On April 15, 1945, British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. Sixty-thousand prisoners were living in the camp when the troops arrived, most of them seriously ill. Thousands more lay dead and unburied on the camp grounds. Five days after the liberation, the sick and starving survivors gathered for their first Shabbat service since the fires of destruction began.
The Jewish chaplain to the British second army, Rav L. H. Hartman, led the service. Recording it for posterity was BBC reporter Patrick Gordon Walker. Knowing they were being recorded, it seemed those survivors wanted to send a message to the world. They gathered what little strength they had and sang an earlier version of what was to become Israel’s national anthem, Hatikva, The Hope.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syUSmEbGLs4
The passion mixed with pain in their voices made the words resonate in such a deep and powerful way. It was clear that such a passion could never be extinguished. What then gives strength to a people who had witnessed the greatest evil, felt it burnt into their own flesh, and yet still believed there was hope?
The secret may lie in the fact that they were a people that did not become a people because they lived together, or spoke the same language or even looked alike. They were a people that became a nation because G-d ordained it to be so. They came out of Egyptian slavery and after trials and tribulations received their mandate and their land. So it would be after their exodus from the valley of the shadow of death. Comprehending the presence of the Divine in the fires of Europe remains a mystery, but not so with their miraculous return and rebirth within their ancient land.
Israel’s independence was achieved by the sacrifices of so many who possessed that passion. It is a fire that burned in the hearts of the pioneers who dried the swamps and the underground who risked their lives against the British forces who had closed the gateways into the land. It still burns in the hearts of the young people volunteering for the elite units in the army and in those who build outpost after outpost in the hills of Judea and Samaria. Yet clearly these successes can be confused as being simply the achievements of men and women with great courage and tenacity . Removing such ideas was part of the cleansing that was needed after the exodus form Egypt ,in order to prep[re the people for the revelation of G-d at mount Sinai. As a result very day of the counting of the omer brought them one step closer and one step higher in the national and personal spiritual journeys of this people.
In the midst of that counting of 49 days lays the month of “ Iyar “ . It is the bridge which gathers together the powers of physical liberation experienced at the Exodus from Passover and prepares the people for the spiritual liberation at the foot of Mount Sinai during the month of Sivan.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook wrote years before the declaration of the State of Israel regarding the month of Iyar; “ The Month of Iyar, a month described in the ancient books as a month that absorbs the delicate structure of Israelite independence ( the national entity born out of Egypt on Passover) together with the Higher sensitivity of the spiritual light of torah ( received at Mount Sinai on Shavuot) .
What was in the past will be again in the present and the future. The month of Iyar will again prepare the people for the spiritual revelation yet to come. YomHaatzmaut ( Israel Independence day) and Yom Yerushalayim ( Jerusalem day) both ensconced in the month of Iyar are the building blocks of such a revelation. Yet we are still in the midst of this process. As a result there are still many Jews that see the Day of Independence as a celebration of human victory. It is fascinating that this view is shared by the segments of our people that call themselves secular and those that call themselves Haredi. They both see Yom Haatzmaut as a day celebrating human prowess. That is the reason one side celebrates and the other rejects it. Yet the time is fast approaching wherein they will realize that it is and always has been a day that celebrates G-d’s hidden and revealed miracles . Miracles that celebrate G-d’s bringing the skeletons out of the ovens of Auscwitz and giving them the sinews , the flesh and the ruach ( ezekiel 37) they needed to flourish again.
It is then that they will declare and sing together on Yom Haatzmaut” not by might , nor by strength but by My Ruach says HaShem Tzvakot”