Yom HaAtzmaut 2008

According to the Jewish Calendar, a new day starts at sunset of the old day. Memorial Day and Independence Day are one day apart and the remembering transitions directly into celebration in a way that is befitting to a place like this where sadness and fear are almost always mixed with happiness and love of life. Efrat has a really lovely local tekes (ceremony) to mark the end of Memorial Day and the start of Independence Day. The entire town (or small city really) shows up to the largest park and plops down on blankets on a slope to watch the festivities. They have sad songs and speeches for the end of Yom HaZikaron and once Yom HaAtzmaut starts the flag is raised from half-mast and the celebrating begins. They start with a torch lighting ceremony and they have everything from a live band to the youngest jazz class in the area performing. In the end to top it all off they have one of the nicest and largest fireworks displays in the area. I bumped into some other new-immigrant friends and had a blast singing and dancing and jumping up and down with them celebrating our first Independence Day as citizens. It was really fun and really special.

Later that night I went into Jerusalem with a bunch of friends. Center of Town was packed with things to do and people doing them. We went straight to the square in front of the municipal building for Israeli Folk Dancing! The square was PACKED with thousands of people dancing in hundreds of circles dances that have been around since before the state was established. It was so much fun. It was really unbelievable. It was the perfect thing to do. Because folk dancing is “not cool” all of the gross “cool kids” (read arsim = those kids who wear really tight jeans and have spiked hair and who have listen to music on their cell phones on buses and who have no respect for themselves or anyone else) were at other parties and the dance floor was open for chill people who just wanted to come and dance and be happy. It was an awesome mixing of peoples (again the Charedim were completely absent) from religious to non, old and young. The dancing went until almost 4am!!!! It was also the most ‘kosher’ mixed dancing I have ever seen. The religious girls and religious guys danced in separate circles and the people who wanted to dance together did so and there was no issue from anyone. People were just happy and dancing and singing and it was fantastic. I didn’t know more than half of the dances but just being carried along in huge circles of dancing singing happy people made me so happy. I want to go there every year to celebrate because I feel like it epitomizes everything I love about Israeli society and what it is that we are doing here- making a home for all Jews and truly appreciating what we have as well as being connected to our past. It was awesome!

David pulled the unfortunate duty of being on call during the holiday weekend. In order to fulfill the local commandment of “Thou Shall Barbeque on Independence Day” and get to be with David as well we piled into cars and drove to his base. We figured that either the nature reserve next door or the beach down the road would be perfect places for our “Al Ha Aish” (On the fire) but when we arrived we noticed that everyone else (literally) was following the same commandment!! There was absolutely no room anywhere. At first I freaked out because I really wanted this BBQ, but then we remembered that right next to the gate of David’s base is an area of picnic tables for when families come to visit their soldiers. We drove in there and had a lovely picnic and even got to take David home with us!!

Another fun aspect of the day was sitting and talking with David’s grandfather. His grandfather made Aliyah just over a month ago. He is 85 and it is not his first time living here. Before the state was founded he was here as a journalist and served in the Hagana. Listening to him retell his stories on Independence Day, which he personally helped come about, was really amazing. All in all it was an amazing holiday week and I hope that it will continue to be as meaningful and exciting in the coming years.