This post first appeared on the Times of Israel website.
We’re all home, doing the best we can and hoping for better days ahead. While we look to the future, we need to continually remember our past, and pay respect to those who created our history. With Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) starting tonight and then Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom Haatzmaut (Independence Day) next week, it will be more challenging for us this year. How do we show our children how important it is to remember, from the space of our own homes?
Like so much these days, these are heavy questions.
And, of course, I don’t have the answers.
A few days ago, my children were all discussing how we needed to buy a huge Israeli flag to hang outside our window. There are a number of families that have these enormous flags in our community and each spring the flags decorate the entire façade of their homes.
No problem, we told the kids. That would be great. But where would we get such a flag, particularly with so many stores closed?
Then yesterday, my oldest, resourceful son managed to find an enormous – enormous – flag. He brought it home with glee and proceeded to try to figure out how to display it on the side of our house. He found a long piece of wood and positioned the flag on it and then secured it to our porch. He unfurled the flag, and then encouraged my 9 year old to take his new (very basic) drone out to get some pictures. While the drone crashed in the course of the pictures (predictably), we did manage to get these images and to enjoy a few minutes of ooohs and aaaah as we basked in the job well done.
We can’t leave the house to go to a ceremony for Yom Hashoah. We can’t do most of the things we usually do. But we’ve got an enormous flag waving our Zionist pride in the wind. And we’ve got a house full of boys brimming with the love of their country and their people, and a desire to display that love in bold blue and white.
Today, this is my tribute to the six million Jews who are no longer with us. To all of you I say: I’m raising my own little corner of the future of our people to remember you; to pay tribute to you; and to live in the Land that you did not get to experience. They will all be called to defend this Land and its people; they will each do so with great pride and joy, and with the memory of each of you and of why they are here tucked inside their helmets and their hearts.
