Counting the Omer: Sunday Night, 29 May 2016/22 Iyar 5776

D-Day, 6 June 1944.  A time of great valour.

Today is Day Two of Week Six of the Omer.  That is Thirty-six Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

          Monday – tomorrow – is Memorial Day in the USA.  I don’t let its Australian-Commonwealth parallel, Remembrance Day, or its Israeli equivalent, Yom Hazikaron, go by without a comment.  I therefore think it is fitting to detour a bit from my current train of thought regarding religion and happiness.  But in reality, it isn’t much of a detour.  Because for most of us, remembrance of those who have gone on before us can be a source of happiness.  Allow me to explain.

          American Memorial Day remembers, of course, those who died in defence of our freedom – or of somebody else’s.  Because the USA, more than any other nation on earth in this century and the last one, has stood up for the rights of other peoples, and offered the blood of our own sons and daughters to help overthrow tyrannous regimes and cast of the yokes of terror organisations throughout the world.  And this, since 1974, with an all-volunteer force.  When I hear criticism of America for, for example, a supposed ‘Islamophobia,’ I want to cry because I remember how our forces were dispatched to places like Somalia, and Bosnia, and Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq to rout evils regimes that were destroying the lives of Muslim people.  And many of those young Americans, volunteers, did not come home or came home broken and battered in various ways.

          So when Memorial Day approaches, I think of the cost of freedom and my only regret for my country is that we were unable to do more.

          As I’ve said, Happiness is not how good you feel or how much stuff you have to enjoy.  It’s something far deeper.  It depends on one’s life having meaning.  And recognising the good that one has accomplished.  And celebrating it.  It is therefore, Happiness-inducing to remember the heroes of one’s nation, and to honour them on the special days that our countries have designated.

          Remembrance is really a factor in religion; in observing religious days of obligation and festivals, we remember the exploits of those who preceded us.  Remembering civil heroes is the equivalent of remembering religious heroes.  In reality, one could say the same about one’s ‘personal heroes’ – the forebears of your family who have gone before you, who literally gave you life, and raised you to be the person you are.  We celebrate the lives of those who gave us so much.  I obviously don’t mean in wild party-like abandon; ‘celebration’ can also be reverent!  The Jewish tradition commands that we celebrate.  It provides a framework for mourning, but that process is understood to be cathartic and of limited duration:  a year for a parent, a month for another close relative.  It’s not that we’re supposed to forget after the prescribed period; we are, however commanded to return to the business of life and Happiness.

          We don’t usually make and automatic association between remembrance and Happiness.  But in reality the former should lead to the latter.  Remember, and be Happy.