Memorial ceremonies can be very moving. Your personal closeness, or distance, to those being commemorated inevitably determines the depth of your emotional experience.
A different type of commemoration, one which jolts the senses and can evoke a very unique sense of soul-searching, is practiced in Israel on its Memorial Days: the siren. In Israel, on Holocaust Memorial Day and on Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism, a siren is sounded for one or two minutes preceding trad