25,648 🕯️
We Will Never Forget You!
My grandfather died as a soldier at the age of 42.
I didn’t get to know him. I got his absence instead. But today, on Yom HaZikaron, I think about him differently. I think about what 42 means — that’s roughly my age. A man with, presumably, decades ahead of him. Dreams still unfinished. Things still unsaid.
Every loss for us is a world lost. Every son. Every daughter. Every soul.
That’s not a platitude. That’s a fact. Every single one of the 25,648 soldiers whose names scroll across Israeli television for 24 straight hours today — every single one of them was an entire universe. They had a favorite song they’d hum without knowing they were humming. They had a way they took their coffee. They had a joke that only one friend truly understood. They had a mother who memorized the sound of their breath.
In 78 years, terrorism and war have created:
8,420 bereaved parents
4,872 widowed partners
14,430 orphaned children
This is not abstract grief. This is the specific, searing, unrelenting cost of our existence as a nation.
It is by far the saddest day of the year for every Israeli. Every single Israeli has either suffered loss or knows a family that has. That is the reality we wrestle with. However, this year, almost 3 years removed from October 7th, I noticed something a little different.
