My Word: Combining commemoration and celebration

It’s an emotional roller-coaster in the best of years. And this is not the best of years. It’s the worst the State of Israel has ever known. It’s post-October 7.

There is a uniquely Israeli period from Passover to Holocaust Remembrance Day (which was marked this week) and the back-to-back Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars with Independence Day, two days that we will respectively commemorate and endeavor to celebrate next week.

It might be argued that the ups and downs of commemorating Jewish survival during this season also includes Purim. Certainly, some of the post-October 7 dilemmas arose then, too.

How do we celebrate during a war?

What is an appropriate way to celebrate when the country is still at war, soldiers are being killed, hostages are held by Hamas in Gaza, there is ongoing rocket fire, and some 100,000 Israelis are displaced from their homes?

Add to that the global wave of antisemitism.

These are toxic times.

The Holocaust is simultaneously being denied and being hijacked as part of the Palestinian narrative, under which Gazans are the victims.

The 1,200 men, women, children, and babies tortured and slaughtered in the Hamas and Islamic Jihad invasion on October 7, the worst attack on Jews since the end of the Holocaust, count for nothing. Jews count for nothing.

Posters of the kidnapped – from baby Kfir Bibas to octogenarian Shlomo Mansour – are defaced or ripped down, something no normal person would do to a poster of a missing dog.

This is the time of year when my social media feed splits into those riding the roller-coaster and those who have no idea it exists.

Abroad, particularly among non-Jewish friends, there is nothing unusual.

The world goes on as normal. For Israelis and a growing number of Diaspora Jews – particularly in the wake of the campus hate fests and antisemitic rallies – the world also goes on as normal: The Jew is the scapegoat of all evil.October 7 overshadows everything this year.

For thousands, Passover was the first time without a particular loved one at the Seder table – someone who had been murdered or fallen in the war. Holocaust Remembrance Day brought back real memories for survivors and collective memory for the country.

It is unfathomable that less than eight decades after the war, Jews had to hide for hours in their homes as barbarians raped, mutilated, and set fires in an orgiastic pogrom.

Babies were killed in their mothers’ arms, daughters violated in front of their fathers.

Remembrance Day for soldiers and terror victims next week will be hell.

There are so many new names and faces in our thoughts. As for Independence Day – well, who is in the mood for celebrating? And yet, if we do not honor the day, it grants Hamas and those who want to destroy us an added victory.

It often has been noted that the jarring juxtaposition of Remembrance Day and Independence Day reminds us of what we have and the price we have paid for it. A price we are still paying.

The country comes to a standstill for the two-minute siren on Holocaust Remembrance Day and for the evening and morning sirens on Remembrance Day for soldiers and terror victims.

In the past seven months, almost every Israeli has come under rocket attack: from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and their arch-terrorist sponsor the Islamic Republic of Iran, which just last month launched a massive barrage of hundreds of missiles and killer drones on the Jewish state.

It is harder than ever to explain to young children when the siren means rush for shelter and when it is a call to stand still in honor of the dead; what sounds mark national unity and which are the signs of foreign enmity.

The Hamas invasion and mega-atrocity took place when Israel was painfully, dangerously, split over the judicial reform and the response to it – different visions over the political direction of the country.

That divide did not disappear, but the horror of what had happened and the need to fight back brought people together.

This is an existential war. The argument over national politics is meaningless when the entire country is threatened by Iranian-financed terrorist armies.

It is natural, however, for the cracks to reappear at a time like this, when we need to confront the commemoration vs celebration dilemma.

The once ubiquitous slogan of “Yachad nenatze’ach!” – Together we will win – is disappearing from the landscape and public discourse, but, along with blue-and-white flags, my neighborhood has many banners proclaiming “Am Yisrael chai!” – The People of Israel live!

Irit Linur, in her column in Yisrael Hashavua last week, ridiculed the peculiar phenomenon of those on the Left side of the political spectrum demanding that Independence Day celebrations be canceled this year – like the calls to abolish Purim parades and even Seder night traditions – while cheering on Israel’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.

I’m writing these lines before the talented young singer Eden Golan takes to the Eurovision stage for the semi-final in Malmo, Sweden.

I wish her luck, but as I wrote a few months ago, I can confidently predict that she will not win first place. When the Ukrainian band Kalush Orchestra performed after the Russian invasion, it was clear that whatever they sang or did on stage, they would be the winning number.

Last year, when the show was hosted by the UK on behalf of Ukraine, the Liverpool arena was filled with the colors blue and yellow and other reminders of the ongoing brutal Russian offensive against Ukraine.

When it comes to Israel, however, Eurovision sings a different tune. The European Broadcasting Union, which runs the annual song contest, twice demanded the words of Eden Golan’s song be changed, claiming they were politically loaded and an open reminder of October 7. The double standards are astounding.

Even now there are calls to boycott the event because of Israel’s participation.

Eden’s song “Hurricane” is a powerful number. Is it a thinly disguised tribute to the more than 300 Supernova music festival partygoers who were massacred by Hamas on October 7? An anthem for those still held in captivity in Gaza? What is wrong with that? Israel cannot just forgive and forget the tragedy and horror of that dark day.

October 7 has become a part of us the way that 9/11 will always be a part of American and world history. (And it should be remembered that the same jihadist ideology fueled both mega-atrocities.)

Golan did not attend the main Eurovision opening event on Sunday night, attending instead a Holocaust Remembrance Day event hosted by the Jewish community in Malmo – a community under siege, with antisemitic sentiment soaring and such a high terrorism threat that Israelis have been warned not to travel there if not essential.

Security is at an all-time high. Ever since Palestinian terrorists held Israeli Olympic team members hostage at Munich in 1972, resulting in the massacre of 11, we have seen that nothing is sacred. Slogans of “Unity in music” and Olympian “sporting spirit” are no match for terrorism. Here in the real world, on a very troubled planet Earth, there is a need to fight to combat evil.

Israelis love to sing. Especially this time of year.

What would Seder night be without the traditional songs and tunes that bind us? We sing to remember, we sing to forget; we sing when we’re happy, and we sing so much when we’re sad that there is a genre of what is known as shirei dikaon (songs of depression), heard on the radio in times of war, terror attacks, and remembrance days.

The repertoire is poignantly being broadened by songs commemorating the victims of October 7 and those who fell in Operation Swords of Iron.

But there are also inspirational songs. The song “Superheroes” by Hatikva 6 is an example, with its chorus: “Everyone looks normal, but we are a nation of superheroes, and within each of us is a hidden soldier ready to save the world.”

Even the group’s name and the national anthem – “Hatikvah” (The Hope) – are an indication of the secret of Jewish survival.

We survive not just because we remember the past but because we understand that, no matter what, we have a future. Am Yisrael chai!