"A quartet of female soldiers sang “Amazing Grace,” and I chanted El Male Rachamim, after which an honor guard fired memorial volleys and a bugler played taps to conclude the ceremony.
"But then something happened that was truly as magical as it was spontaneous."
"As the crowd dispersed, a soldier walking among the rows of white lanterns removed his chem-light and placed it inside one of the paper bags, which now glowed with color. Another soldier followed and another and another. The whiteness of death and loss literally started to dissolve in a rainbow of memory and hope.
“Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around,” described the Prophet Ezekiel, in the haftorah portion for Shavuot. “Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.”
