Readings for Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day

Assembled by Barbara Binder Kadden, Jewish Education Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle

In Remembrance of Jewish Suffering

All peoples have suffered cruelty, and our hearts go out to them. But this day we think especially of the pain suffered by the House of Israel. Exile and oppression, expulsion and ghettos, pogroms and death camps: The agony of our people numbs the mind and turns the heart to stone. When we consider this we are tempted to say, with one of our poets: “To me the whole world is one gallows.”

We can only wonder at the fortitude of our fathers and mothers who said, not once but many times: “Though You slay me, yet will I trust in You.” And we can only pray to be blessed with a measure of the faith that enabled them to remain true to G-d and G-d’s Torah, even when G-d seemed remote from them and life itself might have lost all meaning. (Gates of Prayer)

At My Bar Mitzvah – and His
Dedicated to the memory of a thirteen-year-old hero of the Resistance
By Rabbi Howard Kahn
A responsive reading

When I was thirteen, I became a Bar Mitzvah.
When he was thirteen, he became a Bar Mitzvah.
When I was thirteen, my teachers taught me – to put Tefillin on my arm.
When he was thirteen, his teachers taught him - to throw a hand grenade with his arm.
When I was thirteen, I studied – the pathways of the Bible and roadways of the Talmud.
When he was thirteen, he studied – the canals of Warsaw and the sewers of the Ghetto.
At my Bar Mitzvah, I took an oath to live as a Jew.
At his Bar Mitzvah, he took an oath to die as a Jew.
At my Bar Mitzvah, I blessed G-d.
At his Bar Mitzvah, he questioned G-d.
At my Bar Mitzvah, I lifted my voice and sang.
At his Bar Mitzvah, he lifted his fists and fought.
At my Bar Mitzvah, I read from the Scroll of the Torah.
At his Bar Mitzvah, he wrote a Scroll of Fire.
At my Bar Mitzvah, I wore a new Tallit over a new suit.
At his Bar Mitzvah, he wore a rifle and bullets over a suit of rags.
At my Bar Mitzvah, I started my road of life.
At his Bar Mitzvah, he began his road to martyrdom.
At my Bar Mitzvah, family and friends came – to say “L’chayim.”
At his Bar Mitzvah, Rabbi Akiba and Trumpeldor, Hannah and her seven sons – came to escort him to Heaven.
At my Bar Mitzvah, they praised my voice, my song, my melody.
At his Bar Mitzvah, they praised his strength, his courage, his fearlessness.
When I was thirteen, I was called up to the Torah – I went to the Bimah.
When he was thirteen, his body went up in smoke – his soul rose to G-d.
When I was thirteen, I became a Bar Mitzvah – and lived.
When he was thirteen, he became a Bar Mitzvah – and lives now within each of us.

Two Hundred Fourteen: Kindling the Lights of Remembrance
Debbie Perlman, psalmist in residence, Beth Emet The Free Synagogue

How can we fathom this enormity of loss?
Our hearts try to gather in the countless faces.
You, Holy One, summon each, images burned
In Your remembrance. Help us to recall.
Help us to recall their lives and their destruction;
Bring us to Your sacred place of memory,
Not only to bear witness, but to reassemble faith,
To recover the defiled and make it holy.
Those slender flames are a promise and a charge,
Calling us to honor and to imitate righteousness;
These flames illuminate truth’s horror and hope’s future,
Your searing reminder: do not forget.
Let us bless You, Holy One, touching fire to wick,
Six candles to burn in testimony;
Let us bless You, Holy One, for You dry our tears,
You comfort martyred souls,
You bring us shalom.

Light the six memorial candles (As they are being lit, Ani Ma’amin may be recited or chanted)

Ani Ma’amin
Moses Maimonides/
Ani ma’amin, be’emunah shelema,/
B’viat HaMashiach, ani ma’amin,/
v’af al pi she’yitmameha/
im kol ze, ani ma’amin./
I believe with perfect faith/
In the coming of the Messiah,/
and despite the long delay/
I believe the Messianic time will arrive./

The Soul of Humanity
Adam Fisher, A Service of Remembering the Shoah: An Everlasting Name

The human spirit is the light of G-d. As we look at these lights, try to imagine six million candles each one with the name of another Jew. Each one would signify a unique and precious soul, who struggled and had hope, who was part of a family, an orphan, a widow, or a widower. They worked, studied, took walks – the ordinary things of life. They celebrated births and weddings, mourned at funerals.

All were part of the Jewish people, each one was a separate individual. Each one suffered. Each and every one was murdered.

From Anne Frank’s Diary

Two weeks before she died, Anne Frank wrote the following:
“It is really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the approaching thunder, I can feel the suffering of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come out right one of these days, that this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals for perhaps the day will come when I shall be able to carry them out.”

Prayer after Readings

O, G-d, give us ears to hear and hearts to understand the memories these words bring, so that we might acknowledge their lives and their suffering, their death and their resistance, their survival, their despair and their hopes.

Praised are You, for memory and words, for hearts that speak and hearts that listen.