Yom Ha'atzmaut Sermon 2026

At sundown on Tuesday, Israel observed Yom HaZikaron, the day for the fallen. A siren sounded across the country and everyone stopped. Cars on the highway. Shoppers in the supermarket. For two minutes, a country mourned together. And then, before the grief could settle, the day ended. Memorial Day became Independence Day. The flags went up. The parties began.

This is not how grief works here. In America, our Memorial Day and Independence Day celebrations couldn’t be less directly connected. We compartmentalize. Israel does something else. Israel insists that the celebration cannot be honest unless the cost is named first. The siren on Tuesday made Wednesday possible.

I want to talk tonight about what the two Yoms ask of us, here in Topeka, in 2026. I know many of us have a complicated relationship with the current Israeli government. Some of us read the news with our jaw clenched. Some of us argue with relatives. Some of us have been quieter about Israel lately than we used to be, because we don't know how to defend everything happening there. I understand it. I share some of it.

But the two Yoms are not asking us to defend a government. They are asking us to remember our peoplehood.

The names read this week on Yom HaZikaron, more than 25,000 of them, did not die for a coalition agreement. They died for the proposition that there is one place in this world where Jewish life is not contingent on the goodwill of others. They died for the idea Hannah Senesh wrote about in her diary before she parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe and was executed by firing squad at twenty-three. They died for the idea that a Jewish child, in any generation, in any country, should have a homeland that is theirs, so no Jew can ever again be made stateless to be murdered by a country that was supposed to protect them.

That idea is bigger than any prime minister. It will outlast this government, and the next one, and the one after that.

Israelis understand this. They argue with their government constantly. They protest by the hundreds of thousands. They write op-eds that would be considered radical here. They fully participate in the democratic process. They protest Bibi and then fly combat missions in an F-35, because they know the difference between a government and a country. Between a coalition and a covenant.

We have the same obligation, and we have it from a long way off. The Talmud teaches kol Yisrael areivim zeh la-zeh, all Jews are responsible for one another. The word areiv means more than "responsible." It means we have signed each other's loan. We have pledged ourselves as collateral. When something happens to a Jew anywhere, it has happened to us.

What does that look like in Topeka?

It looks like showing up. It looks like sending our kids on Israel trips. It looks like reading Israeli news, not just American news about Israel. It looks like making the trip even when it is uncomfortable. It looks like donating to the organizations building the Israel we want to see. It looks like being honest with our non-Jewish friends about what Israel is and what it is not, even when that conversation costs us because so many lies and so much propaganda has been spread our discourse feels poisoned.

It does not look like silence. Silence is what the world wants from us right now. Silence is the easiest gift to give, and the most expensive one.

The grief of October 7^th and the war that followed is still in this room, and so is the work of rebuilding from it. Families in Israel lit candles on Tuesday and danced on Wednesday because that is what we do. We hold the grief and the hope at the same time. We mourn and we plant.

Tonight, the Shabbat we welcome is the same Shabbat that has already arrived in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and Sderot. We are one people praying one liturgy in two hundred countries and one homeland. The two Yoms remind us that the homeland exists because Jews gave their lives for it, and it endures because Jews keep showing up. From Topeka, that means we keep showing up too.

Shabbat shalom.