Every year, on the evening of Yom HaZikaron, the Giv’olim elementary school in Ramat Gan—near northern Tel Aviv—hosts a Memorial Day ceremony for Yom HaZikaron. Parents and students alike from the local community flock to campus and sit patiently in white plastic chairs, waiting for the school principal to announce the commencement of the ceremony which features student-led poetry, dances, and music.
The ceremony honors every student from the school who lost their life in defense of Israel or in acts of terror. In between performances, students or adults read biographies of each fallen alumnus, as their photo appears on a projection on the side of the school building. Until this year, the last addition to the list was Ido Naim, an alumnus who died in a military training exercise in 2000. This year, as in countless schools across Israel, new names will be added to the list, as the school commemorates both victims from the October 7 attacks as well as soldiers who gave their lives in the ensuing conflict in Gaza.
Though the added names, along with the continued prayers for the safe return of the hostages in Gaza, will undoubtedly add even more anguish and longing to this year’s ceremony, the ceremony remains an annual event, continually reminding students of the narrow precipice between life and death in a nation that after 76 years, still searches for acceptance from its neighbors.
Each year, the ceremony ends with a prayer for peace, yearning for a day when schoolchildren need never consider which classmates they will one day return to mourn. As we, too, commemorate Yom HaZikaron, we add our prayers to theirs. May the day soon arrive when:
“Nation shall not take up sword against nation, nor shall they ever again know war, but everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, with no one to make them afraid (Micah 4:3-4).”
— Rabbi Joshua Knobel