Yom HaZikaron

April 27, 2009

Today, Israelis (Jewish) come together again, as they did last week, to honor the memory of those who died in battle or in terrorist attacks. At 8 p.m., as Elana, my ulpan teacher was in the middle of a sentence on constructing infinitives in Hebrew, the siren sounded. She stopped, we all stood, and waited in respect for the siren to end and then we went back to infinitives. After class ended at 8:30, I headed down Ben-Gurion towards Ibn Gvirol and Rabin Square where the main Tel Aviv memorial was to begin at 8:45. There are also many neighborhood commemorations. The flow of pedestrians picked up as I neared the plaza, but the gathering crowd was somewhat subdued and rather quiet, considering the number. Barriers were set up about 100 meters from the plaza with security guards scanning entrants. The plaza was full, but not packed, certainly not at all approaching the throngs that attended the 100th birthday celebration a few weeks ago. A large stage had been constructed at the city hall end of the plaza. The colorful lights that changed throughout the evening were eye-catching, but not gaudy.

Three aspects of the nearly 2 hour memorial stand out for me. First, the mood was quietly respectful. There was little small talk, only occasional text messaging and no cell phone use that I could see. Indeed, Linda called me about 10 minutes after the beginning of the ceremony and I received several stern looks that caused me to cut the conversation very short. It would be fascinating to see the cell phone records for Tel Aviv during this ceremony. There were occasional tears, a not unexpected reaction when considering that given the size of Israel, most people know if not a family member or close friend of each of those being memorialized, they know a family or friends who have experienced the death of a loved one in war or through terror. There appeared to be no smoking, an observation that seemed to be confirmed by the plumes of smoke that emerged almost immediately as the last bars of Hatikvah were sung. Second, the ceremony consisted of videos of interviews with family and friends of 20 or so individuals who had lost their lives, not just in the last year, and not just recently, but as far back as 1948. There may even have been representatives from pre-state days, but the projection onto large screens was not always so clear and the entire program was in Hebrew. Each video, maybe 1 to 2 minutes in length, was followed by a live performance of an Israeli popular song and even one Beatles song. The words were projected onto the screens and more than a few people sang along. These personal videos were occasionally broken up by a brief speech by a soldier and one by, I think, the mayor of Tel Aviv. Third, there appeared to be little, if any, Jewish religious content. There was no kaddish, no el malay rachamim. The ceremony closed with Hatikvah and the crowd quietly dissipated, with the clicking of cell phones, and the plumes of cigarette smoke. As with last week, there was a feeling of shared history, shared experience, and shared vulnerability after a loss, for the people on Rabin Square and for the Jewish people.