Leah’s Blog- Yom Hazikarone- Yom Haatzmaut – מקימי מעפר דל 2026
Leah’s Blog- Yom Hazikarone- Yom Haatzmaut – מקימי מעפר דל
A week before Yom Haatzmaut- Independence Day, Yom HaShoah- Holocaust Memorial Day comes and asks us to remember. Every year in our shule here on Itamar we light a six cupped brass candelabra my father A”H made in memory of his family and the six million that perished in Poland when he was just a young teenager. The story of my father of blessed memory is not just one of pain and loss but of heroic bravery. After righteous gentiles nursed him back to health, he joined the partisans and fought the Nazis. Little did he know then that his grandchildren only decades later would also be fighting -in Israel and on her borders Nazis of mid- eastern origin, Nazis all the same. His image carries us always through this week of remembering where we come from to – where we are going. The courageous warrior takes form again but now it is here in our Land, in our sons.
We made it.
The walk through grey pain into black has me knowing victims of terror. Too many. But a crack of light comes to meet me now at the end of this tunnel of time. It is the glaring bones of life. . -מקימי מעפר דל We have returned to the place of David; a mighty army- the Jewish warrior returns. Europe has not changed. We have. These are the counting days. We tally the Omer, the wheat ripens and consoles. Our land is adorned in white and blue. Our history has us walking out of the carnage into a land unsown, a barren land that waited and waited for its true love. The blood – the birth. Israel lives; her mountains cascading grapevines. My father ran away from Dobermans and death ditches only to have his offspring, a shoot that lives, plant trees on the mountains of Abraham Isaac and Yaakov. They said- “Jews! Go home!”
That’s just what we did.
Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut is not merely a military or even patriotic motif but a micro of the macro of our lives. Intertwined with the life force is the ever present intensity of Israel rising- against the odds. The enduring patriotic sacrifice we live is being answered now with the landscape changing- it’s looking more like Provence! It’s looking more like the Garden of Eden! (oh – it IS!) Now we return to the communities and places in Samaria that were made Judenrein in the abysmal Oslo accords. Europe can no longer dictate to Jews where to live in their land. In a loud nationalistic proclamation we have announced our return to our land covenant places- all located in the center of this tiny holy land. In memory of those fallen here in Itamar as well as all terror victims and brave soldiers who gave their lives for our independence – we carry your torch. The only way to truly heal is to build- in your names, on every hill, in every dale.
Israel is a super power today located at the heart of the world. All ways lead to and from it. If ever there was a time to choose where you stand- there is no way to not have that opportunity now. Divrei Hayamim:” For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is wholly toward Him!”
BLESSINGS DEAR FRIENDS OF ITAMAR!
We are building new neighborhoods and will soon be building new parks and playgrounds as well as many projects in agriculture, education and infrastructure. Stay tuned!
Leah
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