Living in America, I cannot help being struck by the stark contrast between Yom Hazikaron in America and Yom Hazikaron in Israel. Yom Hazikaron in America is Memorial Day. It is a federal holiday in May that honors and mourns the United States military personnel who have died while serving in the United States armed forces. How does the average American feel about Memorial Day? Barbecues. Long weekend. Extra day off work. There are some notable exceptions, and there are events throughout the country that pay tribute to the American soldiers who sacrificed their lives in defense of the United States, but that is not the dominant feeling amongst the average American citizen on Memorial Day.

In Israel, the mood on its Memorial Day could not be more different. For 24 hours, all places of public entertainment are closed. A siren sounds across the country, and the entire nation comes to a standstill – two minutes of complete silence, a collective cessation of activity. Radio and television broadcast stories of the fallen, and even the music reflects the weight of the day.

Why is that? Why is Israel’s Memorial Day – Yom Hazikaron – so much more solemn than America’s Memorial Day?

First, because the loss in Israel is deeply personal. We do not merely remember Joseph Trumpeldor, the one-armed Russian soldier who fell at Tel Hai in 1920 and famously declared, “Ein davar, tov lamut b’ad artzenu” – “No matter; it is good to die for our land.” We do not merely remember Yonatan Netanyahu, the lone Israeli soldier killed during the Entebbe rescue mission in 1976. We don’t merely remember Yossi Tabeja, the Ethiopian immigrant who was killed at the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000 by his Palestinian patrol partner outside of Kalkilya. We don’t merely remember Michael Levin, the American who made aliya after going to Camp Ramah, USY, and Alexander Muss High School in Israel, and was killed during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

We remember those we have lost this past year – the fallen soldiers and the victims of terror whose absence is still raw, whose families are still sitting shiva, whose futures were cut short only months ago.

We are living the tragedy of Yom Hazikaron not as avelut yeshanah, a distant, historical mourning, but as avelut chadashah – fresh grief. Parents mourn children. A fiancée or a young bride mourns the loss of her future. Yom Hazikaron is not only about the past; it is about the present – the painfully immediate present – that we revisit each and every year.

But there is a second reason for the profound solemnity of the day. We are a people of memory.

In 1982, the Jewish historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi published Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, arguing that the obligation to remember lies at the very heart of Jewish identity. The Torah commands us – zachor – again and again. Memory in Judaism is not passive recollection; it is an active force. It is the means by which we bring the past into the present in order to shape the future.

Yom Hazikaron, then, is more than mourning. It is more than gratitude. It is about remembering our heroes and their mission – and, by extension, understanding our own. And perhaps, in that sense of mission, there is also a measure of comfort.

Rav Yisrael Gustman, one of the great sages of the twentieth century – a Holocaust survivor and founder of Yeshivat Netzach Yisrael in Jerusalem – once gave voice to this idea.

Among those who attended his weekly shiur was Professor Robert Aumann, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics. In 1982, during the Lebanon War, Professor Aumann’s son, Shlomo, was killed in battle. Rav Gustman attended the funeral and later visited the grieving father during shiva.

He said to him: “I, too, had a son – Meir. He was taken from my arms and murdered in the Holocaust. My Meir is a kadosh – holy. But in Heaven, he is now welcoming your Shlomo and saying: ‘I died because I was a Jew, but I could not save others. You died defending the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.’ My Meir is holy – but your Shlomo is a shaliach tzibbur, a chazzan, leading the heavenly congregation.”

Rav Gustman then added, “I never had the chance to sit shiva for my Meir. Let me sit here with you a little longer.”

Professor Aumann later reflected, “I thought I could never be comforted – but Rebbi, you have comforted me.”

The sadness of Yom Hazikaron is intensely personal. But perhaps there is a measure of comfort in knowing that those who fell did so with a sense of purpose – defending and building our historic homeland – each one, in Rav Gustman’s words, a shaliach tzibbur for our nation.

And that places a responsibility on us, even those of us living in America.

First, we can support Israel materially: by buying Israeli products, directing our tzedakah to causes in Israel, and visiting when we can.

Second, we can be advocates. Support for Israel has weakened in recent years, particularly among younger Americans – even among some young Jews. We must educate ourselves and speak thoughtfully and confidently in defense of Israel’s legitimacy and moral complexity.

Third, we must engage with Torat Eretz Yisrael – the Torah of a sovereign Jewish people in its land. What does it mean to return after 2,000 years of exile? How does a Jewish state navigate the realities of religious and secular life? What does an ethical Jewish army look like? How should Shabbat be lived in a public sphere shared by all segments of society? These are not abstract questions – they are the living Torah of our time, and they demand our attention.

And finally, aliyah. Each of us should at least consider a future in Israel. We need not make immediate decisions, but it must be part of our consciousness. Even if not for ourselves, then for our children – to be part of the unfolding destiny of Klal Yisrael in our homeland.

Yom Hazikaron calls upon us not only to mourn and to give thanks, but to remember in the deepest Jewish sense – to allow the past to shape our present and guide our future.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)