The siren is memory in the present tense

We’re waiting for the siren.

The one we can actually anticipate for Yom HaShoah.

The one that will rise and hold the air in place for one full, aching minute.
A siren that doesn’t send us running — but roots us to the ground.

But it’s hard to brace for that siren — the one of memory —
when we’ve been living inside a year and a half of other sirens.
Sirens that scream warnings, not remembrance.
Sirens that jolt us awake and scatter our children.
Sirens for rockets from Gaza.
Sirens for missiles from Iran.
Sirens for drones from Yemen.
Sirens in Tel Aviv, in Naharia, in Jerusalem, in Netiv HaAsara. I across the country from root to tip.
Sirens during weddings. Funerals. School drop-off. Coffee.

We don’t even flinch anymore.
We just move.
Like a reflex. Like breathing.

And yet, this siren — the Yom HaShoah siren — will land differently.
Not because it’s louder.
But because it makes everything else go silent.

The traffic will stop. The country will freeze.
Even the wind will seem to hold its breath.

Because this siren doesn’t wail — it summons.
It stretches across time like a thread pulled tight through history.
It doesn’t ask for your attention — it just takes it.
It is not just a sound. It is scar tissue ripped open again.
It is memory in the present tense.

In so many ways we are stronger than we’ve ever been.
A sovereign nation. A revived language. A people who planted forests in the dust.
But we are not at peace.
Not in our bodies. Not in our spirits.

Since October 7, we keep burying our dead.
We’ve prayed for our hostages.
We’ve held each other in shiva houses and bomb shelters and protest lines.
We’ve fought.
We’ve fractured.
We’ve stood back up.

And we are encircled again.

In 2024 alone, the ADL recorded over 9,000 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. —
the highest number in recorded history.
That’s more than 25 acts of hatred a day.
More than one every hour.

Assaults. Threats. Swastikas. Canceled lectures. Screamed slurs.
Jewish students exiled from campuses.
Holocaust survivors silenced in the streets.

So how do we hold both?
The moment of sacred silence —
and the noise that never seems to stop?

How do we keep our tent open to others when we’re afraid it might collapse on top of us?
How do we listen when it feels like the world has stopped listening to us?

How do we keep our hearts soft and tender when outside our tent is raging wilderness and the jackal are closing in.

And what do we ask of each other now?

Are we meant to remain two tribes — one in the Diaspora, one in the Land — for the sake of diversity, resilience, survival?

Or are we being called home?

Because we are a people who live inside the argument.
We don’t silence dissent — we preserve it.
The Talmud holds every voice, even the ones overruled.
We wrestle, just as Jacob did — and we are named Israel.

And we are still wrestling now.

With who we are.
With who we’ve been.
With who we must become.

But the siren is coming.

And so is the next one.
And maybe the one after that.
But so is something else.

Because we have lived through fire.
We have carried our dead.
And still — we bless the bread.
Still — we build.
Still — we teach our children to love.
Still — we rise.

So I’ll ask — not with certainty, but with love:

Jews in the Diaspora — is it time to come home?
Or is our survival still braided across oceans, grounded in both rootedness and reach?

Whatever the answer may be, let us keep asking.
Let us keep listening.
Let us keep remembering who we are.

Because the siren will sound.
And so will we.