ANZAC Day address 2019, Mount Scopus
Address by Rabbi Raymond Apple at the 2019 ANZAC Day commemoration at the Jewish graves, Commonwealth War Cemetery, Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 29 April, 2019.
When we stand before the graves in this cemetery we realise how literally true are the words, “They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old”.
These were boys and always will be. Their contemporaries grew old and eventually passed away, but not these boys.
Everything has changed in the meantime; people don’t eat, talk, travel, or even fight the way they did a hundred years ago.
Plato says that change is evil, but he isn’t right. Change can be good, and many of the changes of this past century have been good for mankind.
True, we can and do challenge God and ask why He allowed so many new evils to come upon His world. Whatever answer He gives, He surely also says, “But what about all the good things that came into My world?”
Actually, one of the best blessings of the past century is seen by who we are and where we are, people who love (and mostly live in) Israel, an Israel that owes much of its foundation to the boys and battles of World War I.
We pray that the boys buried here will rest in peace: we pray for their souls, we praise their gallantry, we pray that peace will come to the region.
