Jewish Celebrations – Individual Questions
A. Briefly explain the significance of your celebration (historical events/key themes) Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, is a very important Jewish Holiday. It’s their day of morning the victims and reflecting on the events that took place during the holocaust (January 30, 1933 - May 8, 1945). Yom HaShoah gives them a chance to get together as a community or with their families to remember and pay respect to the 6 000 000 Jews who died. Mourning, respect, and remembrance are defiantly the key themes to this day.
B. Identify the time of year it is celebrated, plus the symbols and/or foods used during the celebrations? Yom HaShoah takes place on the 27th of the month of Nisan (March/April) and lasts only 1 day. Unless the 27th would be adjacent to Shabbat, in which case the date is shifted by a day. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Since it’s a relatively new holiday there aren’t actually that many rituals or symbols. The only one I could find that was a symbol is the 6 candles that Jews light in their homes and in the synagogues that represent the six million Jews who were killed during the holocaust. Radio stations feature recitation of appropriate songs and readings, television stations play Holocaust-themed films or a program featuring Holocaust survivors sharing their stories.
C. Read the scriptural passage that is related to your topic. Explain how the celebration is connected to the scriptural passage. Each synagogue celebrates it a little differently. It’s common that the Kaddish (on attached page) is recited, which is a prayer for the departed. Yom HaShoah is Remembrance Day of the holocaust, which is why the Kaddish is completely fitting. In recent years a new literary scroll has been created. This scroll is called “Megillat HaShoah” (The Holocaust Scroll) created by the Conservative movement as a joint project of rabbis and lay-leaders in Canada, the U.S., and Israel. This Holocaust scroll contains personal
B. Identify the time of year it is celebrated, plus the symbols and/or foods used during the celebrations? Yom HaShoah takes place on the 27th of the month of Nisan (March/April) and lasts only 1 day. Unless the 27th would be adjacent to Shabbat, in which case the date is shifted by a day. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Since it’s a relatively new holiday there aren’t actually that many rituals or symbols. The only one I could find that was a symbol is the 6 candles that Jews light in their homes and in the synagogues that represent the six million Jews who were killed during the holocaust. Radio stations feature recitation of appropriate songs and readings, television stations play Holocaust-themed films or a program featuring Holocaust survivors sharing their stories.
C. Read the scriptural passage that is related to your topic. Explain how the celebration is connected to the scriptural passage. Each synagogue celebrates it a little differently. It’s common that the Kaddish (on attached page) is recited, which is a prayer for the departed. Yom HaShoah is Remembrance Day of the holocaust, which is why the Kaddish is completely fitting. In recent years a new literary scroll has been created. This scroll is called “Megillat HaShoah” (The Holocaust Scroll) created by the Conservative movement as a joint project of rabbis and lay-leaders in Canada, the U.S., and Israel. This Holocaust scroll contains personal