Memorial Day

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, May 27, 2006

When we read about child sacrifice in ancient societies we are horrified and repulsed. What could motivate parents to allow this to be done to their beloved children? How could a society believe that its well being and survival are dependent on the death of its young? Recently though, in a commentary on this week's Torah portion, an American Jewish writer, David Mamet, compared the deaths of young English and German soldiers, the most advanced armies of their times, in the trenches of World War I, to the sacrifices to the sun god so common in ancient times. Both, he argues, were meant to assuage the anxieties of their elders.

The census in this week's Torah portion is not merely informational. Moses is not just curious, say, how many Israelites are there? In an organized and methodical way he is counting only the men and only those over the age of 20, those able to bear arms, in anticipation of the battles that the Israelites will face in entering Canaan. In other instances in the Bible, attempts to take a census of the people are also related to conscription, and upcoming battles. In the time of King David, for example, after ten months of travel throughout the country, David's officer Yoav declared that Israel has some 800,000 soldiers ready to draw the sword in addition to the 50,000 in David's own tribe of Judah. Some scholars argue that it is this tie to military adventures, that causes God to respond so negatively to human attempts at counting the Israelites.

When God counts the people, according to the rabbis, it is because they are God's treasured possession. When we have something that we cherish, they explain, we take it out often, and lovingly count and recount it. This is God's attitude towards the Jewish people and why there are four separate enumerations of the people under God's direction in the Bible. This is contrasted with human kings, who in the rabbis experience, seldom cared how many soldiers they lost in battle, the soldiers being merely instruments for the fulfillment of their goals and objectives and not individuals valued in and of themselves.

In Israel, Memorial Day, Yom Hazikaron, comes the day before Israeli Independence Day and the two are seen as directly related.

With Israel's Independence more recently won and with threats to Israeli's security in every decade of its existence, the sacrifices made by those who have died in military service are appreciated and recognized. When I lived in Israel as a student, just after the Yom Kipppur Way, the poem read at the commemoration programs was Magash Hakesef, the Silver platter by Natan Alterman. The poem describes the thoughts of two young soldiers who have been killed in battle. They stand and greet the people: "we are the silver platter on which the Jewish State has been handed to you".

Memorial Day in Israel is not a three day weekend, experienced by most people as a day for picnics or shopping at the sales. Everyone knows someone who has lost his or her life, everyone is involved in some act of remembrance or of comforting mourners, and the whole society stops in respectful silence. It felt important to me, that in an America at war, where soliders, young and older, are sacrificing their lives almost daily, we take note as well.

In the Bible there is a positive ending to this story. The Levites who in Moses' time were dispatched to guard the tabernacle, to stand at its perimeter and forcefully prevent the incursion of outsiders, (remember we read last night- hazar hakareiv yumat, the stranger who crosses the bounds will be put to death), these Levites take on a new role in the Temple which Solomon constructs. No longer concerned about the security of the sacred precincts, they become musicians. God's holiness is upheld not by violence, but by moving the people through song to reverence and respect. Picking up on this theme the Israeli poet Yhudah Amichai wrote: "After we beat swords into plowshares, let us beat the ploughshares into musical instruments. That way, before they start a war, they'll have to beat the musical instruments back into ploughshares before they can beat them back into swords."