A celebration … with precautions
Bergen County Yom Ha’atzmaut Experience features pride, hope, and security
Israelis are used to emotional lability.
That term — a person’s ability or tendency to slide quickly from one mood to another, wildly different one — often is used to described unhealthy mental conditions, but in practice, in Israel, it’s done on purpose.
It’s what Israelis face as they move from Yom HaZikaron, which begins on the evening of April 20, to Yom Ha’atzmaut, which starts at sundown the next day. Yom HaZikaron is a solemn, even somber day that asks Israelis — and Jews around the world — to think about each soldier who was killed defending the Jewish state, and now each victim of terrorism as well, as personally and as individually as possible, because every fallen soldier or murdered hostage or terrorist victim was a person, a world, and that world now is gone.
Then the next evening brings Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day, a time to celebrate the state and its people; its successes, its vibrancy, its food and wine and art, and its survival.
Moving from one to the other demands a kind of emotional lability that keeps people sane, because both sets of facts and emotions are true.
The Bergen County Yom Ha’atzmaut Experience, returning for its fourth year, will mark Yom HaZikaron, delight in Yom Ha’atzmaut — and add another commemoration, specific to this year. (See box.)
The United States is marking its 250th birthday. That will be part of the Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut gathering. “It will be a combined program,” its chief creator, Rabbi Chaim Strauchler of Congregation Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck, said. Its theme is “Freedom and Hope.”
It will also be shaped by the experiences of the last few years, of the barbarity of October 7, of the trauma of its survivors, and of the changed situation in which Jews in the United States and around the world find ourselves.
It will also be shaped by the new technology that flourishes around us.
“We are going to remember the stories of soldiers and civilians who were killed because they were Jewish in Israel, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of America, and we will recognize that America and Israel are connected this year, more than any other year,” Rabbi Strauchler said. “In terms of the war in Iran, in terms of the sources of Israel’s democracy and its culture and its values and its hopes, which are very much rooted in the grand experiment that is American democracy.”
Part of planning a large celebration is taking care of practical concerns. When he started to think about the first Yom Ha’atzmaut celebrations, Rabbi Strauchler had hoped to include fireworks, but fireworks are so inherently dangerous that it costs a great deal of money to use them.
That’s where technology came in.
“For the last three years, I’ve been using drones instead,” Rabbi Strauchler said.
So, does that mean that local hobbyists bring their precious creations with them and let them fly? Rabbi Strauchler laughed. The short answer to that question is no.
He works with a company that specializes in drone shows, he said. Drones can tell a story, as the most sophisticated fireworks do, but it’s much safer and can be much more controlled. Drones are in some senses like fireflies. They’re utilitarian objects, generally unimpressive to the nontechnical eye, but when they light up, they’re glorious.
“This year, the story is very much the story of a nation under attack, that defends itself, that is able to withstand that attack, and is able to thrive in the face of adversity,” Rabbi Strauchler said. “We will use images of a lion to tell that story in the sky.”
He and the other planners also are learning from experience. Last year, he said, the drone show began a little too early. It was just starting to get dark. “People told us that we should have waited another 20 minutes,” Rabbi Strauchler said. “We got the message. We’re not starting the show just as the sun sets.”
There will be 200 drones, he said; “they’re all coordinated through a computer program, and it’s almost like you turn the sky into a movie theater.”
The plan for the evening calls for music by Shlomo Lipman, a 26-year-old Israeli IDF reservist — he was in the Golani Brigade — and musician who went viral soon after October 7, when he sang at the wedding of another IDF soldier who hadn’t been able to go home for the ceremony. It was unplanned, it was immensely emotional, and it went straight to people’s hearts.
Rabbi Strauchler is excited about having Mr. Lipman sing in Bergen County, but he’s also realistic. “We are very much aware of the fact that it’s a moving situation in Isreal.” Travel in and out of the country isn’t easy — it isn’t always particularly safe — “and so we know that we can’t guarantee that our plan will come through.
“Fortunately, we also have a backup plan.”
Because antisemitism is rising in the country, and because there is a great deal of anti-Zionism around as well, the evening’s planners are being very careful. “We work very closely with the Community Security Service” — CSS is a nonprofit, nonpolitical Jewish organization that consults on safety — “and with Teaneck and Bergen County police,” Rabbi Straucler said.
And because of security needs, he’s not saying where the program will be held. “We hold back that information until people register, and then we want your name and credit card information,” he said. Tickets are just $10 each, but “when you have 5,000 people come,” as they did last year, “you have to take precautions.”
Last year’s program was more somber, Rabbi Straucler said. “We focused on the stories of six soldiers who had personal or family connections to Bergen County.” The war in Gaza was still going on then, and hostages still were in captivity there. “This year, we are trying to establish a connection to celebrate the freeing of the hostages. That part of the story shouldn’t get lost.
“And then at the end, there will be dancing,” he added.
The program is aimed at the entire Jewish community, and Rabbi Strauchler hopes that everyone — Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, nonaffiliated — will come together. The Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey was a founding supporter, he said, and B’nai Akiva has been helpful too.
Rabbi Strauchler returned to the message behind the practicalities. “We believe very strongly in the positive sense of what America means to us as American Jews,” he said. “We see something seamless about America’s connection to Israel, which is under attack today.
“That is something that we want to fight against.”
What: Freedom and hope — the Bergen County Yom Ha’atzmaut Experience
When: On Tuesday, April 21, at 6 p.m.
Where: In Bergen County; specifics available at registration
To register: Go to www.rinat.org/yhe
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