Almost all Israelis do it automatically, without thinking about it. As soon as the siren sounds on Holocaust Memorial Day and on Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars, Israelis get up and stand still. If driving, they pull to the side of the road, get out of their cars or off of their motorbikes and stand beside them.

Israeli tradition dictates that ceremonies on both these days begin with a one- to two-minute siren across the state. This ritual of standing in silence while a siren blares is one of the few things that the overwhelming majority of Israelis agree on observing, at least in public spaces. Those who do not stand are a very small minority. “We’re talking about a ritual that is the ultimate Israeli Zionist ceremony,” said Jackie Feldman, a lecturer in anthropology at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev who studies secular ceremonies.

What do Israelis do on these occasions if they are alone? Many stand even when they are at home and no one can see them. Although loath to say it, doing so seems a little silly. There is no evidence that one participated (or declined to take part) in a collective ceremony whose whole essence is to “stand together.”

In 2013 in Haaretz, Alon Idan wrote that people who stand for the siren when they are home alone do so “because they are afraid. … They are the kind of people who combine individual and nationalist elements within themselves. … The person and the state are a single body, with blurred boundaries distinguishing them.” In contrast, Hanoch Daum wrote in February in Yedioth Ahronoth, “Being part of a nation that stands for the siren, that stands when everyone else is standing, and that remembers the soldiers and other casualties that we all remember together … evokes a deep emotion within me … even when no one sees me.”