Yesterday, tens of thousands marched through the streets of New York in honor of a beautiful cause — Sunday’s “Celebrate Israel” parade. Hundreds of thousands of spectators watched a variety of organizations and public figures join in the festivities: the Orthodox Union, the NYPD police band, New York governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams, nearly a dozen Israeli ministers, and more. Holocaust survivors danced through the streets alongside IDF veterans, accompanied by live music, waving Israeli flags.
The parade’s theme, “Israel @ 75: Renewing the Hope,” served as a reminder that what Israel needs for continued flourishing is everlasting hope. I found the greatest hope, of all the parade attendees, in the thousands of children representing their Jewish day schools, synagogues, and communities.
Those children have been so fortunate to grow up in the States, far away from the painful, persecutory histories of their ancestors. They are the product of an American Jewry that built their community from the ground up after witnessing horrors beyond comprehension, including ones we know little about:
The Farhud, a Holocaust-era massacre committed by Nazi-inspired Arab nationalists in Baghdad, Iraq; the 1839 Allahdad, a murderous forced conversion to Islam of Jews in Mashhad, Iran; the 1911 blood-libel accusation and trial of Menachem Mendel Beilis in czarist Russia. More familiar to us are the horrors of the USSR, the Spanish Inquisition, and the 6 million lost in the Holocaust.
Yet the children marching at the Celebrate Israel parade are not joyous because they are ignorant of or far away from these stories. They are joyous because they are in the know and consciously close. The stories of their ancestors remain in those children’s hearts, and they march because there is nothing more beautiful than resilience in the face of destruction.
Those children know that Am Yisrael, the people of Israel, and Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, will face persecution, from yesterday’s pogroms to today’s terror attacks. They are proud and infinitely positive Jews nonetheless. They are connected to Jews past and present, from the asara harugei malchut, ten righteous rabbinic leaders martyred by the Romans for their religious devotion, to the Beta Israel, Ethiopian Jews rescued by miraculous Israeli operations, who kissed the ground when they disembarked at the Ben-Gurion Airport in the late 20th century. They know not only the deaths of their people, but also their lives.
Those children hear the stories of their ancestors and recognize that their life is a gift. They are tasked with the responsibility to treasure life, in honor of those who could not. Their ability to march is a gift. They live in a country that welcomes their celebration of a beautiful thing, namely, Israel, instead of attacking them for the same. Finally, Israel itself is a gift — one that keeps on giving, protecting its people from the persecution they would face almost anywhere else in the world and preserving their precious lives instead.
They march with gratitude, smiles positively glowing. What could be more hopeful than that?