Janna's Jerusalem Journies: Israel Memorial day and Independence day (April 15th and 16th, 2013)

Israel's memorial day (not to be confused with the Holocaust memorial day which was a week or two earlier) kicked off at sundown on the 14th with a siren. Memorial day commemorates Israeli fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. There were tons of ceremonies around town, including a torch ceremony at the Western Wall. We didn't attend any of the ceremonies, but in the morning they sounded a 2 minute siren for a moment of silence to remember the fallen soldiers. They did the same thing on Holocaust Memorial Day. I stopped typing my midterm paper and looked away from my computer screen to participate in the moment of silence. I hate to admit this, because I feel it's a bit disrespectful, but here goes...after about 20 seconds, I bolted to the balcony to look over. We have a very busy street right below us, and I wanted to see what the moment of silence was like out there. Everyone pulled over and got out of their cars! They took their hats off and stood quietly until the siren was finished. Also, I may have taken a picture or two. UGH! I'm a horrible person. But I promise, other than that I was very respectful of the silence. In all honesty, I was very moved by it. Life is CRAZY in Israel. People say Americans speed through life with busyness...yeah right. It only takes one short ride in the traffic here to feel so stressed and overwhelmed that you never want to leave your home ever again. So it was just very powerful to see the Israelis get out of their cars on a busy street to remember those who have died.

Memorial day ended at sundown on the 15th which immediately began Independence day. Israel's declaration of independence began in May 1948. Rothberg, the international school at Hebrew University, emailed a list of events happening around town, there were a ton of options! We decided to get a group of friends together and check out a few of them.

First we went to Safra Square for a free performance of folk singing and dancing. People were wearing, carrying and waving the Israel flag, kids were spraying "silly string" (really it wasn't string, it was this weird foam stuff) on everyone (not sure I like that tradition), and everyone was generally cheerful and excited. The singing was fun, everything was in Hebrew and pretty much all the people knew the songs and sang along. Seriously, why don't we have cute songs like this in America that people just know and sing randomly? Of course we have 4th of July songs, but people aren't just singing them loudly in the streets and in bars. Are they? When we lived in Germany, they had awesome songs too (most of them were for soccer, but still!). Anyways, just thought I'd rant about that a bit.

After that we walked up Ben Yehuda to the top at King George where there was another stage with folk singing. This seemed to be a much younger crowd, but they were just as excited as the crowd at Safra Square. We joined in on some dancing and jumping before making our way to the shuk.

I have told you all about the shuk as far as my grocery runs, but did I ever mention that it is quite lively at night as well? I think I briefly talked about it when I wrote about Purim. All the stands are closed but there are a few bars and restaurants hidden in there, so it's like a whole other place at night. As fun as it is there, it was lacking some of the Independence day crazy. But we decided to stay and have a drink anyways. After an hour or two, Skye and I decided to call it an evening. It was fun to see all the events and the people out and about celebrating their country!

Independence day wasn't over until sundown the next day, and there were many events happening the next day as well. The Israel Museum had a few family events going on, and guess what else? They had free admission all day! So we decided to take that opportunity to see the rest of the museum. My gosh that thing is huge!!! It goes on forever! But it's really well done and we covered most of it. They also had four planes flying over Jerusalem and doing aerial tricks together! We had a good view from the museum for the real deal, but Skye and I had a great view of them from our balcony a week earlier when they were practicing.

We had a fun time celebrating Israel!