We Are All One Human Embroidery: Message for Yom HaZikaron

Aaron Frank-Ramaz Upper School 2024


When I die, something of mine will die in you


כשאמות, משהו ממני, משהו ממני

ימות בך.


כשתמות, משהו ממך בי, משהו ממך בי

ימות איתך, ימות איתך.

When you’ll die, something of yours in me, will die with you


כי כולנו, כן כולנו

כולנו רקמה אנושית אחת חיה


For we all are one living human embroidery, one human tissue.


These words from the song by Moti Hammer and made famous by Chava Alberstein resonate now more than ever.


People in this room have lost friends, relatives, and each year they cry, and each year they connect with that soul and remember. And they also connect with the part of them that died along with their loved ones. 


This year, when we are all commemorating an unimaginatively, painful Yom HaZikaron we are all sort of lost. We are all numb a bit. And this year more than ever, maybe more than any Yom HaZikaron in history, we need each other, that huge human connection of which we are all a part for strength. 


It is because while we all stand as living testimonies to our people, our history, our nation and land, part of us is gone. 


Over the 76 years of this tragic day, we have all been diminished. Part of our people’s soul and therefore part of us, has died in the Independence War, the Sinai Campaign, the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the Lebanon War, and so on, and so on up until this ongoing Iron Sword struggle.  


And we have all died a bit in countless terrorist incidents – – murders in pizza shops, in buses, on Kibbutzim and at music festivals. 


In a year where we mark over 1800 more who have died for our country and our people, we are all diminished. We have all partly died and, at the same time, part of each of those souls lives in us.  


כולנו רקמה אנושית אחת חיה

ואם אחד מאיתנו

הולך מעמנו

משהו מת בנו -

ומשהו, נשאר איתו


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