U.S. President Donald Trump has started planning America’s 250th birthday celebrations. Predictably, partisans at both extremes seem determined to make it another polarizing train wreck. What a shame that would be, especially at this brittle moment in American history. Anticipating July 4, 2026, Americans should learn how a divided Israel is celebrating its 77th birthday.
At 8 p.m. on Wednesday, when Israel’s flag is raised at Mount Herzl’s national cemetery to start Yom Ha’atzmaut—Independence Day—Israelis will have been bonding culturally, patriotically and existentially for 18 intense days already. True, the Gaza war, protests over the hostages and party clashes persist. But since 96% of Israeli Jews participated in the Passover seder on April 12, with as many as 64% lasting through the whole meal and reading the entire Haggadah according to Jewish People Policy Institute surveys, Israelis have been acting in synch in remarkable ways. Some 71% avoided bread throughout Passover week.
On April 24, Yom Hashoah—Holocaust Remembrance Day—the country froze in place for two minutes at 10 a.m., memorializing 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Earlier on Wednesday, Yom Hazikaron—Memorial Day—sirens again united Israelis in mourning the fallen in wars and during terror attacks. That includes Jews, Arabs, Druze and Bedouin, especially G’haleb Sliman Alnasasra, who was killed on April 19 combating Hamas in Gaza, and since the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, also Thais, Nepalese and victims from at least 16 other countries.
The country is enveloped in flags, and during both memorial days, a deep mourning. Honoring those who have been murdered, regular television programming stops. Cafes, restaurants, theaters and sports arenas close. Millions light memorial candles.
Each communal ritual, along with Independence Day barbecues, fireworks, hikes, concerts and sing-alongs, updates a wise Jewish insight with Zionist actions. Judaism created specific acts to consecrate, to commemorate, to connect. Those actions were not just meaning-carriers. They also personalized, popularized and democratized—and thereby immortalized—ideas, values and historical events.
In Israeli terms, standing still for sirens represents a remarkable ability to mute partisanship and act in concert. Those moments reflect the power of simply celebrating and celebrating simply. They convey one central idea: remembering the Holocaust and honoring sacrifices to defend Israel, regardless of any political static.
And, in the frequent singing of the national anthem, “Hatikvah” (meaning, “The Hope”), always standing at attention, Israelis concentrate on their national mission: “to live as a free people in our homeland, the land of Zion … .”
At noon on July 4, every American should stop, stand at attention and hear the Declaration of Independence read—ideally communally, if not online.
While Americans have long celebrated Independence Day enthusiastically, no one defining ritual emerged. Proud of the 13 colonies’ historic breakthrough in July 1776, John Adams wrote his wife Abigail that America’s “Great Anniversary Festival” should “forever more” be “solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Sh[o]ws, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations … .”
Initially, celebrations on the Fourth of July were “formulaic,” the historian Adam Criblez reports. Cannon and pistol fire often triggered the festivities, followed by military parades to town squares or patriotic sites. Orators deified the framers, “those noble men, those dauntless heroes, those self-sacrificing patriots” who “bequeathed to us” this “temple of Liberty.”
Most ceremonies culminated with public readings of the Declaration of Independence. Then, men often repaired to the tavern, drinking 13 toasts to the incumbent president, regardless of party; to George Washington, “the Hero of liberty … . May his enemies have the justice to applaud his virtues and his friends the candor to acknowledge his errors”; and the 13th toast, to their women, “the Fair of America,” sometimes mischievously saying, “Yours are the only arms to which freemen delight to yield.”
Gradually, Americans developed local traditions and individualized celebrations. In Philadelphia, descendants of the Declaration’s 56 signers still tap the ever-fragile Liberty Bell 13 times. By the 1850s, as abolitionists politicized the holiday to fight slavery, some anti-alcohol activists had dry celebrations, while opponents continued their annual benders. Riots sometimes erupted, stoked by racism, partisanship, communal rivalries or booze.
In short, without one sacred act defining the day, America’s centrifugal political, ideological, ethnic and personalistic impulses made July 4 celebrations too idiosyncratic—and, sometimes, too violent.
Historians still debate whether Americans in 1860 blundered into the Civil War or had no other way to end slavery. So clearly, patriotic celebrations aren’t enough to save a democracy. Still, today, Israelis prove that willingness to stand together, in sorrow and joy, is a necessary first step in figuring out how to live together.
In that spirit, Americans should adopt one unifying Independence Day ritual. At noon on July 4, every American should stop, stand at attention and hear the Declaration of Independence read—ideally communally, if not online. This July could be a practice run for the mass healing event America needs for the 250th anniversary next year.