Tzipiyah.com

We could live our lives filled to the brim with Torah, personal growth, chessed (kindness), maasim tovim (good deeds), perfecting our middot (character traits). We could even be involved in tremendous community work bringing loads of Jews back to their roots. We could be building up our community, starting up new kosher restaurants and cafes. Building new shuls and mikvas.

But even with these incredible mitzvot, we are lacking something so fundamental to us as a nation; our return to Eretz Yisrael. We need our own personal growth in Torah and we need to bring back assimilated Jews, but all this is working with a very small perspective. The larger picture can sometimes get lost. We lose sight that there’s also a national perspective to our existence as Jews. We are a Nation, we are Am Yisrael. Just like Hashem has a plan for our own individual development and purpose in our lives, so too does He have a plan for Am Yisrael. When in chutz la’aretz (outside Israel), our vision is limited to ourselves and our community around us. It’s only when we arrive in Eretz Yisrael that we realise (ironically) that we are in exile, that we don’t have a Beis Hamikdash, that Hashem’s presence is hidden from the world… but at the same time we see redemption has started, we are being gathered in from the four corners of the world to finally rebuild our Homeland after 2000 years of exile. What a whole new perspective to our Torah!

As Yom HaZikaron and Yom Haatzmaut approach, this idea is very profound. These two days bring a whole new meaning to Am Yisrael and to achdut (unity). On Yom HaZikaron we commemorate the incredible courage and messirut nefesh (self-sacrifice) by our soldiers who gave up their lives so we could return to Eretz Yisrael, our Homeland. And it’s not just the soldiers themselves who are heros, but their families too, who live knowing that their children will one day be fighting on our borders to protect our beloved land. From all over Israel do Jews come to Mt. Herzl where all the fallen soldiers are buried, free buses to and from, a ceremony and kaddish. What respect Am Yisrael have for their soliders, what value we have for life and for the need for our Land.

And the very next day we break into celebration and joy, where we thank Hashem for finally returning us to our Land, for the miracles He performed for us, for the start of redemption, for the chance to fulfil all the mitzvot we previously couldn’t do (shmitta, truma & maser, etc). We could only have a Yom Haatzmaut because of a Yom HaZikaron.

Through these two days do we begin to realise that there’s more to our avodat Hashem than our personal obligations, but we have national obligations too. We must always prepared to be musar nefesh, and to live amongst our people in unity. Only in Eretz Yisrael can we retain this perspective and witness and be part of Hashem’s nissim (miracles). May He soon bring us the complete and final redemption.

While it’s true that tonight starts the 2nd day of Iyar, not the 4th which is when we normally celebrate Yom HaZikaron, Israeli remembrance day, the Rabbis felt they should move it all up making today Yom HaZikaron.

So since today is Yom HaZikaron, a day when we remember Israel’s fallen heroes, i thought i would tell you a little bit about just one of them… it’s a personal story VERY Close to my heart.

Yehoshua (Jason) Friedberg (HY”D) was born and
raised in Montreal, not far from where I was raised and continue to live. Yehoshua went through the religious school system in Montreal, and upon completion, left for Israel to study in a hesder yeshiva and complete military service as a Chayal Boded (literally a lonely solider), a foreign volunteer in the prestigious Golani Brigade (Gdud 51… KAVOD!). He was planning to enter the officer’s training course, he was three days short of completing his initial enlistment, when on Purim, 15 years ago, he was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists and shot with his own weapon. His body was dumped by the side of a highway where it was found three days later, after a massive manhunt by Israeli General Security Service personnel.

Yehoshua was the embodiment of true Zionism. He left the comfort of a safe North American city with a sizable and influential Jewish community so that he could contribute to the defense and development of the Jewish state. He enrolled in an institution of higher religious education to further encourage himself with the traditions that are meant to guide Jews and Israelis, and then set out to defend those traditions and those people simply because he was one of them.

Yehoshua was a very special young man. Poorer students would often ask him for a loan which he gladly gave. When the student came to repay the loan, Yehoshua would show in his notepad that the amount was already crossed out and refused to take the person’s money! Yehoshua was very careful about saying or hearing lashon hara (evil speech). When people said something derogatory in his presence, he would simply walk out of the room to show his displeasure. Yehoshua loved learning and teaching Torah, and when he was home, he volunteered to teach Gemarra to the members of our shul. He was a natural communicator, and people marvelled at his teaching abilities. Yehoshua was once a member of my community, the son of my parents’ friends and it was in his merit that I was blessed with the chance to go learn in Israel.
May G-d avenge his blood, which should be immortalized. Yehi Zichro Baruch.

It is amazing how today we will sit, in Israel there is no school, the soldiers, seminaries, yeshivas and high schools all go to Har HaZaitim, where the soldiers are buried… and we all pay our respects. We daven at their graves and we cry for our fallen heroes. Our brothers, our sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, uncles and aunts, boyfriends, girlfriends and best friends we remember that they did not fall in vain, and we PROMISE them that they will be remembered. Today we reflect on all they did for us, we have a moment of silence where we thank them and remember them. Then as soon as the sun goes down at a moment when all becomes dark again, we celebrate all that the did for us… we have fireworks and BBQs and parties. We do all this, because we will not sit around and be sad, they did NOT die for no reason… so as we say ‘vayehi erev vayehi boker’ (first it was night then it was day) we have sadness and despair in the darkness of the night… but it is always followed by the joy and hope of the day. So today we are sad… today, we remember with tears and reverence… and tomorrow we remember with celebration… telling them that we will continue to live the life they fought for us to have… we WILL continue to LIVE

Sadness and joy,
drizzling sunbeams,
remember, remember,
and fill your soul with memories you never witnessed;

Remember, remember,
join yourself up again to the
massive Whole.

Grieve, shed tears,
make room for the darkness
of the families, children destroyed forever,
though they were never your children.

Remember the blood-stained uniforms,
the smell of explosions and darkness and death,
though it was not your nose
that smelled them.

And remember the joy,
fireworks and flags,
elation and trepidation,
fighting fiercely, joyfully for your lives -
though it was not you
who fought, whose heart rejoiced.

To be one of the Nation,
to be one with the Nation,
my mind must remember,
my soul must remember.

To be a soul holding hands
with those before and those after,
with those beside me and those far away,
I must remember.
We must remember.

Taste the joy,
the fear, the darkness,
the light, the death,
the throngs of jubilant rejoicers and
the full, silent cemeteries
in the moments of silence.
Remember the stories.
Remember today.

—–
* Pictures 1, 2, 6 & 7 are of the Gush Katif Human Chain, and are from this site. There are more wonderful pictures there; go and look!
* Picture 3 comes from this page.
* Picture 4 comes from this page.
* I’m not sure where I got Picture 5 from.