I've known for a long time that Yom HaZikaron is very different from American Memorial Day, and my manager recently very elegantly summed up why.
I was wondering why Israeli schools have a half-day for Memorial Day. After all, I posited, if a main focus of Memorial Day is a ceremony commemorating those who died in the struggle for the State of Israel, wouldn't it make sense to have a half-day of classes followed by an in-school (audience-appropriate) assembly? My manager pointed out that a general assembly wouldn't actually make sense, since so many students attend private ceremonies.
Because there are private ceremonies. Because there are too many people here for whom a personal ceremony is the only possible response to Memorial Day.
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