While generations past lionized captains of industry as heroic company builders and market creators, our generation is drawn instead to young, relatively inexperienced individuals who identify the flaws in the world as it is and seek to improve on them.

Israeli culture values heroes who do not have any special powers. They are mere mortals, only with striking character traits such as pioneership, initiative, vision, and decisive intelligence employed for the protection of Israel.

A long time ago, in a far away land, there lived a Jewish gaucho in a settlement called Moisesville. This first Jewish colony in Argentina was comprised of Jewish cowboys. Fleeing pogroms, they arrived from Russia in 1889 and established agricultural settlements in the vast, unpopulated land of Argentina’s Santa Fe province.

The place, and the time: Israel on Yom Hazikaron—Israel’s Memorial Day—held on the fourth of Iyar, the day before Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel’s Independence Day). Fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism are remembered at national memorial services, such as this one for victims of terrorist attacks at the military cemetery in Haifa. The somber mood of the day takes effect with radio and television programs on Israel’s wars, the closing of all venues of entertainment nationwide, and two air raid sirens which sound throughout the country, causing all traffic to stop in commemoration of Israel’s fallen.