By Rabbi Lana Zilberman Soloway 

Time is always moving, leading our way forward. We live from one event to the other, from one holiday to the next. It’s human nature, and so the Jewish calendar does not differ from it. We just celebrated Passover, one of the three biblical festivals, and started the journey to the next festival, Shavuot, by counting the 49 days of the Omer. In between these two, however, there are three special days to observe. These were added to the Jewish calendar only recently, when the State of Israel was established, 76 years ago.  They are called: the National Days, hayamim haleumi’im and include: Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Memorial Day, Yom Hazikaron – Memorial Day for the IDF soldiers and victims of terror attacks, and Yom Ha’atzmaut – Israel’s Independence day. 

Why were these three days placed during this time of the year? The answer is different for each of them. 

The easiest one is Yom Ha’atzmaut. The modern state of Israel was established on May 14, 1948, which was the fifth day of the Hebrew month of Iyar, and so, Israel’s Independence day is usually celebrated on its Hebrew birthday (unless it falls on Shabbat).  

The state of Israel was reborn in the midst of a bloody war, the war of Independence. Two weeks into that war (December 1947), Dr. Chaim Weitzman, the future first president of Israel, wrote in a daily newspaper: The Jewish state will not be given to the Jewish people on a silver platter. Four days later, Israeli poet Natan Alterman wrote a poem in response to Dr. Weitzman called: The Silver Platter. 

…And the land will grow still
Crimson skies dimming, misting
Slowly paling again
Over smoking frontiers
As the nation stands up
Torn at heart but existing
To receive its first wonder
In two thousand years

As the moment draws near
It will rise, darkness facing
Stand straight in the moonlight
In terror and joy
…When across from it step out
Towards it slowly pacing
In plain sight of all
A young girl and a boy.

Dressed in battle gear, dirty
Shoes heavy with grime
On the path they will climb up
While their lips remain sealed
To change garb, to wipe brow
They have not yet found time
Still bone weary from days
And from nights in the field
Full of endless fatigue
And all drained of emotion
Yet the dew of their youth
Is still seen on their head.
Thus like statues they stand
Stiff and still with no motion
And no sign that will show
If they live or are dead.

Then a nation in tears
And amazed at this matter
Will ask: who are you?
And the two will then say
With soft voice:
We–
Are the silver platter
On which the Jews’ state
Was presented to you today.

Then they fall back in darkness
As the dazed nation looks
And the rest can be found
In the history books.

In order to remember the painful price, the silver platter on which the Jewish state was presented to the Jewish people, the early Israeli decision-makers chose to mourn Israeli soldiers and victims of terrorism right before celebrating independence and statehood. And so, in the state of Israel, only 60 seconds separate Israel’s memorial day, the saddest day of the year, from Israel’s Independence Days, the happiest one. 

The International Holocaust Memorial Day is commemorated around the world on January 27th – the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest death camp on European soil, was liberated by the Red (Soviet) Army. Yom Hashoah, however, is commemorated seven days after Passover and seven days before Yom Hazikaron, on the 27th of the Hebrew month Nissan, during the three weeks duration of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The full name is Yom Hashoah Ve-Ha-gevurah – remembrance day of the Shoah and heroism. 

This year, after October 7th and the ongoing war, these three days feel for many Jews in Israel and around the world suffocating and almost impossible. Eight decades after educating ourselves and others on Never Again, we sadly live a reality in which 2,500 Holocaust survivors in Israel lived through the October 7th massacre. We recognize that 2000 of them lost their homes and became refugees, 86 of them have died since the beginning of this war, a 91 year old survivor Moshe Rindler was murdered in Kibbutz Holit, and a 86 year old survivor Shlomo Mantzur was kidnapped from Kibbutz Kissufim and is still held captive by Hamas terrorists in Gaza. 

There are no words, no logical explanation and yet, here we are. 

Let us find comfort by Etty Hillesum, a 29-year-old Dutch Jewish woman, who perished in the Shoah. In her darkest hour, she wrote these words: Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears their grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. One day we shall build a whole new world. Against every new outrage and every fresh horror, we shall put out one more piece of love and goodness, drawing strength from within ourselves.

Let us also find comfort in one another and in our community. 

Join us at 7pm tonight (Tuesday, May 7th) for a special gathering to mark Yom Hashoah, next Monday (5/13) night to commemorate Yom Hazikaron at Valley Beit Shalom (Encino), and next Tuesday (5/14) again at Or Ami to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut.

Never again is now.