Official days of national remembrance or celebration come with a dual demand: they call for emotion, and they call for ritual. Think of Passover, the holiday we celebrated not long ago. There is the emotion — joy, family warmth, spiritual elevation, or perhaps worry about burnt food and hidden chametz. And there is the ritual — the seder night, with its four cups of wine, its recitation of the Haggadah, its hiding of the afikoman. Ideally, the emotion and the ritual work in harmony: we feel uplifted because the ritual draws out our emotions, and our emotions enrich the ritual. But often, they are separate. One can perform the seder without feeling a thing. One can feel inspired without following every ritual step.
Sages and scholars have long debated the question of “kavanah” — intent — in prayer. Must one truly feel what one recites? Is prayer without focus and intent still prayer? The consensus is nuanced: intent is necessary to fulfill the mitzvah fully, but even without it, the act itself must still be performed. Obligation to utter the words does not vanish because the heart is distracted.
This framework is useful as Israel confront this year’s cycle of national remembrance days and celebration: Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut. It is not an easy year to mark these days. Leave aside, for a moment, the political battles that rage with disturbing intensity. Leave aside the tasteless exploitation of national ceremonies for factional gain. Even without all that noise, there remains a deeper, more troubling difficulty.
Holidays and memorials are powerful because they break routine. Ordinary days are for work; Shabbat is different. Whoever maintains a weekday routine but ensures their Shabbat is special (each in their own way) fulfills the duty to make Shabbat … well, special. The seder night is also special. It is marked only once a year (or twice – for those who do not live in Israel). There is a special ritual — and there is a special feeling. If every week were seder night, it would feel less special. If every day were seder night, it would not feel special at all.
Similarly, Memorial Days — Holocaust Remembrance Day, Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers — are special because they come once a year. They are marked with ceremonies held only once a year. The piercing siren, the lighting of the memorial candle. There are national ceremonies and there are personal or community ceremonies (“Zikaron Basalon,” where people gather in small groups in living rooms to hear from witnesses about the Holocaust, is a fascinating Israeli cultural innovation). There is symbolic action, and there is a special feeling.
And yet, this year — as was the case last year — it is hard to feel that break from routine. For the past year-and-a-half, Israel has lived in a near-constant state of mourning, remembrance and resilience. The grief is daily. The ceremonies are daily. People wear yellow ribbons on lapels to remember the hostages. Mourning families are interviewed on television on a daily basis. Empty chairs in public squares remind us of missing Israelis. The siren that should stop the nation in its tracks once a year now competes with the reality of frequent siren alarms because of missiles from Yemen. In a recent survey, 67% of Israeli Jews said their dominant feelings in the past year were sadness, worry, anger, or despair. Against such a backdrop, what room remains for the “special” sadness that memorial days are meant to evoke?
Still, we can — and must — fulfill the rituals. Light the candle. Stand when there’s siren. Attend the memorial gathering. Recite Yizkor or El Malei Rachamim. Whether we manage to feel something new and different is another question. In some ways, it is easier to feel it this year: sadness is already close to the surface. In other ways, it is harder to feel it: when every day is tinged with mourning, it is difficult to summon a deeper, distinctive sadness for a specific day.
What, then, is the right response? Like in prayer, the answer is both simple and demanding: do the deed. Carry out the ritual. Feel if you can — but act even if you cannot. The structure must be maintained even when the spirit falters.
This is not an excuse for cynicism. It is an acknowledgment of reality. Ritual is a tool: it shapes community, enforces memory, and protects continuity. Emotion is a blessing when it comes, but it cannot be the sole foundation. Without ritual, emotion flickers and dies. Without ritual, memory becomes vulnerable to forgetting.
And so, on these memory days, we carry on. We bow our heads. We say the prayers. We listen to the names read aloud. We watch the bereaved families light their candles. We do it for the dead. We do it for ourselves. We do it for the future.
Even — perhaps especially — when our hearts are tired.
Because tired hearts still remember. Tired hearts still need rituals. Tired hearts still need to stand still, even if only for a minute, in the middle of a storm that never seems to end.
Something I wrote in Hebrew
When the PM asks “Why didn’t they wake me up?” – it’s a smoke screen. He is saying: the attack is not my fault, had they called, it would have been prevented. Here’s what I wrote:
“Why didn’t they wake me up at night?” This is a question that the prime minister often uses … The answer to the question of why they weren’t woken up at night is quite simple: They didn’t wake them up – because they didn’t understand the seriousness of the event. Period. Nothing more, nothing less. They didn’t understand the seriousness of the event, which is of course serious, but doesn’t add anything to what has already been said: poor political judgment, poor intelligence collection and analysis, poor operational assessments. Layer upon layer.
A week’s numbers
The traditional Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony has become a focus of political controversy. According to a JPPI survey conducted a few weeks ago, while right-wing voters remain loyal to the ceremony and even increase their attendance, center-left and left-wing voters are moving away from it. Another victim of politization and polarization.
A reader’s response
Chaya Goldberg writes: “You should have more faith that Israel will come out of the war stronger.” My response: Please, teach me how to have such faith. I’d like to have it.
Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor. For more analysis of Israeli and international politics, visit Rosner’s Domain at jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain.
