Memorial candles are woven into all aspects of Yom HaZikaron: lit during public ceremonies, by bereaved families at gravesides on Har Hertzl, and of course in homes up and down the country. But why do we use a candle to commemorate the fallen heroes of Israel? What inspires us to shed light in a day full of darkness?
“Remember me in happiness”: The last testament of Esther Cailingold, a soldier and teacher who fell in the battle for the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old City during Israel’s War of Independence
Not long before becoming the world’s most famous hairstylist and building a business empire, Sassoon fought for Israeli independence. He lost friends, gained confidence, went weeks without a shower, and literally never learned the Hebrew word for ‘retreat’…
Zahara Levitov was a Palmach fighter and among the first women to fly planes in the newly established IDF, but her service was cut short by a tragic crash
The tragic circumstances that led to the surrender of the Jewish Quarter’s defenders in Jerusalem’s Old City during the War of Independence
The Yom Kippur War of 1973 was utter chaos. Armored corps soldiers who joined the battle in the Valley of Tears on the Golan Heights were not familiar with the terrain and couldn’t find a proper map to guide them, so they improvised…
Every year on Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, many of us wear the famous Dam HaMaccabim sticker; the connection between the flower and the occasion was made in the early days of the state
A chilling letter found in the National Library archives tells the story of Hadassah Lempel, whose voice was the last one heard during one of the fatal Battles of Latrun in 1948
“I’m very thirsty and there isn’t a drop of water in the house. I must go down to the street, perhaps I’ll find something to drink, and thus I must cease my writing.” A peek into the siege diary of Menachem Zvi Kadari, a resident of the Old City during Israel’s War of Independence.
