The Weight of the Soil: A Yom HaZikaron Encounter

I hesitated this morning before heading to the garden center. It’s Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, and the air feels different—heavy, quiet, and thick with a collective grief. My feelings were swinging between profound awe for the soldiers who gave everything for this land and the somber reality of the cost of that sacrifice.

In the end, I decided to go, thinking there is something healing about tending to things that grow.

When I arrived, I saw the man who usually helps me with my plants. The light was gone from his eyes. He was sullen, almost angry; he seemed to want to speak, to unburden himself to someone who would simply listen. He didn’t tell me who he had lost—the loss was written in the lines of his face. Instead, he spoke of a different kind of ghost: the weight of being a young soldier.

He described, with raw, haunting clarity, what it felt like to take the life—the soul—out of another human being. It wasn’t a conversation about politics or military strategy; it was a visceral, spiritual confession. He spoke of the impossible friction of combat:

The Moral Certainty: Knowing that the person in front of him represented an evil that had to be stopped.

The Moral Certainty: Knowing that the person in front of him represented an evil that had to be stopped.

The Divine Burden: The terrifying realization of the power he held in that moment—the power to end a life.

The Divine Burden: The terrifying realization of the power he held in that moment—the power to end a life.

“G-d gives life,” he said, his voice trembling with a quiet fury, “and G-d should be the one to take it.” To step into that role, even out of necessity, even for the right reasons, had left a mark on his soul that time hadn’t managed to erase.

The conversation took a turn when he began to speak about his children. The same hands that had once dealt with death had later cradled his newborn babies. He described the birth of his children as a force of nature—a powerful, overwhelming reminder of the sanctity of existence.

“I felt the fragility of life then,” he whispered, “more than I ever did on the battlefield.”

As we stood there among the flora and the scent of damp earth, the siren began. It is a sound that doesn’t just hit your ears; it tears through you. It vibrates in your chest, demanding that you stop, exhale, and remember.

In that moment, the garden center fell dead silent. Everyone stood frozen. I closed my eyes and felt the sheer scale of the moment. I thought about the millions across the country—in offices, on highways, in kitchens—all stopping at the exact same second. A whole nation held its breath.

My mind drifted to the men and women currently on the front lines in Gaza and Lebanon. Do they hear it? Does the siren reach them? If they can’t hear the physical sound, I wondered if they feel the shift in the atmosphere—the sudden, heavy psychic weight of a country turning its gaze toward them and their fallen brothers. I thought of the pilots high above us, patrolling the blue. Do they hear that piercing wail in their headsets? Or are they suspended in a silent, solitary vigil?

The siren eventually faded, leaving a ringing silence in its wake. A man in his 40s was standing next to me. he took a few extra seconds to come out of his silent vigil, his eyes still fixed on something far away even as the world began to move again. When he finally stood up straight and looked toward me, I said, “Thank you for your service.” He nodded graciously.

I left the garden center with more than just plants. I left with a reminder that behind every siren and every name read on the news, there are people carrying stories we can’t imagine. On this Yom HaZikaron, we honor those who fell. But we must also hold space for those who returned—the ones who walk among us, tending gardens and raising families, while carrying the heavy, complex memory of what it takes to protect a nation.

Today, we remember the fallen. And today, I pray for the peace of those who still carry the battle within them.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)