Listening to "Voice of Israel" online. Today is Memorial day in Israel. Yom Hazikaron. Never have I seen anything like the sirens sounding in Israel, and seeing everyone...stop. I mean, cars come to a stop on the freeway. People walking in public places stop and bow their heads. If people are out eating, they will put down their utensils and stop talking. And all of this...is only from me watching it on FB. I am now listening to the stories of family members of victims online...A special broadcast of Voice of Israel, dedicated to those who gave their lives.
So, on MEMORIAL DAY in Israel, everybody stops and...remembers. Wow. This is what this day is for, correct? So, the entire occasion is taken quite seriously by, the whole country. This fills me with a somber humility, that I have been pretty unaccustomed to. I think this is sad. I think it's sad that Americans (as a whole) are not sad on our Memorial Day. I'm not saying that no one here feels anything on our Memorial Day...but in honesty, that's what it feels like. Our country is huge, and I think the very fact that we are divided into states might suggest the walls we put up signifying our general "personal space" mentality.
What do typical Americans do on Memorial Day Weekend? In my experience, we rejoice over the fact that WE have a long weekend and a shorter work week. We plan picnics and barbecues, and trips to the lake...trips out of town because we'll have an extra day to have fun. We are encouraged through TV commercials to do a lot of extra shopping because stores have Memorial Day sales. We do have many parades, which are largely happy traditions where folks bring lawn chairs, and watch people clad in uniforms riding in old war vehicles, and I bet that most of us wonder who had the job of restoring these old "classics" rather commemorating those who lost their lives defending us. If we're home to see the evening news, we'll see highlights of, say rows of American flags at Arlington Cemetery, for example. The President might go there to commemorate soldiers. We DO have actual remembrances of those who've died, yes. But they seem few and far between, separated, individual, spaced out...and to most of us, they are impersonal because we are "removed" from what's going on. There seems to be very little recognition or appreciation of the millions of lives lost...the blood shed so that we could have our freedom. There might be a radio program somewhere, with sound bytes from times past. But most of us might watch war movies on TCM, while ordering take out food because it's summer time, and we love the excuse not to cook. After a while, we'll change...say..."Saving Private Ryan," if we watch it at all. We must watch "something happy" now because this is too depressing.
I've never been to Israel before, but I am now jealous because of a very defined sense of family that seems to be universally shared throughout the whole country. Now, Israel is tiny...it's a small country. But you know what? Who cares, because I want to know how this sense of everyone being connected to everyone else is achieved. Americans simply do not experience this. We are all broken off into little clusters, which can and do extend beyond our own families, yes. But even so, we are taught so much to value our own space, mind our own business, and live for the "now.". We are largely uninterested in history. We think it's pretty pointless because it's already happened.
Besides, we will do anything to keep from being depressed, or being aware of profound sadness or grief. We do not want to look death or aging in the eye (Heaven forbid). So most of us talk and analyze everything to death: We hate our government, or we don't care, because we hardly know anything about it. We watch the news for five or ten minutes, we shake our heads and say, "Oh God, how awful," while many of us are probably pretty glad that it does not affect us personally. We turn our TV's off, and seem to get offended because this sadness is ruining our pleasure.
Israeli's seem to be grateful (in a way) to remember the suffering...simply because this reminds them of immense joy. They gather together with quiet respect, showing their loved ones who've gone before, that they LOVE them. They take time. They bow their heads. They PACK cemeteries to recognize a connection, now broken...but NOT...because Israeli's keep it alive! They remember. They appreciate...and they teach their children to do the same. When I was a child, America's Memorial day, was mostly just a chance to get out of school for a day. Israel is so tiny, that whenever anyone dies in war, or terror attacks, it is always someone that everybody knows, and there is great sadness. Now as I said, geographically, things are quite different here; but what I think is tragic about the US, is the way we are so incredibly desensitized to violence and war in general, through our mass media, largely. Translation: we watch too many war "movies" and then we glorify the violence with things like academy awards, and 90% of what we see on our news has to do with some kind of violence. We shut it off, if you will...we separate ourselves from it...and we seem to forget to "feel " that it's even happened.
Now, there's nothing wrong with celebrating in general. There's nothing wrong with parades, there's nothing wrong with academy awards, I just think it's so tragic that culturally, where I come from, we keep trying to think of ways to avoid taking the bitter with the sweet. We avoid most of the bitter, rather than embracing it, and in many ways, things like Memorial Day take on a rather saccharin, detached, disrespectful tone. Remorse gives way to arguments over things people have said on Facebook. I'm unsure about anyone else, but I personally have grown weary of a deep sense of being a wanderer without an anchor. I see the deep sense of unity going on in Israel now, and seem to hunger for the "equality" and sense of agreement with each other that is flowing through the veins of her people. This is like a refreshing drink of "living" water to me. It's life, in the middle of so much death. I, from a country known for the "equality" of everyone, am asking how this is accomplished, and suddenly longing to be a part of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment