Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror

Tomorrow night we’ll be marking Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terror in Israel. Israel is a country that knows war and terror all too well. Most people in Israel, sadly, are skillful in war; and most families, even more sadly so, encountered grief caused by either one of those plagues.

I am not going to get into any political discussions. I am fully aware of the fact that those plagues affect people, and not the other way around, and that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:11-13). I just want to take time out, and empathize with those who are mourning. I want to share with you a Hebrew song, sung by one of israel’s greatest musicians, Shlomo Artzi (שלמה ארצי). The song is called “That man”, or in Hebrew – Ha’eesh ha’hoo  (האיש ההוא).

The lyrics say:

That Man

Where can you find more people like that man
which was like the weeping willows?

Born at the foot of the mountain
by the stream…
In winter, he sang among the weeping willows;
in summer, between the lights of the water beddings
his soul he cast upon the waters for the fish.
From the reeds he chopped himself a kite.
And when he became a man,
from the blades of the weeping willows he planted a hut;
from the gray fortress stone he built a home.
Along the river, he constructed a mill,
sown fields;
he sent his potency on merchant ships across the sea.
But when he lay down his tools,
suddenly he became another man.

Where can you find more people like that man
which was like the weeping willows?

Born at the foot of the mountain, near the river,
he would wonder, distracted on the mountain or in the valleys.
And when one cloudless morning, he collapsed upon his land,
they gave him an eternal tenement,
next to the quiet aqueducts.
Where can you find more people like that man
which was like the weeping willows?
And like an old fortress he was, at the end of the road.

Where can you find more people like that man
which was like the weeping willows?