith, culture and language for nearly 2000 years—it is clear that when it comes to Jewish history, the expression “against all odds” is an extraordinary understatement.

The fact that the Jewish people not only have a sovereign state, but also that state is today ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the eighth most powerful country on earth, with the ninth happiest population according to the UN is, again, nothing short of miraculous.

It is a miracle that all of us are blessed to witness and to play a role in as a part of Am Yisrael. May each of us, to the best of our abilities, continue to play a role in that miracle.

Chag Atzmaut Sameach. Happy Independence Day.