Fireworks

I promised fireworks, and here they are.

One July 4 about 15 years ago, my friend Nili and I had a day off from the solar plant we were building in the desert near Las Vegas. After a super hot day in desert sun, it was cooling slowly. We went out in the sultry evening and found a ridge overlooking the city. From our vantage point we saw fireworks in every direction, a colorful sight we still reminisce about.

On Yom Ha’atzmaut in 2021, shortly after moving to Modiin, my husband and I discovered fireworks being launched from the end of our block! All we had to do was walk past the corner. As the fireworks burst brightly overhead, we fell into long conversations with our new neighbors. Everyone stayed till the very end, clapping and cheering each new launch.

The next year Modiin followed the growing trend and banned noisy fireworks for the sake of traumatized soldiers. We went to a hilltop overlooking the one central location launching those “quiet” fireworks. Families crowded the hilltop and the arena itself, enjoying the lights.

In the years since then, years of Covid and war, there were no fireworks at all. So many of us are traumatized, whether as soldiers fighting in the IDF or just civilians waiting out the bombs and missiles in safe rooms and bomb shelters. Even the televised celebration marking the end of Memorial Day and the beginning of Independence Day didn’t light up the Jerusalem sky with fireworks this year. Instead, they had a drone display.

Such a difference between July 4 in the US and Independence Day in Israel. The name itself, “July 4,” is already distanced from the event it remembers. My US friends just treat it as a long weekend, and don’t watch fireworks or parades. Here in Israel, many still remember the first Independence Day in 1948, or, like me, remember when Israel was just 15 or 20 years old. We celebrate, we watch that televised event, we party, we get together with our families.

I love fireworks. The bright lights and the surprising booms, the colorful displays, I could watch them every year with joy and anticipation. I doubt I will ever see them in the US again, since none of my friends are interested. And I wonder if Israel will ever go back to the fireworks with joy and celebration.