Price of a State, the Privilege of a Nation Returned as Sovereign in their Homeland

Avi Abelow

Memorial Day Candles (Photo by IHershkovitz Pikiwiki Israel, CC BY 2.5)

Every year, I share the same message during this sacred week between Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron: Holocaust Memorial Day is the mourning for the price we paid for not having a state. Israel Memorial Day is the mourning for the price we pay because we do.

This year, those words hit even harder. After October 7th, we don’t need reminders of the cost. Almost every single family carried it with them—with only one level of seperation from the names of the fallen, the faces of the hostages, the impact in the wounded, in the cries of parents who will never again hug their children.

We are a wounded nation all going through trauma, even before the post part. But we are not a broken one.

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the Chief Rabbi of Efrat, once told a story that I can’t stop thinking about.

He visited a family in Efrat who had made Aliyah, and who had lost their son—a soldier in the IDF.

When he entered their home, he expected grief, perhaps even bitterness. But what he saw surprised him.

There was sorrow, yes, but also acceptance. A quiet strength. He assumed they would say, “This is the price we pay for coming to Israel.”

But instead, they said something so much deeper:
“This is the privilege of being in Israel.”

That takes extraordinary faith. Not everyone can internalize or say that.

Not blind faith, but the kind forged in the fire of Jewish history.

The kind that understands that the dream of generations does not come without sacrifice—and that sacrifice itself is a sign that the dream is alive.

We are not victims. We are builders. We are defenders. We are warriors. We are sovereign.

As we enter Israel Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron tonight, we remember the fallen not only with tears and sadness, but also with pride, through the tears.

Every single name is a world. Every soldier and victim of terror stood in the breach for us. And because of them, we stand tall today. We owe them more than memory—we owe them the resolve to ensure their sacrifice wasn’t in vain.

And then, as the sun sets tomorrow evening, we will do something almost impossible—we will transition into celebration. Israel Independence Day celebrations. Yom Ha’atzmaut.

Only in Israel can a nation move from mourning to dancing in the span of a heartbeat. Because we understand that our joy is born of pain, and our pain is sanctified by purpose.

October 7th still casts a huge shadow. But in that shadow, something remarkable is happening. Across the Jewish world—from Tel Aviv to New York, from Efrat to Paris—Jews are awakening. There is a renewed sense of identity, of connection, of mission. We are remembering who we are.

This Yom Hazikaron/Yom Ha’atzmaut, we are called to honor the fallen, support the living, and strengthen the ideals upon which our eternal nation in our ancestral homeland is built.

To see pain as a privilege is not natural—it is supernatural. But that’s the story of our people. We are a living miracle, defying all reason and the laws of history, because we are the chosen nation, chosen for a purpose to impact humanity as a nation in our indigenous homeland.

It’s not an easy “choosing”. It comes with enemies who rise up to destroy us in every single generation.

We will never understand why things happen, why us, why him, why her, why that family?

We will never know.

But we do know the following…

We were not meant to merely survive in exile.
We were meant to *thrive* in our homeland.

And through the tears of Yom HaZikaron, and the hope and gratitude of Yom Ha’atzmaut, we declare: Am Yisrael Chai.

And we will prevail and fulfill our purpose as a nation working together with Hashem on the miraculous project of developing a sovereign and strong Jewish state of Israel that will impact humanity.