בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת Bein hashemashot, literally, between the suns.

בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת A twilight zone of time, or rather, out of time, between one day and the next. Our sages of old used this concept to explain certain miraculous manifestations in Torah that are not directly credited to God. For example:

Noah’s rainbow
The manna that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness
The mouth of the earth that swallowed the rebellious Korach and his followers not long after the Exodus

In our day, one בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת may be the liminal moment when Israel transitions from the grieving of memorial day to the celebration of independence day.

On Monday afternoon, at 12:42 our time, our daughter Hannah called from Jerusalem. Nothing special: she’d attended an awkward dinner party, was helping a new work colleague understand their relative positions, had been asked by her 11 year-old niece in Massachusetts to explain the difference between a kibbutz and a moshav.

Then Hannah said “I’ll have to cut out when the siren starts.” Sure enough, at 1:00 sharp, I heard the sirens revving up, and she hurriedly signed off. I didn’t catch her quickly enough to ask that she leave the phone line open….

I had experienced the memorial sirens in person, the first time in 1974. At 8:00 p.m. Israel time, one minute of sound and stillness begins yom hazikaron, the day of remembrance (akin to our Memorial Day). The next morning, at 11:00 a.m., a two-minute siren brings the country to a solemn stand-still, as you’ll hear and see in this video.

We note that, along with the 25,648 soldiers and members of other security forces — mostly young men — who have died protecting Israel, also mourned today are the more than 5,000 Israeli victims of terror attacks.

Then, with sundown, the country moves to yom ha’atzma’ut, Independence Day, through a type of בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת — the magic moment of being in two days at once, or in neither, and, with it, the potential for something new, perhaps previously unimagined.

בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת Were it possible, we would create a new בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת, a period in which Israel would not be treated as so damned exceptional in being judged by rules that seem to apply only to the Jewish state, held to standards not expected of any other country. A בֵּין הַשְׁמָשׁוֹת from dusk to dawn to noon to dusk … every day.

Would that the words of the 1969 Shir l’Shalom, a song for peace, come true in our lifetime:

הַבִיאוּ אֶת הַיוֹם כִּי לֹא חֲלוֹם הוּא

Make that day happen, for it need not remain a dream!

!עם ישראל חי