Local News
May 9, 2008
Beth Tfiloh Baseball Scores Big
Community observes Israel’s day for its fallen soldiers.
Maayan Jaffe
Staff Reporter
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A siren, loud and long and heart-rending. Seven candles. Somber music. An Israel Defense Forces helmet atop a table, draped in black. “Lizkor,” read the sign in front. “Remember.” Last Tuesday night, May 6, marked the beginning of Yom HaZikaron, the day of remembrance for Israel’s fallen soldiers. A community-wide commemoration organized by the Baltimore Zionist District brought 400-500 people to Pikesville’s Beth El Congregation to remember those who fought and died for Israel.
“People were there from the right, the left and the middle,” said Fran Sonnenschein, the BZD’s director of programming and education.” But the ceremony wasn’t about that. It was about getting everyone together to remember these brave people.”
The event began with the cry of a siren — the same type of siren that sounds throughout Israel annually for two minutes on Yom HaZikaron. The people in the room stood in silence for its entirety, just as Israelis do.
The rest of the evening was divided into seven parts — one for each candle and for each Arab-Israeli war. The first candle, lit by Israeli Lt. Col. Eyal Bar-Or, represented the 6,000 Jews who fell during the 1948 War of Independence. The second candle, lit by Mira and Nick Dahan, represented the Sinai Campaign of 1956 and the 231 soldiers who died in the fighting.
The third candle was lit by Jewish activist Shoshana S. Cardin, in remembrance of the 700 Israeli soldiers who died during the 1967 Six Day War. Others were lit for the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the first Lebanon War that began in 1982, the second Lebanon War in 2006, and in honor of all of the victims of Arab terrorism attacks in Israel.
In between the candle lightings were music and poetry. The Krieger Schechter Middle School choir performed three songs, while the HaZamir Baltimore Jewish High School Choir sang twice. And there were two poignant musical pieces presented by Stav Livni, an Israeli singer living in Baltimore.
“I was told to find a way to live with a void. ... I was told not to hang onto the past. ... But I wasn’t told that in order to live you have to decide, one has to decide to live. ... And to decide to live, hurts as much as to die,” read Jake Ferentz, from the poem “Things They Never Told Me,” written by a parent who lost a child in one of Israel’s wars.
Tears fell. Sobs sounded. Heads shook.
“Give us strength,” read Molly Lipton from the poem “Give Us Strength,” after the lighting of the final candle, “to plant the seeds of tomorrow in the battlefields of yesterday.”