Springtime in Israel: Joy or Foreboding?
A succession of holidays that touch all the deepest chords.
Israel comes to a halt with 10 a.m. sirens to commemorate 6 million Holocaust victims (The Times of Israel)
Note: Part of this article is derived from an article I published on Frontpage Magazine in May 2011.
Spring in Israel. This is my 40th since making aliyah, and the most striking thing about spring in Israel, to me, is still the succession of holidays—both ancient Jewish ones and modern Israeli ones—that occur in it. While there are colorful and deeply resonant holidays in Israel all year round, the spring has an especially potent lineup of them.
The ancient Jewish spring holidays are Passover, Shavuot (the Feast of Weeks), and the more minor Lag B’Omer; the modern Israeli ones are Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), Remembrance Day (for fallen soldiers), and Independence Day (along with Jerusalem Day celebrated mainly in that city). The holidays are deeply felt and related to authentically. Yom Hashoah and Remembrance Day touch an abyss of mourning; Passover, Shavuot, and Independence Day tend to the joyous.
Especially in the spring, then, Israel is an ideological community in the best sense; people do not live only as atomized selves but as part of larger memories and purposes. It’s perhaps what I was most seeking in moving, long ago, to the old-new land; I wasn’t disappointed.
And what of the spring of 2025? I wrote, above, “tend to the joyous,” because joy—while certainly still to be found here, as we keep getting rated among the world’s ten happiest countries—is these days a sort of tentative emotion that can’t be felt simply and maybe not wholeheartedly. The year and a half since October 7 has been, of course, a time in which the recurrent dark, traumatic themes of Jewish history have been felt very keenly and hover like a shadow over what may look superficially like normal routines of life.
For me, the accent this spring is more on the dark, mournful holidays than the happy ones. True, since October 7 Israel has scored dramatic military victories against Iran’s “resistance axis,” and many believe our strategic situation has improved—though that claim, in my view, can only be made tentatively and cautiously amid a real threat of Erdogan’s Sunni-jihadist Turkey encroaching on Syria.
And even more worrisome—at this stage—is the Trump administration’s decision to give the 46-year-old Shiite-jihadist, nearly-nuclear regime in Tehran yet another reprieve, with negotiations led on the US side by a real-estate investor who shows little or no understanding of the Middle East and the fanatic ideologies that disfigure it.
Prominent Israeli commentator Amit Segal, writing on his site three days ago:
...the [April 16 New York Times] report that President Donald Trump blocked an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear sites was the most serious leak in Israel’s history. That’s according to figures in Israel’s security establishment.
Why? Let’s put it into context. As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential ever military operations, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.
...this week has seen some bumps for Israel on the Iranian front, to say the least—besides the Times report, Witkoff also hinted that Washington isn’t looking to fully dismantle Tehran’s nuclear program.
Not fully dismantling it can only mean one thing: Iran mothballs it for a while before taking it out again, when the time is right, for lethal use; or, worse, pretends to mothball it while continuing to pursue it clandestinely. The ayatollah regime is as committed to destroying Israel (and ultimately the US as well) as Israel is committed to surviving, and no possible negotiation can divert Tehran from its course except in ways that are temporary, deceptive, and costly.
The Israeli spring is around me; I feel joy in blossoming nature, felt joy at Passover, will feel it again in some of the upcoming holidays. But the inflection for now, this spring, is on foreboding.