Yom HaShoah 2025
Remarks
Introduction by Tam Huynh
Today, we gather to commemorate Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, a solemn occasion dedicated to honoring the memory of the six million Jews and countless others who perished during one of the darkest chapters in human history. This day serves as a poignant reminder of the atrocities committed and the resilience of those who survived. It is a day to reflect on the lessons of the Holocaust and to reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that such horrors are never repeated.
Marking Yom HaShoah is of paramount importance. It is not merely an act of remembrance but a call to action. As we remember the victims, we must also confront the rising tide of antisemitism and hate that continues to plague our world. The lessons of the Holocaust are painfully relevant today, reminding us of the dangers of intolerance, persecution, and dehumanization. We must stand united against these forces, safeguarding the values of democracy, human rights, and dignity for all.
This year holds special significance as we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center (HHRC). The HHRC has been a beacon of education, advocacy, and remembrance for four decades. Its tireless efforts have ensured that the stories of the Holocaust are preserved and that the lessons learned continue to inspire future generations. Many of you know it began with a small group of Holocaust Survivors, liberators, and their allies, also known as a group of teachers and librarians that attended a two-week course entitled, Teaching the Holocaust in Maine Schools, given at Bowdoin College. It was funded by the Maine Humanities Council and private donations, with sponsors including Bowdoin College, the Maine State Library, and the Department of Education. It is less known that the group's camaraderie and reunion in March of 1985 led to the formation of a Task Force. The Task Force lasted for the duration of their meeting before they decided to become the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine and appoint officers. That was a very efficient Task Force, and shortly thereafter, the organization was incorporated with the help of then Representative Merle Nelson. The HHRC's work, which began with a dedication to Holocaust education and a broader commitment to human rights and social justice, remains today.
Today’s program will feature remarks from Robert Katz, followed by ten community members who will share prayers, poems, readings, reflections, and songs. The program will conclude with a time for reflection at the site just outside our entrance, where earth from Auschwitz is interred.
I am honored to introduce Robert Katz, an esteemed artist whose contributions to Holocaust remembrance are unparalleled. Bob has designed numerous Holocaust installations and memorials, including the Slivka Holocaust Memorial in Portland. His work serves as a powerful testament to the enduring impact of art in preserving history and fostering reflection. Bob has also been a dedicated member of the HHRC's board of directors for 30 years, and he recently retired from the faculty of the University of Maine at Augusta (UMA).
Today, Bob will share his insights on why this Yom HaShoah feels different. His perspective, shaped by decades of artistic and educational contributions, will undoubtedly provide us with a deeper understanding of this day's significance and the ongoing relevance of its lessons. Thank you.
Remarks by Robert Katz
I grew up in the Bronx in the 1950’s. We lived in an apartment building near my grandparents, Sophie and Louis. They were immigrants who came to America to seek sanctuary from persecution.
I remember that many of their neighbors had mysterious numbers tattooed on their arms. My grandparents never spoke about the country that they left. They passed away giving us the gift of Jewish traditions, but without providing us with any details about the fate of our family.
In my early 20’s, I came across a letter that provided me with a glimpse into my ancestor’s lives and fate. It stated;
The family came from Galicia and were victims of economic oppression and had very little chance. And then, there was Hitler and Auschwitz. When the German tanks rolled into their small village all the Jews who were strong became fodder for their factories, or if too old or young, went to the gas chambers. The vast majority of our family were fed to the flames.
In 1989, when Eastern Europe was purging itself of communist control, I began a decade long search for the fragments of my ancestor’s lives. I traveled to many of the concentration camps. I visited the sites where there were pograms and public executions. I visited mass graves that were now well hidden under the forest canopy, and I walked the cobble stone streets of the former ghettos. I stood silently in the desecrated Jewish cemeteries. I listened intently to the painful memories of the survivors that I met along the way.
As the story unfolded for me, I was shaken by the number of murders at each site that I visited; 200,000 at Sobibor; 840,000 at Treblinka; 80,000 at Majdanek; more than 90,000 at Mauthausen ; 190,000 at Dachau; and over a million at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I stood before the gas chambers and the ovens.
The statistics are staggering to comprehend. In searching out the details, the true tragedy would reveal itself. The viciousness of the pograms, brutality of torture, starvation, and the insidious methods of killing of the young and old simply because they were Jews. Each detail of this firestorm was horrifying as I confronted a deliberate, mechanized 20th century genocide committed against my family and all Jews.
Each time that I would return to Maine there was a pause, a reprieve from these tragic stories. My growing family and I felt reassured that the Holocaust is a dark event in history. As Jews, we are comforted in knowing that we have places like the HHRC and other Holocaust museums and centers throughout the world. Other artists and I have had the privilege of being commissioned to create public Holocaust memorials, which allowed us to believe that the world has changed. We have had nearly 8 decades to learn the awful consequence from the testimony of survivors and liberators of what happens to humanity when the corrosive power of hate prevails.
October 7th, 2023.
On that peaceful morning, the day dawned bright at a music festival and the neighboring Kibbutz communities. How could we possibly have imagined the impending inferno and the unspeakable atrocities that were about to be unleashed?
The brutality and depravity of the crimes perpetuated on innocent babies, children, parents and grandparents are almost unspeakable. The sexual assault on girls and women, the burning alive of families huddled in shelters, the mutilation of bodies, decapitations and the taking of hostages, awakens us to the harsh reality that Jews are still being viciously murdered today, 80 years after the Nazi’s Final Solution. The perpetrators may be different, but the victims are the same.
Yom Hashoah today requires us to go beyond commemoration, reflection and remembrance. We must renew our commitment to “never again.” However, this past year in our country alone there were 9,354 anti-Semitic acts that includes bomb threats, assaults, harassment and vandalism. This is the highest number of documented anti-Semitic incidents in the past 46 years.
On college campuses anti-Semitic incidents rose to a horrifying 84% over last year. This is a grim reality.
The lesson learned from the past is that it was not just the failure of governments, but the failure of everyday people who stood silently by.
What must resonate today with institutions like the HHRC, our churches and synagogues and universities and each of us here, is that silence and indifference is complicity. We must commit ourselves to insuring that the post-Holocaust generation reflect and most important act upon its moral responsibility to confront prejudice, intolerance and discrimination in all of its forms.
We have a collective obligation for our institutional and individual voices to be loudly heard in the streets, in the halls of government, in our religious sanctuaries and on the campuses of our universities condemning the rise of anti-Semitism, historical revisionism and other human rights abuses.
We were warned. We were warned about all this by the late Elie Weisel who looked out upon a gathering of survivors and said,
Had anyone told us when we were liberated that we would be compelled in our lifetime to fight anti-Semitism once more … we would have had no strength to lift our eyes from the ruins. If only we could tell the tale, we thought, the world would change. Well, we have told the tale, and the world has remained the same …
Yom Hashoah reminds us about the Jews who courageously fought the Nazis in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto. We are reminded of the ongoing tenacity of the Jewish people as we confront the continued threat of fanaticism, extremism, anti-Semitism and racism. We are at a juncture and must resolve not to yield to violence and hate.
President Ronald Reagan once said that to “reinforce the moral fiber of our society is much more than a Jewish responsibility. It rests upon all of us who, not immobilized by cynicism, believe that mankind is capable of greater goodness. For just as the genocide of the Holocaust and (I believe the mass murders of October 7th) debased civilization, the outcome of the struggle against those who committed the atrocities will eventuall give us hope that the brighter side of the human spirit will, in the end, triumph.”
And the World Was Silent, by Elaine Katz
People may not realize that Elie Wiesel first published his memoir in Yiddish, under the title And the World was Silent. It wasn’t until the French version was published under the new title La Nuit, a more palatable version for the public. Now let us turn attention to another widely popular Holocaust story.
Around this time of the year, people of all ages, from elementary school age children to adults, dust off their copy of The Diary of Anne Frank—published in 70 languages and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam hosts over a million visitors a year. So, consider the following when in 2019 a young employee at the Anne Frank House tried to wear his yarmulke to work, and his employers (the museum board) told him to hide it under a baseball cap. The museums’ goal was to foster “neutrality.”
A spokesman for the museum said that a live Jew in a yarmulke might “interfere” with the museum’s “independent position.” It took the museum board 4 months to decide that it probably was not a good idea to force another living Jew into hiding.
Gee, where have we heard this before? As the noted author and Harvard scholar Dara Horn writes in her book entitled People Love Dead Jews, her premise being: but not so much the plight of living Jews. All around the world there are Jewish Museums and other Jewish Heritage Sites, many of which exist in countries where there are virtually no living Jews. These sites are often tourist destinations bringing in millions of dollars. And yet Holocaust education is not sufficient to stem the rising tide of antisemitism around the world. A recent global survey published in January 2025 revealed that 48% of US respondents could not name a single concentration camp used by the Nazis. The younger the demographic, the worse the response. This alarming reality of such total ignorance of Jewish persecution has got to play a role in the pervasive lack of interest and in some cases the perpetuation of current day antisemitism.
Holocaust education is essential when we consider there are only about 220.000 survivors of the Holocaust who are probably vastly outnumbered by Holocaust deniers. But the legacy of the Holocaust cannot be taught in a vacuum. For 3,000 years, Jews have been hunted, chased and murdered for no other reason than being alive.
As a mere 2% of the American population, how does one account for the disproportional number of assaults? As Jews relocated across the globe, including to the United States, we embraced assimilation into American culture, hiding our language and in many cases cultural traditions as a means of self-preservation. We will no longer apologize for our right to live in peace.
Non-Jewish society has to take responsibility for having downplayed the acts of synagogue shootings, physical assaults, terrorizing Jewish members of the community when swastikas are painted on park sidewalks or on the high school bathroom walls, or when Jewish college students are too frightened to attend class for fear of physical assault. Or even more currently, firebombing a Jewish family’s home on the first night of Passover. Expressions of sympathy do nothing to stop the next assault. Having to provide police protection outside synagogues during Jewish holidays is not the answer.
It is no longer acceptable to maintain “neutrality.” When the KKK comes marching through streets of towns big and small, urban and rural, terrorizing all people they judge not to have the right to exist in peace—No, there are not “Good people on both sides.”
But fortunately, there are many good people who are dedicated to inspiring us to step up, organize a call to action to fight back against antisemitism, racism and bigotry wherever and whenever it occurs. I hope we can Support the HHRC’s efforts as they lead in this mission.
Readings
Let us begin with a prayer from Rabbi Lord Sacks and the lighting of three candles:
Today, on Yom HaShoah, we remember the victims of the greatest crime of man against man – the young, the old, the innocent, the million and a half children, starved, shot, given lethal injections, gassed, burned and turned to ash, because they were deemed guilty of the crime of being different.
We remember what happens when hate takes hold of the human heart and turns it to stone; what happens when victims cry for help and there is no one listening; what happens when humanity fails to recognise that those who are not in our image are nonetheless in God’s image.
We remember and pay tribute to the survivors, who bore witness to what happened, and to the victims, so that robbed of their lives, they would not be robbed also of their deaths.
We remember and give thanks for the righteous of the nations who saved lives, often at risk of their own, teaching us how in the darkest night we can light a candle of hope.
Today, on Yom HaShoah, we call on You, Almighty God, to help us hear Your voice that says in every generation:
Do not murder.
Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.
Do not oppress the stranger.
We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future.
We know that whilst we cannot bring the dead back to life, we can ensure their memories live on and that their deaths were not in vain.
And so, on this Yom HaShoah, we commit ourselves to one simple act: Yizkor, Remember.
May the souls of the victims be bound in the bond of everlasting life. Amen.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the heart’s secret places.
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
We begin with silence
We begin – with silence.
The silence of death; the silence of life.
The silence after destruction;
The silence before creation.
There are times when songs falter,
When darkness fills life,
When martyrdom becomes a constellation of faith
Against the unrelieved black of space about us.
There are no words to reach beyond the night,
No messengers to tell the full tale.
There is only silence.
The silence of Job.
The silence of the Six Million.
The silence of memory.
Let us remember them, then, as we link our silences
Into the silence which becomes a prayer,
Linking us with the past,
Touching that darkness we cannot fully enter,
The anguish that is memory and love.
And life and death.
Silence.
Video Screening
We watch scenes from Jewish life in Europe before the war and picture the people and places that were lost.
https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-videos/video-toolbox/hevt-life-before.html (start at 2:15 or 2:16→end)
Naming of the Survivors and Victims
Let us now remember the generations who remembered. The tradition of remembering continues. We are a link in this chain. We acknowledge this incomplete list of Maine survivors and invite participants to stand and add the names of any survivors they would like to be remembered.
Julius Ciembroniewicz. Tama Fineberg. Gerda Haas. Dr. Rudolf Haas. Judith Magyar Isaacson. Rose Magyar. Alfred Kantor. Inge Kantor. Manfred Kelman. Emil Landau. Cantor Kurt Messerschmidt. Sonja Messerschmidt. Edith Pagelson. Charles Rotmil. Julia Skalina. Jerry Slivka. Rochelle Blechman Slivka. Alan Wainberg. Walter Ziffer.
El Malei Rachamim
We continue with El Male Rachamim, a Jewish prayer for the departed. It is customary for all to stand, so I ask that those who are able to please rise as I recite a special version of the prayer dedicated to those who perished in the Holocaust in both Hebrew and in English. I invite all who wish to join in.
Exalted compassionate God, Grant perfect peace in your
sheltering presence, among the holy and the pure, to the souls
of all our brethren, men, women,
and children of the House of Israel and others who were
slaughtered and suffocated and burned to ashes. May their
memory endure, inspiring truth and loyalty in our lives. May
their souls thus be bound up in the bond of life. May they rest
in peace.
And let us say: Amen.
Shema by Primo Levi
Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist, partisan, survivor and writer. We listen to his words:
You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud,
Who does not know peace,
Who fights for a scrap of bread,
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman
Without hair and without name,
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.
Meditate that this came about:
I command these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces
from you.
For All These Things I Weep …
Even if I have no words and you have few,
Our reach falling short and our language stammering,
We awaken the memory of an ocean of indescribable
torments, mankind’s most enormous slaughter,
With the very muteness of our lips and with a sadness that
transcends language.
For these things I weep:
For the parents who were murdered,
For the brothers, the sisters,
For the children who dreamed.
For these things I weep:
For the house that was destroyed,
For the neighbors who betrayed,
For the street from which they were driven,
For the synagogues that were shattered,
For the whole nation whose life was crushed.
For these things I weep,
For each person, their world, and their mystery,
For their loves, their despairs, and their dreams,
For their study, their deeds, and their pains,
For their memories, their anger, and their laughter,
For each person and their life.
Eli, Eli, by Hannah Senesh
My God, my God,
may it never end –
the sand and the sea,
the rustle of the water,
the lightning of the sky,
the prayer of man.
אלי, אלי,
שלא יגמר לעולם
החול והים
רשרוש של המים
ברק השמים
תפילת האדם
Yizkor by Abba Kovner
Abba Kovner was a Jewish partisan leader who survived to become an award winning Israeli poet and writer.
We hear his words.
Let us remember our brothers and our sisters
the homes in the cities and houses in the villages
The streets of the town that bustled like rivers
And the inn standing solitary on the way.
The old man with his etched-out features
The mother in her sweater
The girl with the plaits
And the children.
The thousands of communities of Israel with their families
The whole Jewish people
That was brought to the slaughter on the soil
of Europe by the German destroyer.
The man who screamed out suddenly and died while screaming
The woman who clutched her baby to her breast and whose arms tumbled down.
The baby whose fingers groped for her mother’s nipple
which was blue and cold
The legs, the legs that sought refuge
and there was no escape.
And those who clenched their hands into fists
The fist that gripped the steel
The steel that was the weapon of the vision
the despair and the revolt.
And those with staunch hearts and those with open eyes
And those who sacrificed themselves without
being able to save others.
We shall remember the day
The day in its noon, the sun
That rose over the stake of blood
The skies that stood high and silent
We shall remember the mounds of ash
beneath flowering parks.
Let the living remember his dead for
behold they are here
Before us
Behold their eyes cast around and about.
So let us not rest
May our lives be worthy of their memory.
At my Bar Mitzvah—and His by Rabbi Harold Kahn
And dedicated to the memory of a thirteen-year-old hero of the Resistance.
When I was thirteen, I became Bar Mitzvah.
When he was thirteen, he became 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 God,
At his Bar Mitzvah, he questioned God.
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.
Al: his Bar Mitzvah, he began his road to martyrdom.
At my Bar Mitzvah, family and friends came to say I'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 theTorah - I went to the Bimah.
When he was thirteen, his body went up in smoke - his soul rose to God.
When I was thirteen, I became Bar Mitzvah and lived.
When he was thirteen, he became Bar Mitzvah and lives now within each of us.
Joel the redhead, a story from Elie Wiesel
Joel the redhead was five years old and he knew that he must not shout; to shout was dangerous.
An unusually clever hiding place had been found for him: under the cave whose entrance could not be found. With him were his father, his mother, his older brother Yekkutiel and his Uncle Zanvel, whom he loved because he told him stories.
Joel knew many things, but not whether it was day or night outside. In his cave it was always dark…
During the raids the subterranean inhabitants had learned to communicate silently. Uncle Zanvel told his funny stories without a sound.
Joel’s father was the first to go, having ventured out to look for water one night. A rifle shot cut him down. A scream was heard … And in the shelter Joel succeeded in crying without crying.
His mother placed her hand over his mouth when a few days later Yekutiel was arrested. That same evening she, too, was taken. Joel the Redhead knew that he was going to burst with pain, but his Uncle Zanvel’s hand was on his mouth.
Zanvel, too, disappeared. And Joel was left alone in the darkness. His hand covering his mouth, he began to sob without a sound, scream without a sound, survive without a sound.
Simchat Torah by Elie Wiesel
In one of the barracks several hundred Jews gathered to celebrate Simchat Torah. In the shadow of shadows? Yes - even there. On the threshold of the death chambers? Yes - even there. But since there was no Sefer Torah, how could they organize the traditional procession with the sacred scrolls? AS they were trying to solve the problem, an old man - was he really old? The word had no meaning there - noticed a young boy - who was so old, so old - standing there looking on and dreaming. “Do you remember what you learned in school?” asked the man. “Yes, I do,” replied the boy. “Really?” said the man, “you remember Shema Yisrael?” “I remember much more," said the boy. “Shema Yisrael is enough,” said the man. And he lifted the boy, clasped him in his arms and began dancing with him - as though he were the Torah. And all joined in. They all sang and danced and cried. They wept, but they sang with fervor - never before had Jews celebrated Simchat Torah with such fervor.
Fear, an essay written by my grandson, Skylar Levin.
I believe in a life without fear. I believe in the freedom of religion. I believe in the resiliency of the Jewish faith and people, despite all the hate and horror designed to eradicate my religion, in the past, present, and inevitable future. The survival story of my people is so incredibly sorrowful and dishearteningly aggrieved that those who have not heard it may think it to be fantasy.
I remember sitting down on my grandparents’ laps as a young kid after lighting the Hanukkah candles for the first time by myself. I knew I was Jewish, but I did not yet understand the significance of that aspect of my identity. I didn’t think it mattered because it was never a factor that affected friendships or opportunities in my community. My grandma rolled up the back of my shirt to scratch my back, just like always. But what I heard was not a soothing song like many times before; rather, it was quite the opposite.
Jews were first subjugated by the pharaoh in Egypt, 1700 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. This enslavement would serve as a launching point for all the suffering I was about to hear, sitting on my Grandma’s lap, getting my back scratched. The countless, constant, unrelentless persecution opened my eyes: Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans, the Catholic Church, Franks, Reconquistadors, Nazis. The list grew and I felt fear, for the first time in my life, out of the basis of religion.
But I was not going to be a part of this story of pain, for I lived in the United States, a place where everyone is guaranteed the freedom of religion. A life without fear. Equality. At least in theory.
When I turned on the TV though, months after October 7th, 2023 and the headlines read, “Jewish students harassed on Columbia campus,” I was confused. When I opened my phone in early February, 2025 and saw Kanye West’s antisemitic tweets, so blatantly false that they were laughable, I was shocked. But this was not a laughing matter in the slightest. It appeared that the same, inevitable story was rearing its ugly head once again.
Equality is a nuanced ideal; each way to implement an egalitarian society—prioritarianism and luck egalitarianism for instance—frustratingly contains inherent inequalities. Fear, on the other hand, is not. Fear, unlike the pitfalls of inequality, is felt by everyone at one point or another. It is an essential part of life to that point, for without it, there would be no incentive to improve. But to live an entire life in fear is oppression. The Jewish people—my people, innocent people—have lived not just an entire life but entire milleniums in fear. The United States is finally a place where the eradication of that fear has been guaranteed, but only if we, the people, uphold that promise. This I Believe.
We hear an excerpt from the Survivors’ Declaration and listen to their words:
The age of the Holocaust Survivors is drawing
to a close. Before long no one will be left to say:
“I was there, I saw, I remember what happened.”
All that will be left will be the books of research
and literature, pictures and films and archives
of testimonies. This will be a new era. The dark
inheritance of the Shoah that was so indelibly
stamped on the Survivors’ souls and hearts will
become a historical mission and responsibility
imposed upon humanity to fill with content
and substance.
Mourner's Kaddish
We pause now to recite the Mourner's Kaddish, the Jewish prayer in memory of the dead. All who know the prayer are welcome to join in. Those who are in mourning traditionally rise during this prayer, so please do so if you are able.
יִתְגַּדַּל וְיִתְקַדַּשׁ שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא.
בְּעָלְמָא דִּי בְרָא כִרְעוּתֵהּ וְיַמְלִיךְ מַלְכוּתֵהּ בְּחַיֵּיכון וּבְיומֵיכון וּבְחַיֵּי דְכָל בֵּית יִשרָאֵל בַּעֲגָלָא וּבִזְמַן קָרִיב, וְאִמְרוּ אמן
יְהֵא שְׁמֵהּ רַבָּא מְבָרַךְ לְעָלַם וּלְעָלְמֵי עָלְמַיָּא
יִתְבָּרַךְ וְיִשְׁתַּבַּח וְיִתְפָּאַר וְיִתְרומַם וְיִתְנַשּא וְיִתְהַדָּר וְיִתְעַלֶּה וְיִתְהַלָּל שְׁמֵהּ דְּקֻדְשָׁא. בְּרִיךְ הוּא
לְעֵלָּא מִן כָּל בִּרְכָתָא וְשִׁירָתָא תֻּשְׁבְּחָתָא וְנֶחֱמָתָא דַּאֲמִירָן בְּעָלְמָא. וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן
יְהֵא שְׁלָמָא רַבָּא מִן שְׁמַיָּא וְחַיִּים עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשרָאֵל. וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן
עושה שָׁלום בִּמְרומָיו הוּא יַעֲשה שָׁלום עָלֵינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשרָאֵל וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן
The Talmud
The Talmud says that the human was created as a unique
being in the world, to teach that one who
destroys a single soul has destroyed an
entire world. And one who saves a single
soul has saved an entire world.
So let us engage in the sacred work of tikkun olam
today. Let us not wait another moment.
Let us repair the world with love for one another.
Let us start today with a resolve to fight injustice.
Let this service remind us of the horrors of the past
and the hope for the future.
Let us dedicate ourselves to faith, hope and the
traditions of our people.
Let the memory of all those who were killed inspire
us to become more loving and kind, and to speak
out against injustice wherever it occurs.
May the memory of the righteous be for a blessing.
Closing
Tam thanks participants for attending and invites participants to follow Erica outside to pause at the site outside the Center where ashes from Auschwitz are interred to place a stone, say a prayer or reflect. She welcomes them to move to the atrium to spend time together as a community.