## Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 1 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 1](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/1) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** I met Yoni Jesner in Jerusalem in January 2002. He was nineteen years old, just beginning his second year in yeshiva. We had brought together a group of three hundred British students, but he stood out among them as a leader, a young man with quiet inner strength and a sense of humour that drew people to him and brought out the best in them. I knew of his reputation from the community in Glasgow where he had grown up. Already he was something of a legend. He worked with the young and the old, he took children’s services in the synagogue, taught in its classes, ran the local youth group, and was a volunteer in the burial society, helping prepare the dead for burial with dignity. A brilliant student, he had decided to become a doctor and already had a place at medical school. His first priority was to dedicate his life to saving lives. Like many others in Jewish history, he saw medicine as a religious vocation. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 2 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 2](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/2) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** Yoni was travelling on the number 4 bus in Tel Aviv on September 19, 2002, when the suicide bomber detonated his belt. Ari, his brother in London, caught the next flight to Israel. Yoni Jesner, of blessed memory, was a remarkable young man whose death at the hands of a suicide bomber devastated all who knew him. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 3 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 3](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/3) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** It turned out, though, that Yoni had a last and yet more deeply moving message for us. After consulting Yoni’s rabbi, his family came to a decision. Yoni had wanted to save lives. They would donate his organs. Among those whose lives were transformed was Yasmin Abu Ramila, a seven-year-old Palestinian girl from East Jerusalem who had been on dialysis for two years awaiting a compatible transplant. This is moral greatness of a high order – to create life out of death and turn a potential enemy into a friend. It takes exceptional courage to come to such a decision in the midst of grief, but acts like these are fragments of redemption. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 4 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 4](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/4) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** A people is as great as its ideals, and Yoni lived those ideals to the limit. We will not forget him. We will cherish his memory as a blessing and inspiration. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 5 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 5](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/5) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** ***To Heal a Fractured World*, 208–209** ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 6 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 6](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/6) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** **A MESSAGE TO HONOUR THE LIVES AND MEMORIES OF OUR FALLEN LONE SOLDIERS** ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 7 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 7](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/7) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** We remember the courage and the *mesirat nefesh* (self-sacrifice), the dedication and the bravery, of Israel’s *Ḥayalim bodedim* (lone soldiers), especially those who gave their lives defending *Medinat Yisrael* and *am Yisrael*. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 8 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 8](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/8) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** We think of them as living examples of what it is to fight for the freedom of our people, and their safety, in the land of our beginnings, so that never again would *am Yisrael* be dependent on the goodwill of the nations. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 9 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 9](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/9) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** Never again would we have to suffer the two thousand years of persecution of the centuries that preceded the birth of the State of Israel. These are among the great heroes of our people. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 10 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 10](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/10) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** Let us honour the memory of those who died. Let us salute the example of those who live. And let us pray to Hashem to bless the State of Israel, the people of Israel, and the Defense Forces of Israel, and may He give all of us the blessing of health, and strength, and peace. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 11 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 11](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/11) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** Amen. ###### Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 12 [Ceremony and Celebration Family Edition, The Hagim, Yom HaZikaron, It Once Happened 12](https://torahapp.org/share/book/Ceremony%20and%20Celebration%20Family%20Edition%2C%20The%20Hagim/s/Yom%20HaZikaron,_It%20Once%20Happened/r/12) **Ceremony & Celebration Family Edition, Maggid Books, 2023:** *Rabbi Sacks shared this message in* 2020 *to honour the lives and memories of our fallen lone soldiers at the annual Yom HaZikaron ceremony of the Lone Soldier Center in Memory of Michael Levin.*