By Lily Lozovsky
I wanted to share some thoughts as I had as I was sitting in the auditorium yesterday. I noticed how unlike our religious holidays, Jewish national holidays, such as Yom HaAtzmaut, raise some really interesting programming questions for us as educators. There's no script like on Shabbat or prescribed theme bound up in mitzvot and symbols (ie mishloach manot, shofar or matzah). We have a blank check for how to tell the story and celebrate. There were interesting pieces of the narrative throughout the event: a booth of teens selling Israeli products (pickles and hummus), spoofs on Israeli culture, images of soldiers wrapped in tefillin, a parents' account of a chesed mission to volunteer around Israel, images of the sites and geography of the land...all beautiful and connected.
When all is said and done I guess my larger question to myself and others in the field is - Who's telling the story on Yom HaAtzmaut? What are we really trying to say? Unless the case for relevance is made, the day goes down as a wikipedia article in the Jewish narrative but never makes into the personal stories we tell day to day. Sure, we still wave the flags and eat the food and sing the songs, but when telling our story continue to say "they." What would an "Israeli" celebration look like if Diaspora Jews were actually celebrating their state? Perhaps we'd be celebrating our efforts alongside theirs... with the slideshows of soldiers we'd be watching images of our teens doing our part to support the state, we'd be singing songs that we wrote and including our inspiring innovations while listing Israel's great feats to date.
Unlike our religious holidays, we're not marking our common past. Today, like the day when it was first established, Yom Ha'Atzmaut is calling us to rejoice in our empowered present. Let's give ourselves something to celebrate.
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