Should we keep the siren? Israel’s sound of national remembrance

When the siren sounded last night, my children froze mid-movement, startled by the piercing tone that cut through our Zoom call with relatives thousands of miles away. For a moment, everything stood still. It was not just a suspension of activity — it was the split second before panic. The youngest shrieked, another shouted, “We have to run to the miklat (shelter)!”

In that first second, there was no memory or solidarity — just confusion. Until my wife collected herself. “Everyone, stand. It’s Yom HaZikaron.”

Given all of our current conditioning, this same scene of confusion and fear was what united us more than the siren itself. In some circles, there are growing calls to replace the siren with something more “distinct” — a song, more melodic, beautiful, perhaps comforting. This suggestion reveals a subtle but significant shift in cultural consciousness that merits closer consideration. Traditions can become so integrated that they lose their felt meaning. Tragedy often serves as the jolt that reconnects us to a tradition’s soul. Why a siren to begin with? It’s more than an auditory artifact — it is an archetype. A summons. A collective act of remembrance that binds us across time, belief, identity, and loss.

The Israeli national siren, introduced in the early years of statehood, has long served as a powerful ritual of collective memory. At 10:00 a.m. on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and again on Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and terror victims, the nation halts. Cars stop mid-highway. Children in schoolyards freeze. Shoppers pause. Even within the Haredi population — many of whom have legitimate reasons for resisting the practice — the siren has been adopted, integrated into prayer, or acknowledged as a potent symbolic act strong enough warranting resistance. For two minutes, the country enters a suspended state — tethered to the memory of lives lost to catastrophe. The siren does not explain or soothe. It interrupts. It demands attention not through language, but through resonance. It cuts through routine and insists on being heard. It is not merely audible; it is inhabited.

This kind of sonic rupture is neither unique to Israel nor novel. Throughout history, horns and sirens have served as cultural punctuation. They signal alarm but also awakening. In military history, the horn announced danger — and also rallied troops, proclaimed victory, and summoned courage. In literature and myth, horns unite scattered peoples and call heroes into moral and existential action. Whether Lucy Pevensie’s horn in The Chronicles of Narnia, or the battle horns of Rohan in Tolkien’s Return of the King, the horn symbolizes gathering, resolve, and orientation in the face of overwhelming forces. It calls not just individuals, but nations — into formation, remembrance, and being. In Jewish tradition, this symbolism is extended and deepened through the shofar. Its role stretches from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to the wilderness journey, the Temple service, the coronation of the king, and the liberation of the Jubilee. The shofar is not melodic and does not entertain. It is a primal cry — a fractured sound meant to awaken the soul. It recalls the Akedah, evokes the revelation at Sinai, and gestures toward redemption. Its ambiguity is its strength: it transcends narrative and resonates across emotional and theological lines.

This is precisely why replacing the siren with a song comes at a cost. Songs are powerful tools of expression and can also be archetypal — but they are more determinate. They carry melody, lyrics, and emotional cues that guide the listener toward a specific state. The siren, like the shofar, is intentionally ambiguous. It respects the internal diversity of grief. It does not prescribe; it evokes. Ironically, replacing the siren with a song would recreate the very problem critics raise this year: a mismatch of association. But we acclimate to the siren — some more quickly than others. A song, with all its specificity, would close interpretive space. Something essential would be lost.

Archetypally, the distinction matters. Mourning and trauma are too complex to be captured in a too restrictive song. The horn’s abstraction allows each person to respond from their own depth. It activates the personal unconscious through the collective. Its openness is precisely what makes the siren psychologically protective. Trauma researchers emphasize that one of the strongest predictors of harm is confronting a reality that does not fit into one’s worldview. If a person has no conceptual room for malevolence, they lack the internal tools to respond. The horn does not cause rupture—it frames it. In doing so, it calls us to action, not paralysis.

There is also a broader danger in letting such traditions quietly fade. Public rituals of remembrance do more than preserve the past—they shape a society’s civic imagination. The siren is not only about grief—it affirms continuity with the living. It binds us not just to memory, but to each other. In a time of increasing social fragmentation—religious, political, and ideological—the siren remains one of the few unifying symbols in Israel’s diverse landscape. It does not require consensus. It demands attention. In that shared attention, a collective identity—however fragile—emerges.  I saw this unfold during that Zoom call. Despite our religious and cultural differences, once we understood the meaning of the siren, another layer of connection formed. My children, startled at first, did not panic. We all stood. Not merely in reaction to the sound, but in response to the moral demand it carried. Thousands of miles away, relatives in New York—who had set alarms to match the siren—stood as well. In that moment, familial reconnection, national memory, and existential solidarity converged. The horn called, and we answered.

In an age increasingly driven by customization and personal choice, the collective siren is radically countercultural. It flattens distinctions. It does not flatter individual preference. It summons, rather than seduces. And in doing so, it preserves the memory not just of tragedy, but of our enduring capacity for unity amid division. The siren is not perfect. It is unsettling. It is disruptive. And that is precisely the point. The call to remembrance and to responsibility, to courage, and to the fragile beauty of being part of something larger than ourselves is exactly that.  A primal call.