Yom HaZicharon Reflections

 I just returned from a Yom HaZicharon presentation with my Ulpan class. It was my first and I went with an open mind as I hadn't had breakfast or lunch and lacked the strength to project my own perspective onto it unless really provoked. Warning, these are not the kind of reflections you may be expecting.

A number of things struck me during the 45 minute ceremony which was held at a national religious school and conducted mostly by school boys. The first was how all the gestures seemed borrowed from somewhere else. The plethora of flags, the marching, the solder with the torch, the national anthem. It was all European/American military except for the national anthem not mentioning God. There was even an American military band marching song which very well could have been written by John Phillip Sousa.

The second thing was how little of it was religious considering that the school was National Religious and this was an event to commemorate the dead. We Jews are specialists in commemorating the dead. We have more prayers for that occasion than anybody. However, very little of that was employed.

At one point they started to sing Ani Me'amim whose theme of waiting for Moshiach was so contrary to everything else that it seemed out of place as well as borrowed from somewhere else. And that is the third thing. The event was confusing. It was as if they were secular Israelis in style but remembered that they were also trying to be religious even though the two clash thematically. I felt confused and they looked confused.

As I sat there I reflected on a tirade my Ulpan teacher had just made about the State of Israel being a place where Jews didn't have to be victims anymore. If my Hebrew had been better I might have interrupted her shouting to ask her to consider the fact that many more Jews have been murdered in the land of Israel since the founding of the State than outside the land even though for most of that period many more lived outside the state.

So something really started to bother me. I felt this expectation and felt that the school boys were being indoctrinated to identify with the State in memory of the deceased solders when it seems to me that the solders might only have died because of the existence of the State. I wanted to turn my head and share my thoughts with the person next to me but knew I'd never get an intelligible answer but only outrage as one of the prices we pay for this State is the development of extremely aggressive personalities that uphold their arguments with force of personality.

With this, the whole event started to seem surreal to me, like a big fake out, a big con, a big balloon like communism. I can only think that God is Who keeps Jews safe. Where would Israel be without American weapons and political support. Who has ever attacked us besides weak Arab nations? Israelis strut around as if they could conquer Russia and China combined when we have, Baruch Hashem, never faced an opponent any bigger than ourselves. Yet, we are quite small. Hashem has kept the challenges to scale. It is Hashem that has saved us all this time, not the State to which the people all around me were giving their allegiance.

And what does Hashem want from us? To keep mitzvos. But mitzvos and sin were not mentioned at this event. The reason we were sent into exile was not mentioned. All the thoughts seem to be focus on our military might and the solders who paid the price for our acquiring it.

I had never felt it so viscerally before that Zionism is an exercise in heresy. And Religious Zionism is a fraud, like a kashrus seal on traife meat. Here I was at Chardal school, the more religious of the Religious Zionist institutions, watching a military parade singing an atheistic anthem.

I walked out feeling a little sad but peaceful as well. You see, I really did walk in open minded. I was open to the arguments for Zionism and was suffering from my own confusion. I walked out with clarity. Zionism is not for me.