An Experience at Har Herzl

What I left out of my previous post, is that before exiting for the weekend, I was given something called a Yom Siddurim, or "day of order," with a special condition.  Brief side note: These days are entitled to soldiers, and specifically lone soldiers, in order to get things outside of the army together. In my case, it was a trip to the bank. Generally, they come once a month. End side note. The condition for the extra day to my weekend was that I would sleep in Jerusalem on Wednesday night and attend a memorial of a fallen soldier from our unit at Har Herzl, Israel's military, early on Thursday morning. I saw it as an amazing opportunity completely regardless of the Yom Siddurim and happily agreed.

These kinds of memorials happen all the time at Har Herzl. Usually on the anniversary of a soldier's death, his family will come to his grave and will always be greeted by enough soldiers from his brigade so that there is a minyan (ten adult males) in order to say the mourner's prayer, which requires one. In this particular case, the soldier had died in the late sixties, yet his sisters still came, still cried, and still stood to memorialize their brother, all this time later. We sat with the family afterward and heard a bit about his life, and it felt a bit surreal that I was a part of it.

Afterward, I made a spontaneous decision not to go home straight away and rather to look around the cemetery. Although I had been there before on school trips and programs, there was something different about the place now. After a while of going through the place and reading about the many people who are buried there, I found myself in the memorial for the Second Lebanon War and, specifically, at the grave of a famous lone soldier named Michael Levine. Michael's story is well-known and he is considered by many to be a hero, because of his determination to serve the state of Israel and to fight with his unit in the war he was tragically killed in. Although he was at the wedding of a family member at the time, when fighting broke out, he returned immediately from his trip and insisted to join his unit in operation. His grave is an interesting sight, because so many people, not even just American tourists (although they may be a large part) come to pay tribute to him and leave all kinds of things. The mixed feeling I have always had is looking at the bare graves of the soldiers on either side of him, with the very minimum to memorialize them. They may also have very heroic stories that I will never hear or know, and it is sad in a way that, as much as Michael deserves his recognition, they will never get theirs. Looking at the sight, I made a random decision to say the mourner's prayer myself. I pulled out my phone and looked it up, kneeled down, and started to pray. When I stood up, a few minutes later, I turned and saw a large Birthright group, their cameras pointing at me. They smiled, talked amongst themselves about the Israeli soldier praying at the grave. Then, they gathered around and told the story about Michael Levine. Although their coordinator spoke to me, I answered in Hebrew and didn't talk much. t didn't say anything to them.  I didn't even know what to think. It was an extremely strange moment for me to be that image, the Israeli soldier, to a tour group. No less, at the grave of someone I learned about in school and always saw as such an inspiration.

The entire journey up to the north on the bus I spent thinking about the decision I made to pack my bags and become a lone soldier. I thought about those tourists and what they thought, what I used to think, and how Brett and I had followed such a crazy goal that now is so natural to us. We are soldiers in Israel. We aren't mourning a guy we learned about at Donna Klein Jewish Academy anymore, we are mourning a brother in arms, who lost his life fighting for the same cause we have decided to stand for. Like the two soldiers on either side of him.  Like the soldier whose memorial I had been sent to attend that morning. There is a special feeling in Israel that we are all part of this together, that one loss is everyone's very painful loss. I now know what that means and to suddenly realize that I was a part of it was completely surreal.

             -  Darren