The Weight of the Soil: A Yom HaZikaron Encounter

I hesitated this morning before heading to the garden center. It’s Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, and the air feels different—heavy, quiet, and thick with a collective grief. My feelings were swinging between profound awe for the soldiers who gave everything for this land and the somber reality of the cost of that sacrifice.

In the end, I decided to go, thinking there is something healing about tending to things that grow.

When I arrived, I saw the man who usually helps me with my plants. The light was gone from his eyes. He was sullen, almost angry; he seemed to want to speak, to unburden himself to someone who would simply listen. He didn’t tell me who he had lost—the loss was written in the lines of his face. Instead, he spoke of a different kind of ghost: the weight of being a young soldier.

He described, with raw, haunting clarity, what it felt like to take the life—the soul—out of another human being. It wasn’t a conversation about politics........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)