Sirens blared throughout Israel today for National Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Its rise is not subtle, no foreplay. Within a second flat, there is no space between my ears for anything else.
A flash flood of feelings storm in me with the siren’s ring – it doesn’t ask permission: it gives notice.
It pierces.
My soul knows this sound; a Klezmer band of sadness, entire chord progressions frozen in one single, sharp note. Twisted and impossible in its strength.
Snapshots of grainy, black and white men and women I’ve never met, but still know deeply, flash in my mind. I see their faces, their shaved heads, their sunken eyes. I see pillars of dark smoke. I feel it as deep as my body will allow. My head is bowed for the first half of the siren. The pull of its weight feels appropriate.
And then, that thick minute passes – it just shifts and space opens for something else.
