The Shattered Silence

Empathy is a soft word for a hard act: to feel another’s sorrow as if it were your own. It’s not enough to know — one must feel. And that, frankly, is exhausting. In Israel, on Memorial Day — Yom Hazikaron — empathy becomes ritual. Every Israeli carries the memory of someone taken by war. When the siren sounds, the entire country freezes for two minutes of silence. Not a car moves, not a door slams. In those suspended seconds, no one is a stranger: everyone mourns. I confess that this scene, year after year, still moves me — almost restores my faith in pain as a common language.

But faith is always being tested.

On the night of Yom Hazikaron in 2025, in Ra’anana, not even that solemn day was spared. A ceremony held in a Reform synagogue — meant to honor both Israeli and Palestinian dead — was assaulted by extremists. Stones and slurs flew through windows, shattering glass and prayers alike. Entire families had to leave under police escort, fear stiffening their posture. There were injuries. There was chaos. There was desecration — in a house built to remember the fallen. For a few terrible minutes, Jews fled from Jews inside a synagogue. What had once been unthinkable became real.

Yes, there are evil people. Not mistaken, not misled — evil. They act with intention, with discipline, with ice in their veins. They call themselves patriots. But what they defend is not a country — it’s cruelty with a flag.

They shouted “traitors” at those in prayer, blind to the fact that real betrayal is sowing terror among your own. There is no moral symmetry here. Those who hurl stones at mourners defend no cause — they stain memory. And to excuse them is to erode what little decency still stands. No excuse, no explanation, no balancing act can redeem what was done.

I find myself wondering about the depth of this moral collapse.

If even the dead can no longer unite the living, what future does this land still have?