For Those Who Still Live

Tonight is Israel's Memorial Day, when we pay our respects to those who sacrificed everything so that we can live. In Shiloh we had an extremely moving ceremony. I'll blog about it at another time. My emotions are too raw right now. Here is something that suits my mood.

I wrote the following a few years ago:

Musings #13
May 22, 2003

A Club I Don’t Want to Join

The other night I was at a beautiful, joyous wedding. The bride was one of the younger daughters of people I have known since my teens. When she smiled I went back almost forty years, when I first knew her mother.

I knew quite a few people there, but not from our mutual past. These friends have something in common with the parents of the bride. They are all bereaved parents; one of their children was killed by Arab terrorists.

They are all members of a club I don’t want to join. The parents of the bride are veteran members. She befriends other parents whose children are killed to help them rejoin and regain “normal life.” Everyone could see the joy she, her husband and parents get from her surviving children and grandchildren.

The Arab terrorists murder and maim Jews. They cause great pain to the surviving family and friends, BUT THEY CANNOT DESTROY US. We are surviving, and we will always survive! We survived slavery in Egypt. We survived Haman in Persia. We survived the Greeks. We survived the Crusaders. We survived the Inquisition. We survived the Nazi Holocaust, and we will survived these murderers and all of their supporters.

I have no doubts.

Every generation has its challenges and its heroes.

Batya Medad
Shiloh