I’ve heard that people who are bipolar often go off their
medication because, although the lows of depression are difficult and sometimes
even dangerous, the highs they experience are so thrilling, they don’t want to
give them up for the sake of being normal. The highs open the door to genius,
to creativity, to the sublime.
And it is impossible to attain the high, without also
experiencing the low.
The Israeli experience is something like this. I hesitate to
compare my beloved country to a disorder but like the bipolar person, our
“normal” isn’t normal.
Everyday life in Israel is about as normal as casually
making sandwiches for the kids while walking on a tightrope, with no safety
net, over a sea of blood-thirsty sharks. We do make fabulous sandwiches - as
well as self-driving cars, solutions for world water shortages and cures for
cancers – with a smile and full of joy for life – on the tightrope, over the
sharks.
Some days are more intense than others. Probably (unless
there is a war), the most intense day of the year is the day of Yom Hazikaron,
IDF Memorial Day, which at night becomes Israel’s Independence Day.
On Yom Hazikaron my family attends the ceremony held at the Hebrew Reali
School in Haifa. The children of the school attend as well as many of the
school’s alumni. There is something special about generations of alumni coming
together, on this important day.
The Reali was founded 1913. The State of Israel had not yet
been formally re-established but this did not stop the Jewish community in
Palestine (Eretz Yisrael) from building institutions of education for the next
generations, the new Jews who would be free in their homeland and be educated in
Hebrew, the language of their ancestors.
The ceremony at the Reali is probably the most impressive
and moving Yom Hazikaron ceremony in the country. Israelis are notoriously bad
at ceremonies. Pomp and circumstance is a foreign concept, there is something
about focusing on the way things look (rather than their content) that goes
against Israeli nature.
The Reali ceremony is simple, yet profound. The 9-12th
graders of the school march on the field with the flags of the school and the
military academy (also managed by the Reali). The visual impression this
creates is of seeing the present and the future at the same time – the students
dressed in civilian clothes will soon graduate and join the IDF (and look like
the students from the military academy marching alongside them). A group of
teachers and distinguished alumni also march on the field.
A few songs are sung. They are never songs about war, always
songs of grief, sadness at innocence lost and hope for the future. Yom
Hazikaron songs are never about the enemy. The Yizkor and Kaddish prayers are
said.
The bulk of the ceremony consists of the names of every
single Reali student killed in Israel’s wars or by acts of terrorism. This year
they read 302 names.
Think about that. In 105 years 302 people were killed from
this school alone.
During the ceremony I sat behind a family. Grandparents, a
mother and her daughter, a daughter of the grandparents.
The principle of the school explained that this year,
classmates of Dudi Zohar were marching on the field in his memory. The
grandmother’s head sunk down on her daughter’s shoulder. The little girl turned
around and I saw that her face was streaked with tears. Dudi’s
family. His is the 302nd name on the list.
When it came time to say the prayer for the dead, Dudi’s 14
year old son read the kaddish. I don’t know if there was a dry eye in the
audience, mine certainly weren’t.
After the ceremony in the school was over, we went to the
ceremony in Haifa’s military cemetery. The IDF prepares the cemeteries
throughout the country for the thousands of families they know will arrive.
Each grave has flowers laid on it, a flag and a soldier (the rank or higher
than that of the person killed) to stand as an honor guard. Stools are brought
to every grave so that families can have a place to sit should they feel the
need to do so and water bottles are brought for everyone attending the
ceremonies. Of course, politicians and dignitaries attend the ceremonies in
their communities.
The ceremony ended with Hatikvah, as all ceremonies do. As I
stood and sang, I watched a woman approximately my age standing in front of a
grave, singing. The ceremony was taking place behind her but she had come for
personal reasons, not to be part of the community. Whose grave was she facing?
Her husband? Her brother? A friend?
Watching her, I choked on the words of our national anthem:
“To be a free people, in our own land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem.” The
price of our freedom was lying in the grave, at her feet – and yet she sang. As
did everyone all around me.
That evening we watched the official Yom Haatzmaut ceremony
on tv. Wow! It was like watching a mini-opening ceremony for the Olympics – a
sweeping depiction of Jewish history from the beginning of our people, yearning
for Zion in exile and the rebirth of our nation.
At night we went out to the Independence Day street party. Every
municipality sets up enormous parties with the best Israeli performers, music,
dancing and fireworks. There was a party right by my house but we chose to go
to one in a suburb of Haifa because of the artists who were scheduled to
perform there.
Omer Adam is perhaps the most popular Israeli singer today.
When ticket sales for his concerts open, the lines crash. Within a few minutes
all the tickets are sold out. On Yom Haatzmaut we walked down the street to the
stage and there he was.
There he is! There he is!!! The street was packed, people
were hanging out the windows and standing on the porches of nearby buildings.
Everyone pulled out their cameras. Everyone was smiling and singing. What a way
to end the day.
What other way is there? We mourn death and celebrate life,
we celebrate life in gratitude and appreciation for those who made it possible
for us to live.
In Israel, the equation is very clear.
We didn’t ask to live with the sharks swimming below us. Every
time one of us falls, we all fall. The pain is devastating… there really are no
words to describe it. At the same time, if we must walk the tightrope, why not
dance across it? What could be more glorious?