Several decades ago, six young Jews were killed on a Saturday in Hebron.
When we were done treating the wounded and covering the bodies, we walked with Rabbi Moshe Levinger to the group of Jewish women who had assembled there.
This is when he taught us a lesson on how to accept loss and where to seek solace. The rabbi, who was one of the prominent figures in the newly established Jewish community in Hebron, started singing Shabbat songs, to the dismay of one woman, who berated him. "How can we sing, if we haven't even buried the dead?", she said.
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The rabbi answered: "Those who died for kiddush hashem (the sanctification of God's name), don't need mourning, because they are with God. The rituals of mourning were created for us, so that we can conduct ourselves during profane days when we have no way of knowing what takes place up above." With tears in my eyes, I joined the rabbi's singing.
We can't all reach the same level of spirituality as Levinger's, but it is also clear that the rabbi provided even the ordinary, non-religious folk something that they could grab onto for comfort.
There was something similar last week, when two prominent rabbis called on the public not to go to the military cemeteries this Memorial Day because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. "In their death they commanded us to live," the rabbis explained. Indeed, protecting our lives – both personal and national – is their legacy.
Memorial Day is not just a day for the bereaved families; each family its own day of mourning at the yahrzeit of their loved one.
Memorial Day is a collective moment in which the people embrace the fallen, including those who were murdered in terrorist attacks. We remember those who comprise the silver platter on which the state was delivered, as articulated in that famous poem.
Anyone who chose to live in this land and paid the ultimate sacrifice because of the hatred of those who want to destroy us died in order to preserve our country and make it stronger; their memory is sacred.
The terrorists have killed Jews on their way to school, blew themselves up on buses, threw Molotov cocktails and rocks and shot families to death in their sleep.
When we founded the Almagor Terror Victims Association, we were advised to call it in Hebrew, Almagor, because this means "without fear." This is also the mantra we ask the new government to follow after it gets sworn in.
After 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered, Prime Minister Golda Meir didn't pay the killers in the form of a political deal like the Oslo Accords. Rather, she hunted them down with the help of the Mossad until they were assassinated.
After an Air France plane was hijacked to Entebbe, Uganda, with dozens of Israelis on board, Israel didn't capitulate to the hijackers but launched a daring raid in order to kill them and release the hostages.
In that dreadful night in Hebron, I saw how Prime Minister Menachem Begin and other senior officials listened to Levinger's plea to expel the terrorist leaders. Not long after that speech, the very helicopter that brought the prime minister to Hebron was used to expel the terrorist inciters across the border. For the next several years, Israel enjoyed a rather calm period.
This shows that Israel knew how to conduct differently back in the day. We should do the same today, without fear.
