A Thread of Grief and Glory

In our home, my children have been singing “Giboray Al” by Hatikvah 6—a song that has echoed through many homes across Israel this year. “Not all superheroes wear capes,” it reminds us. In Israel, heroes come from every profession, every background. The medic, the teacher, the farmer, the mother. That’s who our children are singing about and look up to—and that’s who we mourn, honor, and celebrate. Our nation is one filled with more superheroes than Marvel could imagine …

Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzma’ut are not separate; they are deliberately intertwined—grief followed immediately by celebration. We mourn, then we dance. We cry, then we sing.

Our children understand – as part of Am Yisrael today- that not all superheroes wear capes. Credit: Ami Solow

There is a thread that runs through it all—grief, love, sacrifice, and resilience—woven from thousands of individual strands. Each story, each act of courage, each quiet kindness adds strength to the fabric of our people. And somehow, that thread holds even in the face of unbearable loss.

We’ve suffered unspeakable wounds—this year more than most. With 59 hostages still in captivity and a war that has not yet ended, the triumph is hard to see- the trauma is still active…the healing process is hard to comprehend. But we find it in the unity that has emerged, in the way strangers have become family, and in the unsung heroes who have stepped up in ways both big and small.

Our strength as a people has never been about denying pain. It’s about facing it fully—and choosing to keep building anyway. We recognize the power of the collective, but we also elevate the role of the individual. Every life remembered, every voice raised in hope, every thread of humanity adds to the story we are still writing.

So as we stand between memory and independence, in captivity and in freedom, between sirens and fireworks, in trauma but holding on to hope, we carry the ache with us—but also the clarity. This is what it means to be part of a resilient nation: to find triumph not only in the grand milestones, but in the quiet, sacred unity that binds us all. We mourn the loss of so many who sacrificed their lives so that we can continue to weave a tapestry far richer than any – woven from grief and glory—its final threads not torn, but transformed into roots that carry us forward in hope and purpose.