In my last column, I wrote about the contrasts and similarities between the two holidays of Purim and Pesach. Once again, I wish to speak about two holidays that stand in close proximity: Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut.

Placing Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembering, just before Independence Day, sets apart sombre remembrance from the celebratory mood of Israel’s birthday.

Nearly 23,000 soldiers and fighters (many before the state was born) and 4,000 civilian victims of terror have died creating and protecting Israel. Their memory informs Yom Hazikaron and the two minutes of silence observed throughout Israel that, as Lawrence Durrell writes in another context, “commemorate an irremediable failure of the human will.”It’s a failure that has cost so many thousands of lives.

Ther’s another poignant quote mounted at the site of the 9/11 memorial in Washington, D.C., from Virgil’s Aeneid (itself a book of bloodshed) that applies here: “No day shall erase you from the memory of time .”

How true is it that their memories will be daily on our minds? Sadly, probably not every day. Indeed, as we survey the prevalence of warfare in our world, we see how badly our human will to peace has failed.

But some days stand out.

Soon after the 1973 war, I was visiting a neighbour in Jerusalem. A knock came at the door, and two young (so young!) soldiers stood in the doorway. She graciously ushered them in, and they presented her with medals from the army honouring her oldest son, who had died in the Yom Kippur War. I was speechless. When they left, she pointed to another set on the shelf: her husband had died in the 1967 war.

What horrible failure had taken these two precious, unique lives? Yet she loved the state that they all had paid for so dearly.

That year, following the ’73 war, we saw whole congregations rise when Yizkor was recited for the fallen: no family was untouched (another neighbour had also lost a son). There are no words.

Passing from Yom Hazikaron to Yom Ha’atzmaut brings us from tears to gladness and rejoicing. Can the human spirit pass so quickly from one state to another?

While we’re not commanded to hasten from this mourning to joy, there are times when we’re commanded to commit to an emotion: we’re commanded to love God, even at times when it’s the farthest thing from our minds. We’re commanded to rejoice on Simchat Torah, a very difficult thing to do when destruction threatens.

So are we commanded to rejoice on Yom Ha’atzmaut? No, but we are expected to move from contemplating some of the darkest moments of our people and then, as sunset comes on the close of Yom Hazikaron, pass into joyous celebration of the rebirth of Israel after 2,000 years of exile. That’s quite a feat of psychic legerdemain.

Centuries ago, the prophet was asked, “Can these bones live?” The answer then was yes. Despite destruction and exile, the bones, the People of Israel, returned to Zion and rebuilt not only the ruined Temple but their lives as well. A second destruction followed, but this time, no benevolent monarch allowed a second return.

Centuries later, Jews, reeling from the destruction of one-third of its people, still insisted “These bones shall live!” Today, they do once again.

What an incredible undertaking: to recreate a language restricted for centuries to scholarly commentaries while dozens of vernaculars were the daily speech of Jews across the globe. What an amazing resurrection, a knitting together of those dry bones, so that Israel can have police officers and thieves, athletes and preachers, scholars and dustmen.

The Israeli constitution leans very heavily on a prophetic mission.

“The State of Israel… will promote the development of the country for all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex; will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture.”

It’s a big task we as Jews have set ourselves, one that’s often lost in the struggle for Israel’s very existence.

But on these days, we remember together and celebrate together, tears mingled with joy.