The state of Israel uses the air raid siren systems three times a year for commemoration rather than “the real thing”. Every year, on the twenty seventh day of the Hebrew month of Nissan (usually around April), at 11:00 AM the siren goes off in commemoration of the six million Jews killed by the Nazis during WWII. Every year, on the fourth day of the month of Iyar at 8:00 PM, and the following morning at 11:00 AM, the sirens wail in commemoration of the Israeli soldiers who lost their lives defending the homeland, and the victims of hostile attacks on Israelis around the world. The expected behavior, when hearing the sirens cries, is to stop whatever it is that you’re doing, and pay your respects by standing straight, your head bowing, thinking of all those who made your life a possibility. It’s a very uniting act, and it always gave me the feeling of being part of something a lot larger than myself. For a declared atheist, this is a significant deviation from an individual point of view, to the collective. Yet, I always thought that it is a proper way to show that you too, are part of this collective, and that you too appreciate the sacrifice. It’s an exercise in humility.
Today, May nineteenth, 2008, I experienced the same in Beijing, only many orders of magnitudes larger. It was an amazing experience.
At 2:28 PM, exactly the time when the earthquake struck, China came to a halt. Beijing came to a standstill. Millions upon millions of people around the country stopped whatever they were doing, stood straight, their heads bowed down, paying their respects to the dead, to the people who lost their lives in the earthquake last week. Lines and lines of people stood there, motionless, thinking. The drivers were honking their horns. Millions of horns with the air raid siren sounding in the background was indeed a surrealistic sound, and the scene was as surreal.
I can only imagine what they were thinking. I know what I was thinking. I was thinking how would I do if I went through an ordeal as such, and survived. I was thinking, how would I save my family, my friends, total strangers. I was thinking about the sheer power of nature. I was hoping. I was wishing.
For a few minutes there, I was part of a much larger group. Probably the largest ever to be standing at the same time, respecting the same victims, mourning. A lesson in humility, larger than life. Larger than a million lives.
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