My Independence Day

"Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you got till it's gone" – Counting Crows

You know, we take a lot for granted in our lives. That we'll have our health, our family, our jobs. Yom Hazikaron is just such a painful reminder to many not to take their loved ones for granted. Yet I can't think of anything we as Jews take for granted more than the very existence of the State of Israel. Day in, day out, we bicker and argue about all the problems involved in the medina. The corruption problem. The violence problem. The question of Jewish identity. The Palestinian issue.

We argue so much that we forget just how wonderful it is to have Israel around. We argue about what the army should do and forget that there was a time we didn't have an army. We argue the merits and demerits of the Israeli schools; we forget that Israel is the single largest provider of Jewish education (in whatever form) in the world (and relatively inexpensive, too!). We write op-eds galore on issues of the day; we take for granted that most of it's in Hebrew, a language that virtually everyone wrote off as dead but 150 years ago. We debate how to work the Law of Return; we forget there was a time when there wasn't such a thing; when no country in the world would let us in.

So tomorrow I intend to turn off the kvetch-o-meter for a day. For me, Yom Ha'Atzma'ut is Israel appreciation day. It's the day I stop taking the state for granted and start reveling in all the good stuff we've gotten from it.

Criticism? I've got the rest of the year for that.