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Rabbi Aaron Rubinstein

Memorial

"Zachor! - Remember" - Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you left Egypt. Remember what God did to Miriam. Remember the Shabbat day to make it holy. Our Torah charges us to remember key events that continue to shape us.

A Brief History of Memorial Day (courtesy of wikipedia)

According to Yale History Professor David Blight the first Memorial Day, originally called "Decoration Day", was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. The freed slaves reinterred the dead Union soldiers from the mass grave to individual graves, fenced in the graveyard and built an entry arch declaring it a Union graveyard; a very daring thing to do in the South shortly after North's victory. On May 30, 1868 the freed slaves returned to the graveyard with flowers they had picked from the countryside and decorated the individual gravesites, thereby creating the first Decoration Day. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

Boalsburg, Pennsylvania was credited with being the birthplace of Memorial Day because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter. Additionally, it is likely that the friendship of General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan, who led the call for the day to be observed annually and helped spread the event nationwide, was a key factor in its growth. Impressed by the way the South honored their dead with a special day, Logan decided the Union needed a similar day. Reportedly, he said that it was most fitting; that the ancients, especially the Greeks, honored their dead, particularly their heroes, by chaplets of laurel and flowers, and that he intended to issue an order designating a day for decorating the grave of every soldier in the land, and if he could he would have made it a holiday.

Logan had been the principal speaker in a citywide memorial observation on April 29, 1866, at a cemetery in Carbondale, Illinois, an event that likely gave him the idea to make it a national holiday. On May 5, 1868, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, a veterans' organization, Logan issued a proclamation that Decoration Day be observed nationwide. It was observed on May 30 of that year; the date was chosen because it was not the anniversary of a battle. The tombs of fallen Union soldiers were decorated in remembrance of this day. Many of the southern states refused to celebrate Decoration Day, due to lingering hostility towards the Union Army and also because there were very few veterans of the Union Army who lived in the South. A notable exception was Columbus, Mississippi, which on April 25, 1866 at its Decoration Day commemorated both the Union and Confederate casualties buried in its cemetery.

The name of "Memorial Day" was first used in 1882. It became more common after World War II, and was declared the official name by Federal law in 1967. On June 28, 1968, Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved three holidays from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend and for the first time recognized Columbus Day as a federal holiday. The holidays included Washington's Birthday (which evolved into Presidents' Day), Veterans Day, and Memorial Day. Memorial Day was moved from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. The law took effect at the federal level in 1971. After some initial confusion and unwillingness to comply at the state level, all the states adopted the measure within a few years, although Veterans Day was eventually changed back to its traditional date.

Stepping Back to Consider the Cultural Horizon

I wonder: what happens to a Holy day when you move it to a Monday in order to create a convenient three day holiday. Is there a cost? Sure, you can score some excellent shopping deals, on wonderful credit terms, but what happened to the communal gesture of memory? True, we have a tough time with somber tones - but our ancestors would surely be dismayed with our modern rendering of their efforts. They would put off by the excessive materialism, and they would be rankled by the casual politicization of the observance, the willingness of politicians to jingoistically wrap themselves in the flag. When we speak of a cultural or spiritual imperative, of a mitzvah, what does it mean to remember? Memory embraces gratitude and mourning.

When I hear the word Memorial, my cultural instincts take me back to yizkor. That's why I feel a disconnect when the ballplayers pause to take in the military fly-over (wow!), and resume play after after several "sanctified seconds.” I'm a consumer, along with most everyone else (resistance is futile!), but when our civic observance kneels before the cash register, I believe our culture is becoming impoverished. Please pardon me when I bristle at the presidential Lent - like gesture of foregoing golf in order to honor the fallen. Images of our fallen heroes just don't juxtapose well with such banal "sacrifice.” Blood and treasure, to use the current coin of the realm, is not meant to be trivialized.

Regardless of our personal political orientation, regardless of our stance toward the wars in which our soldiers are engaged, the minhag haMakom -the custom of our place should evoke reverence and reflection. We owe our soldiers a tremendous debt. Hakarat HaTov - acknowledging the good is not only about Arlington and other sacred shrines. It's about support and care for the wounded (on this front, our leadership has badly fallen short). It's about paving the way toward new opportunities for our soldiers as they reintegrate into our communities. Our freedoms have been bought at a high price, and we must guard those freedoms zealously.

Closing with Some Words of Reflection from Yehuda Amichai

Amichai wrote a series of short poems called Seven Laments for the War-Dead. Below is the first of those selections.

Mr. Beringer, whose son
fell at the Canal that strangers dug
so ships could cross the desert,
crosses my path at Jaffa gate.

He has grown very thin, has lost
the weight of his son.
That's why he floats so lightly in the alleys
and gets caught in my heart like little twigs
that drift away.

yehi zichram baruch - may their memories endure as a blessing.