holocaust day

My son came home from gan (nursery) today wearing a yellow star that said Jude on it. In fact, all of the kids were wearing the star except for one little russian boy and the other children were all throwing things at him yelling "sheigitz,sheigitz." Ok, that last part didn't happen, but it probably could have. When my wife tried taking the yellow star off of his shirt he got very upset and said, "but my teacher said I have to wear it."

Yes, it is once again Holocaust Day in Israel. This morning at 10AM a siren sounded and we all stood quietly for the 2 minutes that it went off for. Except in Sderot, where the children screamed and hid under their desks for the 4th time this morning. Ok, that last part might not have happened, but I don't know for sure that it didn't.

On the radio yesterday they were playing sad, dlow songs to get people in the mood of the day. In Israel if you want to know how you are supposed to feel on a given day you can always listen to the radio and the songs they are playing will let you know.

Yesterday I heard an interview with a Polish minister in which he complained that Israeli youth come to visit Poland and all they do is go to death camps. He felt that it gives a very negative impression of Poland to Jewish teenagers. If I'm not mistaken, Poland is the same country where a number of air force pilots got caught a couple months ago inspecting the local culture in their hotel rooms and were dismissed from their duties. That being said its probably better if we only send our teenagers to look at the death camps instead of introducing them to Polish culture.

My little brother had a baby boy today and I'm not going to write what I was just thinking.
You're all welcome.

In any case, as I've mentioned in the past I am not very pro holocaust day. We already have a Jewish holocaust day, Tisha B'Av, which is an all-inclusive Jewish tragedy day. I do think that it is great that Israeli culture keeps it in the public conscience. We must always remember that as Jews we will only be safe under the protection of God himself, in our own land when we are following the Torah as we are supposed to.

"May God avenge their blood", as it is said, so it is written and so it shall be done.