JERUSALEM (VINnews) — In a country so fraught with tensions as Israel, it was feared that Yom Ha’atzmaut would simply add to the anxiety and polarization of recent months. Instead, Israelis chose to celebrate their country together in the traditional ways, flocking to the national parks and making cookouts, parties and crowding the beaches. The flyover of over a hundred IAF planes also drew crowds around the country as people stood on rooftops and watched the formations flying over their heads in harmonious shapes.
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One of the highlights of Independence Day is the torchlighting ceremony which takes place at Mt. Herzl, in which 12 Israelis are honored for their achievements. At this year’s ceremony, one of the honorees was 91-year-old Eliyahu Tzalah, a farmer from the village of Shetula in northern Israel, is also a gifted paytan, or lyricist who composes poems which are then used as liturgical songs.
Tzalah is a member of a rabbinic family from Irbil in Kurdistan and used to serve as a chazan in his community from a young age. When the Iraqi army sought to conscript him in 1951, Eliyahu ran away to Israel and joined the Israeli army, later establishing the village of Elkosh and then Shetula near the Lebanese border. Tzalah named his 13th and last child Shetulit after the new moshav he formed in 1969. (He also proudly announced that he has 51 grandchildren and 60 great-grandchildren).
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At the ceremony, Tzalah impressed the audience by singing a poem he had composed in honor of the occasion:
Amen, help us, give us the strength to strengthen our land in spirit and in soul, sprout our unity that our hearts can relax until the coming of Mashiach and the blowing of the shofar.”