On Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance, my son is coming home from the army to stand by a soldier’s grave on Mount Herzl. No fallen soldier’s grave is without a soldier. They stand straight, sentinels of respect and life, as the sirens sound at 11am for two minutes.

My husband and I will accompany him. We are clinging to every minute we can be with him. He started basic training a few weeks ago, and we miss him. Our other son is serving in Lebanon, a combat medic. We haven’t seen him for weeks.

This is not the first time we have stood by fallen soldier’s graves with our sons on the Day of Remembrance. The cemetery is green with pines and cedars. Since October 7th the graves are now familiar to us. There is our dear friends’ son, Daniel Peretz. There is our children’s school principal, Yossi Hershkowitz. There are neighborhood boys, whose mothers I see at the local coffee shops.

The cost of this land that bears the towering pines and cedars is steep. We pay with our children’s blood.

And yet why is it we come to Israel?

Ten years ago, my husband and I moved to Jerusalem with our four boys. I said I did not want to leave one day with one suitcase and fifty dinars, as my grandparents had fled Iraq in 1951. More than that, I wanted to be part of Jewish history.

“How can you go? Your boys will have to serve,” People said. Our boys were small. Who was thinking of the army?

When my oldest son’s draft letter arrived I wrote a poem called, This is Why We Need Peace Now.

I tried to hide my tears as we drove along Paratroopers Road to Ammunition Hill, to drop off our son for his first day as a paratrooper.

I thought I understood the cost of return. I had taught Ezra and Nehemiah. I held onto one image: the Babylonian exiles returning and rebuilding the walls of........

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