Aaron Kalman..
Times of Israel..
17 February '13..
Sunday marks the national remembrance day for IDF soldiers without an official burial site. It’s no accident that the seventh day of the Hebrew month of Adar was chosen as the date to mark such a day — according to Jewish tradition, it is the day Moses passed away.
Choosing the traditional anniversary of Moses’s death as the national remembrance day was done because the Bible (Deuteronomy 34:5-6) stresses that the burial site of one of the most important figures in Jewish history is unknown.
Shortly after the end of Israel’s war of independence, the Military Rabbinate decided the day on which Moses died would be the day Israel remembered its fallen soldiers, interconnecting ancient Jewish traditions with modern-day Israel.
Today, that connection is all but obsolete. While religious schools mention Moses’s yahrzeit, almost no one in the country — religious or not — mentions or remembers those soldiers meant to be remembered. Of course, the soldiers aren’t forgotten, but the special day given to mourning families who have no grave to visit seems to have been lost.
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