Depending on when you come of age, certain songs, movies and news stories become your references.  This is amusing when nineties kids meet Gen Z kids; it may be less funny for our own kids, whose reference points are Coronavirus and October 7th.  Will they one day feel nostalgic for these moments?

Rav Yehuda Amital, my Rosh Yeshiva in Yeshivat Har Etzion, was a Holocaust survivor.  He arrived in then-Palestine in 1944, studied in various Israeli yeshivot, and fought in the War of Independence.  Rav Amital would contrast his perspective with ours: his students had all been born into a world where the existence of the State of Israel was a given.  I miss him this week as we swung from the sadness of Yom HaZikaron (especially painful these past two years) to the joy of Yom Ha’atzmaut.

On the Fifth of Iyar, May 14, 1948, Rav Amital taught us, three seismic shifts occurred: the Jewish people became a real am, a nation with a homeland; the aretz, the Land itself, returned to our control; and the world was reminded of netzach Yisrael, of the eternal existence of a people that many had written off, especially after the Shoah.  (Indeed, similar shifts have occurred since October 7, 2023.)  The War of Independence, Rav Amital taught us, was more than a miraculous military victory.

Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz explains that the sin of Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu, which opens this week’s double reading of Acharei Mot-Kedoshim, was that they became somehow too habituated to their jobs in the Mishkan.  Even though they were performing the holiest tasks in the world, human nature is such that we can get used to anything.  Nadav and Avihu got too comfortable with their avodah: they took it for granted.  In 2026, it’s easy for us to be guilty of the same sin when thinking about Israel.  

And we can’t.  Yom Ha’atzmaut is a day of unbridled joy and giving thanks to God, Rav Amital told us.  How could we not be joyful?  “Many years ago,” he told us, “there was an elderly European Chasid who worked in the Yeshiva, who wasn’t raised with the values of Zionism; yet he danced with tremendous fervor on Yom Ha’atzmaut. He would say, ‘After what I went through in Warsaw, how could I not dance?’”  It might be easier for such people to celebrate, Rav Amital said, but everyone should appreciate the miracle and the historic significance and be able to find joy.

On Pesach, our slavery ended; on Shavuot, Rav Amital said, we attained full freedom when we accepted the Torah.  Yom Ha’atzmaut falls between those two days to remind us that the road to freedom is long – and we’re not there yet – but we must celebrate nonetheless.

May we all continue to remember, to celebrate, to hold Israel close and appreciate the gift that it is.

Shabbat Shalom and Mo’adim Le-simcha Le-ge’ula shelema.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)