Yom HaZikkaron 5766

In an hour the siren will pierce the air throughout Israel, and the nation will pause to recall the ‘22,123 men and women who have been killed defending the land of Israel since 1860, the year that the first Jewish settlers left the secure walls of Jerusalem to build new Jewish neighborhoods.’ This was twenty years before the first Hoveve Zion arrived, fifty seven years before the Balfour Declaration, and eighty seven years before the Partition Vote in 1947. This does not include the thousands of Jews who have been murdered since then for having had the temerity of thinking that Jews have a right to live in the Land of Israel (before 1918, as dhimmis). The silence that the siren brings is far more expressive, and evocative, than anything our words can achieve. For the living, our prayers must suffice.

יהי זכרם ברוך!