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The Jewish Chronicle. Got a story? Contact us. Register Sign In. My Profile Subscribe Sign Out. For the Orthodox, this was a breach of the unmitigated joyfulness of the month. Setting this date for mourning directly violated a halakhic tradition, albeit a minor one.
Indeed, the right-wing Orthodox were so unhappy that they have never accepted this date. To somewhat assuage their feelings, the Orthodox were granted a further concession: If the memorial date fell on Friday or Saturday, it would be postponed until Sunday. No one was satisfied with the outcome. The Orthodox were unhappy because they had been forced to accept an official day that incorporated a violation of the halakhah.
The fighters were unhappy because the commemoration was not on the day of the uprising. There was no significant event or special association with 27 Nissan, and thanks to the Shabbat protection, the memorial day was not even fixed on the same date every year.
But the overall pressures to create a memorial day could no longer be denied. The truth is that all through the fifties, the day was neglected. Not until did the Knesset legislate a national public commemoration of the day; two years later it passed a law closing all public entertainment on that day. Why is 27 Nissan the right day for Yom Hashoah? Impressing the total experience of destruction on the very day of national liberation would constitute a statement that hope is overwhelmed; redemption has been defeated by catastrophe.
In effect, the Nazis would have gained a posthumous victory; their assault on Passover finally would have succeeded. Furthermore, the message would have been that identification should be made only with the fighters; all the other Jews in the Holocaust were a source of shame, their deaths best played down or forgotten.
The implication would have been that the overwhelming might of the Nazis that crushed the victims and killed them beyond their capacity to resist or respond had robbed their deaths of dignity and meaning. The idea that death is meaningful only through resistance is a plausible one, but it had already been judged during the Holocaust to be wrong. In the Middle Ages, Jewish martyrs had the choice of converting to Christianity and saving their lives or of consciously offering their lives rather than abandoning their God and Torah.
In many cases, they had the chance to publicly witness their faithfulness and to state their defiance of those who sought to intimidate them into betrayal. During the Holocaust, however, the Nazis gave no choice. All Jews were killed whatever their intention, practice, or desire. Assimilated Jews and even Jews converted to Christianity were killed.
It is interesting to note that the declaration of independence took place earlier than originally planned, in order to prevent Sabbath desecration. Nevertheless, all the other Rabbis held that no distinction should be made, as Rabbi Ariel explains in Ohalah Shel Torah It also seems — and so decided the Chief Rabbinate in — that when the fifth of Iyar falls on a Monday, pushing off Yom HaAtzmaut until Tuesday, we do not say Tachanun on Monday.
In his work, HaRabbanut HaRashit pp. He changed his mind only in Perhaps this explains why the Rabbis instituted two levels of Mehadrin with regard to the Chanukah candles, something we do not find in relation to biblical commandments, whose laws are fixed.
Based on this, we can say that it is fitting for Yom HaAtzmaut not to have a fixed date, seeing that it is a rabbinic enactment. Support Peninei Halakha.
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