A Profound Moment... of Silence

Today is Israel's national memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror attacks.  As on every Israeli memorial day, there is a 1 minute moment of silence at 11am. 
This is not like any moment of silence I have ever taken part in.  I stand on the street in statue-like reverence, surrounded by others in equally still poses.  A woman's cigarette burns in her hand. 
In my relatively short time in this country I have experienced a deep exposure to the reality of Israeli life.  I have spent 6.5 years here.  Not a lifetime.  Not even half of my young life.  Yet in this chapter of my life here I have felt the sacrifice, I have seen the pain, and I have the faces of lost friends burned onto my conciousness .  My moment of silence is filled with images of my young compatriots who fell defending their homes and the ideals thats stand among them.  All of this is reinforced by the stand-still scene that surrounds me on a busy street in Tel Aviv. 
There is much behind this fervently observed moment of silence.  Seeing the cars come to a stop; their drivers standing alongside in the street, the never-ending stream of city busses sitting in their places, the throngs of pedestrians on the sidewalks, all standing motionless and deep in thought. 
This scene means something.  It means that the sacrifice laid down by the hero soldiers we stop and remember today, was not in vain.  The people here remember.  The loss of a soldier matters.  The nation cares. 

Each soldier that falls in the line of duty here is remembered as a hero, and their deeds will never be forgotten or taken for granted. 
This is why the Israeli Defense Force is the best army in the world.  The whole country stands behind us.  The whole nation cares.

The Baron

A sunny day in December, as beautiful as a day can be. It is my first official day at my new job. I am leading a group of 36 of my Jewish peers from around the world, and we are exploring the vast and well kept Ramat HaNadiv Memorial Gardens National Park in Israel. Living 6 years in Israel, I have come across the name “Rothschild” more than once, as many streets and establishments bare the name. But it was not until today that I truly grasped the real vision and impact that the man behind the name had on this small country and the Jewish People for all of eternity.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild was raised and resided in France. He decided to invest his family’s vast fortune, accumulated through savvy banking over the previous century, in the forgotten province of the Ottoman Empire that over 2000 years ago had been known as the Kingdom of Israel. The pure scope of this man’s vision is hard to fathom given the circumstances in which he decided to make this great investment. In the words of Mark Twain upon his journey overland here in 1867:
“….. A desolate country whose soil is given over wholly to weeds… a silent mournful expanse…. a desolation…. we never saw a human being on the whole route…. hardly a tree or shrub anywhere. Even the olive tree and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.” Clearly Baron Rothschild was up against much as he attempted to implement his vision of Jews returning to Zion, the Land of Israel. Statehood was still hardly on his mind. Rothschild was trying to build Jewish settlement.

Through massive land purchases he became known as “Father of the Yishuv,” the first Jewish settlements, Rishon Letzion, Zichron Yaakov, and Rosh Pina among them, which are now well established Israeli suburbs and towns. He brought agronomists, and other experts to aid and instruct the Jews escaping from Eastern Europe, who were mostly merchants, how to farm and how to develop the land. The Rothschilds left a legacy in Israel which included the reclamation of nearly 500,000 dunams of land and 30 settlements.

I stood stoically in front of the smoothed and shined black basalt rock headstone slab that marks the grave of Baron Edmond de Rothschild and his wife Adelaide. Located within the park, the tomb was cave like and a bit dark, but shining above the burial spot was a thick white limestone disk about the size of my head with a grand Magen David sculpted on the surface. This spectacular piece is actually an incredibly intact relic excavated in Jerusalem from the 2nd Temple Period. It was entombed with the Rothschilds as a dedication from the State of Israel to a man and a vision, and a symbol of the miraculous redemption of a nation after more than 2000 years of wandering.

On the Watch for European Anti-Zionist Rhetoric

This is a good editorial from the Wall Street Journal with a rational perspective on the recent Zionist bashing "documentary" in the British media.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704204304574543671980025770.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

Magen David Adom, Tel Aviv

An exposure like no other.

As an active volunteer EMT with MDA Tel Aviv, Israel, I see the inner workings of the city from the streets to people's homes. As a new immigrant in this society, no other experience has so intimately introduced me to the city and the country as a whole. It provides me with a unique cultural exposure by entering peoples homes across all strata of society.















With much of the "clientele" being elderly, this has given me a great opportunity to learn their amazing stories. This is the generation who escaped the persecutions of Europe and elsewhere in the world and established this country.

For example, this last Sunday during my shift on the intensive care ambulance, we took an 87 year old woman to the hospital with chest pain and other irregularities. On the way, I was responsible for monitoring her status as closely as possible. One of the best ways I have learned to do that is just by talking conversationally.
Captivating my imagination, she told me of her journey through British displaced persons camps in Cyprus as a Holocaust refugee from Poland. Glaring at the wrinkled blue tattoo of still legible numbers in the center of her forearm, what she described to me was the long story short. She came through the flames and built this place from scratch.

This incredible generation is, sadly and inevitably, being taken to the hospital by day and night more than I'd like to admit. I am profoundly grateful for my exposure to their lives and stories, and realize that this is an opportunity that will not exist for my children.

The stories and experiences must live on through us.

More on this to be posted soon...