In Israel, it is not a day of barbecues or furniture sales. It is a day when the soul of the nation stands still. A siren sounds across the country, and for two minutes, everything freezes—the highways, the schools, the shops, the homes, life itself. People step out of their cars, stand beside their shopping carts, rise from their chairs, and bow their heads.

For two minutes, an entire nation remembers.

Not in theory. Not with hashtags. But with hearts broken anew, with tears that never fully dry.

They remember the sons and daughters who never came home from the army. The friends who left for reserve duty and didn’t return. The neighbors who died in terrorist attacks. The children murdered for daring to be Jewish, daring to live in the Jewish homeland.

In the diaspora, Yom HaZikaron can feel… distant.

There are ceremonies. Prayers. Maybe a somber gathering at a synagogue or JCC. We read the names of fallen soldiers. We light candles. We cry.

And then—for too many of us—life moves on.

Emails to answer. Soccer practice. Dinner plans.

The siren’s echo fades before it ever fully reaches us.

That is the luxury—and the curse—of distance.

It is so easy for us, here in the diaspora, to forget what it cost to have a Jewish state.

To forget that the blood of 24,000 fallen soldiers lies in the ground underneath every Israeli street. To forget that every skyscraper in Tel Aviv, every olive tree in the Galilee, every book in a Hebrew bookstore stands atop sacrifice.

It is so easy to criticize Israel from the safety of a living room in Toronto, or a college campus in Boston, or a think tank in Brussels.

Easy to moralize. Easy to pontificate. Easy to wag our fingers at the Jewish state for being what every normal country is—flawed, imperfect, struggling with impossible choices.

Because we are safe.

We are safe because of Israel.

And too often, we have the gall to forget it.

We tell ourselves fairy tales about Jewish safety in the diaspora.

That it was American liberty or Canadian tolerance or British decency that finally made antisemitism obsolete.

But the graves tell another story.

The graves of the Jews of Pittsburgh and Poway.

The graves of the Jews of Toulouse and Copenhagen.

The graves of the Jews of Mumbai and Buenos Aires.

And, stretching back only decades: the unmarked graves of six million of our people across Europe—murdered while the free world debated quotas, closed borders, and shrugged its shoulders.

The truth is brutal: before Israel, the Jews were stateless wanderers, safe nowhere and at home nowhere. Before Israel, Jewish life was always one riot, one edict, one mass grave away from annihilation.

Israel changed that.

For the first time in two thousand years, there is a country that sees the spilling of Jewish blood as a casus belli, not a tragic footnote.

For the first time since the days of King David, there is a Jewish army, a Jewish government, a Jewish people that acts instead of pleads.

We did not win this miracle in a lottery.

We seized it.

We bled for it.

We are still bleeding for it.

Jewish safety is not a gift. It is a victory.

And every victory demands a price.

Yom HaZikaron is the day when we are commanded—not asked, commanded—to look that price in the face.

To see the young men and women who traded their futures for ours.

To hear the stories of parents who sent sons to defend the Jewish people and buried them with their own hands.

To sit with the unbearable truth:

We live because they died.

The miracle of Jewish sovereignty was not handed down from heaven.

It was carved into the earth by orphans and refugees.

It was paid for in every language of Jewish suffering: Hebrew and Yiddish and Arabic and Ladino and Russian and Amharic.

It was—and remains—soaked in Jewish blood.

And yet, somehow, it is still too easy for us to forget.

It is easy to demand that Israel act like an angel among nations, while the rest of the world gets to behave like wolves.

It is easy to insist on purity from the one country where Jewish life is precious and Jewish blood is defended.

It is easy to believe we have moved beyond needing Israel—until the mob shows up at our synagogue, or the university dehumanizes our children, or the politician smiles too slyly when asked about “dual loyalty.”

It is easy—until it isn’t.

October 7 reminded us what it means to be Jewish in a world that has not changed as much as we wanted to believe it did.

Twelve hundred Jews murdered in a single morning. Families incinerated. Babies butchered. Grandmothers paraded through streets as trophies.

And yet:

Israel fought back.

Israel stood.

Israel chose life.

That is the ultimate, unforgivable offense to those who hate us.

Not that we exist.

But that we refuse to die.

But it is not just Israeli Jews who owe them everything.

It is every Jew. Everywhere.

It is the Jew walking home from synagogue in Brooklyn, head held high.

It is the Jew celebrating Shabbat in Paris, even as police stand guard outside the door.

It is the Jew in Johannesburg, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Montreal — wherever a Jewish soul dares to live without apology.

The freedom of every Jew in the world is tethered to the existence of Israel.

Because Israel changed the fundamental position of Jews in human history.

Before 1948, Jews existed in purgatory.

We lived at the mercy of kings, parliaments, and mobs.

We were a guest, never a citizen. A tolerated minority, never an equal.

And if the world grew tired of us—if economic times grew hard, if political winds shifted—we were dispensable.

Scapegoats. Targets. Victims.

And there was nowhere to run.

Today, because of Israel—and because of those who gave their lives for her survival—Jews are no longer powerless.

We are no longer trapped.

We are no longer utterly alone.

A sovereign Jewish state means that no matter how dark the skies grow in Berlin, London, or New York, there is a home with lights on.

There is a home with arms open.

There is a home with tanks and planes and soldiers who will fight—and, if necessary, die—rather than let Jewish blood be spilled unanswered.

That knowledge—even if it is never spoken aloud—transforms what it means to be a Jew everywhere.

It gives strength to the spine.

It gives courage to the voice.

It gives meaning to the words, “Never Again.”

Without Israel—without those who paid the price to build and defend her—Jews in the diaspora would still be history’s orphan.

Still searching for refuge.

Still trusting that maybe this time, maybe this century, the world would keep its promises.

We have Israel because they believed we deserved better.

We have freedom because they believed Jewish life was worth fighting for.

We have dignity because they laid down their lives to buy it.

The blood of Israel’s fallen is not only in the soil of the land they died for.

It is in every mezuzah nailed proudly to a diaspora door.

It is in every Hebrew school graduation, every Jewish wedding, every menorah lit in public squares.

Their sacrifice echoes in our lives.

It breathes in our freedom.

It beats in our hearts.

Whether we live in Tel Aviv or Tulsa, we owe them the same unpayable debt.

On Yom HaZikaron, do not think for a moment that their sacrifice was for Israel alone.

It was for you.

It was for your children.

It was for the future of a people that had been pushed to the brink of extinction—and chose, against every prediction of history, to live.

Jewish freedom was never free.

Jewish freedom was never guaranteed.

Jewish freedom is what happens when a people decides it will pay any price to live.

And we—you, me, every Jew breathing free air today—are the beneficiaries of their decision.

We live because they died.

This is not poetry.

This is not metaphor.

This is history.

And it is a commandment to us: Do not forget.

Do not forget that Jewish safety without Jewish power is a lie.

Do not forget that Jewish life without Jewish sovereignty is a half-life.

Do not forget that the world that allowed the Holocaust to happen has not been reborn—it has only changed its tactics.

And above all:

Do not forget that the greatest act of love we can offer those who fell is to ensure their sacrifice was not in vain.

Let the siren echo in your soul this Yom HaZikaron.

Let it rip you out of comfort.

Let it tear down the illusions.

Let it burn away the distance between you and them.

Because we are one people.

One destiny.

One story.

Their blood runs in our veins now.

May we live lives worthy of their memory.

May we build a Jewish future worthy of their sacrifice.

And may we never—never—allow forgetting to do what our enemies could not.

Am Yisrael Chai—because they sacrificed to make it so.