delray beach orthodox rabbi

                                                                                           
                                                                                                  B"H
                            Reflections on Yom HaZikaron
                                      by Rabbi Jack Engel

There are days that don’t just appear on a calendar — they enter your soul. Yom HaZikaron is one of those days.

In most places around the world, Memorial Day is marked with sales, picnics, and long weekends. But in Israel, it’s personal. It’s not a day about the fallen. It’s a day about our fallen — sons and daughters, neighbors and classmates, the kid who bagged your groceries, the young woman who taught your child to read. Israel doesn’t commemorate Yom HaZikaron — Israel lives it.

Every family has a story. And if they don’t, they carry someone else’s as their own. Pain is shared, and grief is a communal language.

Har Herzl — the mountain of Herzl — is often called Israel’s Arlington. But it’s not a place that feels distant or ceremonial. It’s heartbreak in rows. Every stone tells a story, but it’s the fresh graves that are unbearable. You see a mother kneeling by her son’s grave, brushing off the dust as if he might wake up. You see a father standing silently, holding a photograph like it’s his lifeline. And yet, right beside them, you see people who didn’t know the fallen — strangers, showing up because in this land, there are no strangers.

Here, family isn’t defined by DNA. It’s defined by destiny.
​​​​​​​
When the siren pierces the air, time freezes. People stop in their tracks. Conversations go quiet. Drivers step out of their cars on highways. The country itself exhales in sacred silence. For one minute, the entire nation becomes one soul, grieving together.

And then, standing on a hilltop overlooking Yad Vashem, I reflect on the six million Jews who perished in the Shoah. Their deaths are still wrapped in silence and horror. They were killed simply for being Jewish, murdered by a world that didn’t care to ask why. Their deaths were not chosen, not fought for, not defended — they were robbed of life and of purpose.

But on Yom HaZikaron, the sadness is different. It still hurts — deeply. But it’s a sadness with substance. A sadness that says: their deaths were not in vain. These young men and women gave their lives not because they were hated, but because they loved. Loved their land, their people, their future.

Their sacrifice tells a story — of resilience, of rebuilding, of never again letting the Jewish people be defenseless or voiceless.

As we mourn, we also rise. We rise with a renewed sense of responsibility. We rise with hearts full of memory and hands ready to build. We rise because they can no longer rise, and it is on us to carry forward what they began.

Tehei zichram baruch — may their memories forever be a blessing. And may we be worthy of the legacy they’ve left us — to live with meaning, to protect with pride, and to build a future their sacrifice has made possible.