Between the Siren and the Song – Shabbat Tekumah
Friday April 17, 2026 – ל׳ נִיסָן תשפ”ו
There is a moment that happens every year in Israel just after sundown on Yom HaZikaron, Israeli Memorial Day, when the flag at Har Herzl (Israel’s National Cemetery in Jerusalem) is raised from half-staff to full height. In the span of a few seconds, the country pivots from grief to celebration. Tears give way to rejoicing. Mourning turns into dancing. The transition is abrupt and jarring in its speed.
This year, that moment comes as Yom HaZikaron begins at sundown on the 4th of Iyar, Monday, April 20, 2026, followed immediately by Yom HaAtzmaut at sundown on Tuesday, April 21 – the 5th day of Iyar.
For those of us in the Diaspora, the whole experience can feel disorienting and hard to connect with. How do you make that shift? How do you hold a mourner’s candle in one hand and a flag of celebration in the other?
This year, I’m not sure I can make the turn cleanly. I’m not sure any of us can.
Maybe that’s why it matters that this Shabbat, which comes between Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron, has come to be known as Shabbat Tekumah—a Shabbat of rising, revival, and rebuilding. Not moving on but moving forward. This “revival” represents the dramatic turn from the tragedy of the Holocaust to the realization of the dream of a Jewish State. Not leaving grief behind but carrying it with us as we stand back up and look forward.
First, We Grieve
יום הזיכרון/Yom HaZikaron asks something simple and devastating: Remember. Say the names. Sit with the cost, generation after generation, of what it has taken for the Jewish people to have a home in the world and our own Jewish sovereign entity.
This year, that grief feels especially raw and unresolved. We mourn Israeli soldiers and civilians lost over decades of conflict. We mourn the 1,200 murdered on October 7, 2023, and the over 900 soldiers who have fallen since. And we carry, however uneasily, the images of the thousands of Gaza’s civilians in the rubble, even as we struggle with how to hold all of that at once.
The Jewish world itself feels more fractured, more exposed, more uncertain than it has in a long time.
Grief that refuses complexity isn’t really grief. It’s something flatter, more like loyalty performing as mourning.
As Reform Zionists, we’ve never pretended this is simple. Loving Israel has always meant taking its necessity and contradictions seriously. That’s not a bug of the system. That’s what real love looks like.
Then, We Celebrate
יום העצמאות/Yom HaAtzmaut marks 78 years since David Ben-Gurion stood in Tel Aviv and read the Declaration of Independence. That document didn’t only declare a State, it articulated a vision: “Complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants,” and a commitment to the principles of the United Nations Charter.
Those words are aspirational and a measuring stick.
Reform Zionism has always understood Israel not as a finished story, but as an ongoing mission, a promise that still needs to be lived up to.
That’s where Tekumah comes in. Rising doesn’t mean everything is resolved. It means we don’t stay on the ground. It means we take the grief, the questions, the contradictions, and we keep building.
So yes, we celebrate. We celebrate because Jewish sovereignty matters. Because Jewish history has made painfully clear what it means to not have power, not have refuge, not have a place to go. Because Israel exists—and that is not something we take for granted.
We celebrate not because Israel is perfect, but because we are proud of what Israel has achieved and deeply believe in what it can become.
What Reform Zionism Demands of Us Right Now
It would be easier to choose a simpler posture. To wave the flag without hesitation. Or to step away entirely. A lot of people are doing exactly that right now.
I understand the pull.
But Reform Zionism was never meant to be easy. It asks us to hold tension: to insist on Israel’s right to exist and insist on its responsibility to be just. To fight antisemitism and not look away from Palestinian suffering. To feel pride and discomfort, often at the same time.
It asks us to stay in a relationship, to debate and argue, to push and show up, to roll up our sleeves even when wringing our hands would be easier.
That’s the work. And honestly, that’s the only version of being Reform Zionists that feels serious and right.
This is what tekumah looks like in practice: not a clean emotional pivot, but a decision to keep standing, to keep engaging, to keep caring.
This Yom HaAtzmaut, I’m not aiming for a seamless transition. I’m not interested in pretending everything fits neatly. I’m committing to presence—complicated, unresolved, but hopeful.
What You Can Do Starting Now:
If liberal Zionism is going to mean anything, it has to show up in what we do:
- Learn the names. The fallen. The murdered. The living, who are injured, scarred, and traumatized. Don’t let them become abstractions.
- Support Israeli civil society through support for our Reform Movement in Israel. They are doing hard and critical work from within and on the ground.
- Create and show up to spaces that can hold complexity. Not just celebration. Not just despair. Both.
- Push elected officials toward policies that hold security and dignity together.
- Stay in it. Even when it’s exhausting. Even when you’re not sure you’re getting it exactly right.
עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי—the People of Israel live.
That’s not just a slogan. It’s a statement of fact, and a challenge.
Because if Israel exists, if the Jewish people endure, then the question isn’t just what we feel. It’s what we do with that reality.
What we build. What we demand. What we refuse to give up on.
To keep asking those questions, and to stay engaged even when the answers are hard. That’s what love looks like right now.
That’s Shabbat Tekumah: not closure, but courage. Not resolution, but the choice to rise anyway.
Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov, and Chag HaAtzmaut Sameach!