Reflections on Yom Hashoah

Over the last few years, when people have asked me why I decided to move to Israel and make Aliya, my answers have become more and more cynical and PC; “because I believe that there are a lot of problems in this country and that if I want to be a part of changing them I need to live here and be a part its future...” or something along those lines. But today walking home from a Yom Hashoah ceremony on Israel’s Holocaust commemoration day, I remember the reason I initially made Aliyah, I often joke that I was brainwashed and bought into the Jewish Zionist narrative I was taught at school when I was “young and impressionable”.  However if I could pinpoint one event that really impacted me the most it was probably reading the book Exodus, that tells the story of how the survivors of the Holocaust fled to Palestine and despite the odds established the State of Israel.

I think Exodus was the first time that I could make any sense of the Holocaust, as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor it was the first time I saw meaning or any sort of explanation for the Holocaust. I remember asking in primary school why God let the Holocaust happen and while I still don’t have an answer for it, the establishment of the State of Israel gave me some reason or “semi-happy ending”. I remember coming to Israel for the first time when I was 17 and thinking how amazing it was that everything was in Hebrew from the Coca Cola bottles to the trashcans to the advertisements on the side of the road. It amazed me that in less than 60 years we had gone from Genocide to a thriving country.

Today unfortunately that awe has faded, I read Haaretz sometimes and am saddened at how short our memory can be and at the situation we find ourselves in, partly due to circumstances but partly because its easy to forget... However for all its problems, tonight and next week when we celebrate Yom Haatzmaut to commemorate the fallen soldiers and then switch immediately into celebrating our independence on Yom Hatamaut, I feel again that sense of pride, awe and gratitude that I live during a time when the State of Israel exists and that I can feel secure knowing I have a country in which I can be free, confident and even critical – Am Yisrael Chai!