Memorial Day is Not a Salebration
Though I will not be in town to be part of the annual Memorial Observance at the Milton Cemetery, I did contact the organizers to suggest the prayer below be considered as part of the service. We Jews, unfortunately, know how to do Yizkor. If you will not be able to attend a Memorial Day Service, I hope reading this prayer will fill that void.
Almighty God, who gives to everything a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven -- a time for war; a time for peace; a time for life; a time for death; and always time for hope -- we take time now to honor those who serve, who fight, who sacrifice in times of war, so that the time of peace, of real peace, might one day be.
We offer thanks for freedoms that are far from free, for they are bought and paid for at the cost of lives cut short, and family dreams that now can never be; and at the cost of wounded souls and broken bodies, and lives forever changed by suffering and memories so painful that most of us give thanks that we will never know, nor ever fully comprehend, such pain.
We honor those who served, and mourn those who gave their lives. We honor those who live and serve today, within a world that knows too well the time of war. We honor in a special way all military families, those they love and who love them, for whom even far-off battlefields are much too close to home.
Give us the faith, the strength, the wisdom, too, we pray, to do our part to bring about the time of peace for which they fought-and fight; the time of peace, just peace, in which we must keep faith; the world of peace which we must do our part to build.
And let us all say, Amen.
By Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff
