What I Hear on Yom HaShoah
On Rosh Hashanah we hear the shofar.
On Chanukah? Maoz Tsur.
Purim? Megilat Esther.
Pesach? The Four Questions.
And what is the sound we hear today, on Yom HaShoah?
The primal scream of the 10 AM siren, when Israel stands silently honoring the inhumanly murdered 6 million: mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.
But today I hear something else as well…
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once taught that just as the men at a Jewish wedding dance backwards as they lead the bride to the chuppah with song, so too are the 6 million dancing backwards and singing as they lead us, the Jewish people, back to the Western Wall, back to Israel.
And today, I hear them singing for us. In the streets of Jerusalem.
This morning, I took Tsofia to kindergarten, and I saw all the girls scribbling away, preparing blue-and-white Israeli flags for Israeli Independence Day next week.
And tears filled my eyes and my throat clenched with that special mixture of grief and joy, siren and song, which is Yom HaShoah in the Jewish homeland, reborn.
That image that you mentioned in the name of Rav Carlebach made me cry. How touching. Thank-you.
me too…