This year, transitions feel sharper than ever.

We move from Zoom meetings to a ten-minute pause for the siren, and then back to Zoom. We wake up two or three times a night from alerts, from worry, from habit, and still show up in the morning. We function. We work. We lead. We parent. We continue.

And now Yom HaZikaron is around the corner. Along with Yom Haatzmaut. Every year, I am struck by how abrupt the shift is. One moment, the country stands still. Sirens sound, ceremonies begin, names and faces fill the air. The weight of lives lost is everywhere, whether we knew them personally or not.

And then, almost immediately, we turn. Flags come out. Music starts. Fireworks light the sky.

It can feel almost impossible. Even inappropriate. And yet, it is exactly right. Because this is what life here demands: the ability to get back up.

There is a deeply ingrained voice in Israeli society that does not leave much room for hesitation. It is direct and insistent. Get up. Keep going. There is work to do.

I recognize that voice. When I was a teenager, I used to have the same recurring nightmare. I would be climbing a staircase, but each step disappeared the moment I placed my foot on it. There was no way to pause, no way to stand still. The only option was to keep moving.

The message was clear: stopping is not an option. And that is what it feels like for many Israelis. We absorb this mindset early. We reinforce it as a culture. In many ways, we depend on it. It is what allows a country under constant strain to keep functioning. It is what allows people who barely slept to show up the next morning and carry responsibility for others.

But there is another side to this.

That same expectation creates pressure. It leaves little space to pause or to acknowledge the full weight of what people are carrying. The call to “get back up” can feel less like encouragement and more like a demand.

This year, that tension is impossible to ignore.

The war is not behind us. It is present in our bodies, in our sleep, in our conversations. It is visible in empty chairs and in the uncertainty that has not lifted. The cost of this country is not something we revisit once a year. It is something many are living in real time.

And still, we transition. Not because the grief has passed, but because both the individual and the collective continue to move forward.

Yom HaZikaron asks us to stop and remember. To confront the cost of independence in its most human form.

Yom HaAtzmaut asks us to recognize what continues to exist despite that cost. A country that is still functioning, still building, still arguing, still creating. A society in which people continue to show up, even when they are exhausted.

This is not a clean transition. It is not closure. It is the coexistence of grief and gratitude.

That may be one of the most defining characteristics of life here. Not the ability to separate pain from purpose, but the necessity of carrying both at once.

We do not move on. We move forward.

Often under pressure, sometimes without enough space to breathe.

This year, more than ever, that reality feels exposed.

May we remember those we have lost. May we recognize the cost that continues to be paid. And may we also make space, alongside our resilience, to acknowledge how hard it is to keep getting back up.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)