Shavuot and Memorial Day

It turns out that a blue moon — the second full moon in a calendar month — isn’t that uncommon.

You know what calendar coincidence really is uncommon? Memorial Day falling on Shavuot.

Okay, that’s not exactly what’s happening this year, but it’s close. Close enough to give us a four-day weekend. And close enough to encourage us to think about what those two holidays mean to us.

Shavuot is about the intersection of linear history and the seasonal cycle. It’s about time. It’s when God gave the Torah to Israel, and it’s when the spring harvest was ready. It’s about picnics and staying up learning, talking, debating, drifting off and starting back up, eating cheesecake with maybe a little less guilt than usual. It’s about Ruth and Naomi; love and gleaning, and picnics in the park.

It’s about memory; it’s one of the four times a year when we say Yizkor. There’s something particularly poignant about saying it, about remembering our dead, when spring blossoms all around us.

When we say “we” about Shavuot, we’re talking about us as Jews.

Memorial Day is the federal holiday specifically created to remember our war dead, those brave servicemen and women who died to keep us safe and free. It’s also the unofficial start of the summer season, the time when schools are still open, but the feeling inside them changes and the countdown to vacation is well underway. It’s a holiday whose solemn meaning often is just a prelude to fun.

When we say “we” about Memorial Day, we’re talking about us as Americans.

It’s hard to be Jewish in America right now; in fact, given the turmoil in the United States, it’s often hard to be an American in America right now. It seems that we have some choices to make.

We can give up. We can despair. We can decide that this is Germany in the 1930s, and our understanding of history should tell us to get out now.

We can ignore. We can just keep on going, working on the assumption that it’ll all be okay in the end, just like almost everything is anyway. Right?

Or we can pay attention, read, listen, talk, and vote. We can glory in the beauty around us, and in the hope that our traditions — both of them — offer us, and we can work to help fix the parts that are going wrong. That’s what being a Jew and an American mean.

Chag sameach and happy Memorial Day!

—JP

opinion