Every morning at 8 A.M., the elementary school I attended would hold roll call in the courtyard, and one of the students, sometimes me, would go the loudspeaker and recite the daily Psalm – for instance, "Today is the fifth day of the week, on which the Levites in the Temple recited ..."
That is how our days began for eight years – with a religious/national ceremony at an supposedly secular school in Tel Aviv. Similarly, the "welcoming the Sabbath" class was the last class every Friday. For that, we dressed in blue and white – the national colors, which were also the colors for festive clothing.
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In second grade, we had a "giving of the Torah" ceremony at which we received our first Bible from the principal. On Tu Bishvat we had a tree-planting ceremony, and on Shavuot we had a ceremony of offering the first fruits.
On Memorial Day, Melly Bronstein would sing about Dudu with the curly forelock. I don't remember the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony as clearly, but for both of these memorial ceremonies, we word blue and white and stood silently at attention.
Our childhoods were full of ceremonies, all of them national or religious/national. We thought that was normal. We weren't familiar with any other reality. Those were the days when the nation's team spirit was being forged, and that was what the ceremonies were meant to do. In retrospect, some were forced, even ridiculous.
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Whether or not our team spirit was actually forged, the plethora of ceremonies is still part of Israel. It has more ceremonies than any other country, just as it has more memorials. Maybe there isn't a holiday every day, but there is a ceremony every day. The army, of course, is the leader in this – swearing in new recruits at the Western Wall or Masada, graduation ceremonies for courses and the Beret March, in which parents now participate as well.
If the ritualization of life could be understood in a young, hesitant country, it has become pathetic and ridiculous in a country that's approaching 80. And it has reached new heights these days. A yahrzeit for a war that hasn't yet ended – that's something we haven't seen before.
A country that is already bleeding and scarred is now in an uproar over nonsense – who is in favor of the ceremony organized by Transportation Minister Miri Regev, and who is in favor of the one being organized by model and TV host Rotem Sela. It's the former army spokeswoman versus the former spokeswoman for Tornado air conditioners.
Will singer Shlomo Artzi attend the alternative ceremony, and what will Aviv Geffen sing there? Will singer Eden Ben Zaken attend the "government" ceremony? Will people go to the one in Ofakim or the one in Tel Aviv? Will they take place with or without an audience? What will the ceremony look like and who will emcee it?
How many of the hostages' families will attend the "government" ceremony and how many will boycott it? Whoever is on God's side, come to me, and whoever is with Benjamin Netanyahu, go to Regev's ceremony. The Ashkenazim are with Sela and the Mizrahim with Regev. In another moment, we'll have a civil war here.
It's been a long time since there has been such an impassioned debate here. Yet it all revolves around a ceremony that hasn't yet happened for a war that hasn't yet ended. Uproar in Israel is always over the most marginal issue, superficial and hollow, utter triviality. Anything to escape dealing with the truly fateful issues that nobody wants to address.
Why is it even important to hold a ceremony on October 7? Is there anyone who doesn't remember? And has anyone learned any lessons from it?
For the families who are mourning, the mourning is still at its height. All other Israelis are busy with their lives. And despair reigns over everyone. So what do we do? We ignore everything and go to war over a ceremony. If it weren't so sad, it would be funny, grotesque, a comedy that could have been written by Hanoch Levin.
Since October 7, Israel has been wallowing nonstop in October 7. There has yet to be a news program that doesn't wallow again in that day – the longest day in Israel's history, the day that still hasn't ended.
Yet this, too, is meant to repress, deny and escape what really matters. We'll wallow in the past, and then we won't have to think about how to extricate ourselves from it. We'll play the victim to the hilt, and then we won't have to deal with the victims of our own horrific crimes.
October 7 doesn't need a ceremony. It's still alive and well, dead and held hostage. It's present all the time.
But when the ceremony is the most important thing, when it is the experience that shapes our consciousness, it's clear that people here are fleeing the news. People don't want to look reality straight in the face, they would rather focus on the ceremony. Whether there is one ceremony, or two, or 10 – that's what's important right now?
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