Evening and Morning in Israel

Throughout the day, I thought of what my parents and grandparents had gone through 50 years ago, when invading Arab armies threatened Israel’s existence while Jews prayed on the holy day of Yom Kippur. That too had been a time of darkness, but the light eventually returned. That night, as I went to sleep, I said the Shema prayer, the traditional prayer a Jew is supposed to say before going to sleep: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” Still not fully knowing what was happening in Israel, I closed my eyes and said the prayer, knowing that hundreds of my fellow Jews would never again have the opportunity to do so.