Marta and Yosef Motzen were Holocaust survivors. Their son, Avremi, who was a student at the Kol Torah and Shaalavim yeshivas, fell in the Lebanon War when his tank set on fire. Immediately after the shiva, his friends decided to start a Torah class in his memory, in his parents' home. There are lots of classes set up in people's memory, but how many of those classes last for 37 years in a row? The class participants started out as boys, and today they all have grandchildren. Every three weeks, like clockwork, they arrive at the Motzen home in Petach Tikva. Avremi's father, Yosef, died a few years ago, but the class continues: some of the participants are rabbis and educators, some are businessmen, one of them is a judge - and all of their families know not to schedule any events on the night of "the class at Marta's". Marta would sit in the living room, the number from Auschwitz on her arm, sitting across from Avremi's photograph, bearing his IDF ID number. When the friends entered one by one, and the sound of Torah learning could be heard from the living room, her face lit up. "There is nothing else in the world like this," she told a reporter, "that people are so dedicated to elevating a friend's soul." That evening, after class, Marta felt ill and was hospitalized. Soon after she passed away, and she was laid to rest on Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Memorial Day. A life's journey of faith and heroism, lasting 92 years that passed through Auschwitz and Lebanon ultimately ended at the cemetery in Petach Tikva. This is the story of the Jewish Nation over the past century: The Holocaust, our Rebirth, our Torah. Our Hope.
We used to hear about the flag of Israel in the news when a country refuses to show the flag at events such as international sports competitions. In recent years that has changed in places such as Abu Dhabi and Doha. Every year I return to these powerful words of Rav Soloveitchik zt'l , which sums up Yom haZikaron better than I can: "If you ask me, how do I, a Talmudic Jew, look upon the flag of the State of Israel, and has it any halachic value? I would answer plainly: I do not hold at all with the magical attraction of a flag or of similar symbolic ceremonies. Judaism negates ritual connected with physical things. Nonetheless, we must not lose sight of a law in the Shulchan Aruch to the effect that: "One who has been killed by non-Jews is buried in his clothes, so that his blood may be seen and avenged, as it is written, 'I will hold (the heathen) innocent, but not in regard to the blood which they have shed' (Joel 4:21)." In other words, the clothes of the Jew acquire a certain sanctity when splattered with the blood of a martyr. How much more is this so of the blue and white flag which has been immersed in the blood of thousands of young Jews who fell in the War of Independence defending the country and the population (religious and irreligious alike; the enemy did not differentiate between them). It has a spark of sanctity that flows from devotion and self-sacrifice. We are all enjoined to honor the flag and treat it with respect." Whether you plan to wear blue and white this Yom Haatzmaut or not, I hope you will join me Monday night at 6:30 pm as we first acknowledge the sacrifice and then celebrate the existence of the State of Israel and the Flag of Israel.
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