Shuls Crop the Holocaust out of our history

Note: I spoke to Jules Harlow at Jack Neusner's 75th birthday party today and so I am rerunning this post.

Despite the magnitude of suffering of the Jews of Europe, and how recently the events occurred, synagogue prayers and rituals for the most part ignore the Holocaust, or treat it superficially.

True, it is fitting that we commemorate Yom HaShoah in many communities in a public school auditorium or other secular gathering place with speeches and ceremonies to make the event more accessible and universal to our neighbors.

Thinking about the new museum just dedicated at Yad VaShem and about the celebration of Yom HaShoah, I raise an issue near to all our hearts: isn't it time to institutionalize properly our memorial of the Shoah in the synagogue service?

How can we go day after day to pray and not officially recognize directly and explicitly the epochal tragedy that epitomizes modern Jewish and all of contemporary human suffering?

How can we talk of the servitude in Egypt at our seders and contemplate Passover in our shuls and virtually ignore the slavery of the Holocaust?

Notably we must recall that American Conservative Judaism developed a Kaddish for death camps over 30 years ago. Based in part on the last passages of Andre Schwarz-Bart's 1960 novel, The Last of the Just, the rite was originally incorporated into the Martyrology of the Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, of the Rabbinical Assembly (1972). Rabbi Jules Harlow, editor of the Mahzor described the new kaddish to me as follows:

We interrupt these words [of the traditional Kaddish], this statement of faith, with the names of places where Jews were slaughtered, places which therefore cause us to raise questions, to have doubts. The tension is resolved, liturgically, by the last four lines, whose words are uninterrupted by the names which give rise to questioning, thus concluding in a framework of faith.

The original Aramaic text alternates with a register of the sites of extermination in this moving prayer as follows (cited from the Siddur Sim Shalom, ed. Jules Harlow, 1985):

• Yitgadal
  Auschwitz
  ve'yitkadash
  Lodz
  Sh'mei raba
  Ponar
  b'alma di v'ra khir'utei,
  Babi Yar
  v'yamlikh malkhutei
  Maidanek
  b'hayeikhon u-v'yomeikhon
  Birkenau
  u-v'hayei d'khol beit yisrael,
  Kovno
  ba-agala u-vi-z'man kariv,
  Janowska
  v'imru amen.
  Y'hei sh'mei raba m'vorakh l'alam u-l'almei almaya.
  Yitbarakh v'yishtabah
  Theresienstadt
  v'yitpa'ar v'yitromam
  Buchenwald
  v'yitnasei v'yit-hadar
  Treblinka
  v'yit'aleh v'yit-halal
  Vilna
  sh'mei d'kudsha,
  Bergen-Belsen
  brikh hu l'ela
  Mauthausen
  min kol birkhata v'shirata,
  Dachau
  tushb'hata v'nehemata
  Minsk
  da-amiran b'alma,
  Warsaw
  v'imru amen. Y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya v'hayim aleinu v'al kol
  yisrael, v'imru amen. Oseh shalom b-m'romav, hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu v'al kol
  yisrael, v'imru amen.

Harlow explained to me in 1989 that there are intentionally seventeen places named, signifying that life, represented by the Hebrew Chai, numerically eighteen, "can never be complete, can never be the same, after such slaughter."

In another version, the more extensive Kaddish of the Martyrology of the Day of Atonement, this new Kaddish includes Kishinev, Hebron, Mayence, Usha and Jerusalem, places where Jews were slaughtered during other tragic historical eras.

Why have Orthodox, Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues not developed some equivalent prayer or ritual? Why are we so eloquent in prayer and piyyut and davening and sermonizing and yet so ritually mute and liturgically speechless about the Shoah?

It is long overdue that the meaningful new Kaddish of the Conservative Machzor be institutionalized in all of our weekly synagogue liturgies, long overdue that it become a widespread potent ritual.

Every congregation - Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Hasidic - ought to rise and recite this Kaddish every week. It would be fitting on Shabbat Morning to recall the darkness of the Holocaust right before the chazzan intones the Prayer for the State of Israel, the liturgy that notes the beginning of the glimmer of our redemption.
[repr. from 2005, 2006]

JTA: Kaddish and the Pope

JTA NEWS cleared up some of the ambiguities of other reports on the Pope's 2006 visit:

Poland's chief rabbi, U.S.-born Michael Schudrich, not only said Kaddish in the presence of the pope and the country's top elected leaders, but also recalled those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the gas chambers.

The pope prayed with clasped hands as Simcha Keller, director of the Jewish community of Lodz, sang El Maleh Rachamim, a solemn prayer said to honor close relatives who have died.

God: Where was the pope?

Pope: Where was God during Auschwitz horror? - News from Israel, Ynetnews 2006:

In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this? - he said in a speech delivered in Italian.

I don't hear silence. I hear a deafening roar from the heavens. "Where was Pius XII during the Holocaust?" "Why were you sir a Hilter-youth?" "Why did you fight in the German army?" "How dare you wear white to Auschwitz!"

Polish Chief Rabbi Attacked in 06:

A shadow was cast over the papal visit by Saturday's attack on Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, who was to say Kaddish, or the Jewish prayer for the dead, during the ceremony led by the pope.

Schudrich told The Associated Press he was attacked in central Warsaw after confronting a man who shouted at him, 'Poland for Poles!' The rabbi said the unidentified man punched him in the chest and sprayed him with what appeared to be pepper spray.

Was he or was he not with the Pope during his visit to Auschwitz? Did he say Kaddish there? Will anti-Semitism never cease?

The New York Times Magazine interviews Nathan Englander

He's young. He's Jewish. He's a literary sensation. And he has a new book coming out. And yes, he must have a great publicist 'cause he's in the The New York Times Magazine - Features - Columns - Style - The New York Times: Questions for Nathan Englander

The Fabulist
Interview By DEBORAH SOLOMON
The short-story writer talks about why he set his first novel in Argentina and named his protagonist Kaddish, what nose jobs say about our politics and his hopes for world peace."

Kaddish for the University of Phoenix

Would you buy a used car from UoP President William J. Pepicello (right)?

When the NY Times does a front page expose of a sketchy enterprise, the echoes resound around the world.

The University of Phoenix (sponsor of a sports stadium) has been written up as news in the paper of record.

The Times titles the story, "Troubles Grow for a University Built on Profits."

I've said before that these are the guys who took the "non" out of "non-profit education." And just what is wrong with that? It is a scam of mammoth proportions.

We in the industry knew for years that adult-ed courses can make a profit because self-styled literacy is an ego trip. Continuing-ed at a distance is even more alluring. You just pay up and you are an esteemed student of higher learning. And if you drop out after paying up - that is where the real profit margin kicks in.

Until the house of cards falls down. Read the story. The Times does a good job of poking into all the questions about UoP.

Say Kaddish for the Printed Book?

The printed book is nearly dead. The print newspaper is dying. The Internet delivers words and images everywhere to every device at any time.

Soon it may make as much sense to call a treatise or novel a "book" as it now makes no sense to refer to a "dial" tone when you pick up a telephone. Bound paper tomes are already a relic of the past.

Google is ready to put more nails in the coffin. Reports are that Penguin, a unit of Pearson Group PLC (PSO), Harper Collins, a unit of News Corp. (NWS), and Simon & Schuster, a unit of CBC Corp. (CBS) are are preparing to partner with Google. The Sunday Times (London) has the story:

Google plots e-books coup
Dominic Rushe

GOOGLE and some of the world’s top publishers are working on plans that they hope could do for books what Apple’s iPod has done for music.

The internet search giant is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry.

With 380m people using Google each month, the move would give a significant boost to the development of e-books and have a big impact on the publishing industry and book retailers.

Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, said: “We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online.”

He did not believe taking books online would mean the end of the printed word but it would give readers more options when it came to buying. “You may just want to rent a travel guide for the holiday or buy a chapter of a book. Ultimately, it will be the readers who decide how books are read,” he said.

He added that after many years of setbacks the electronic book looked poised to go main-stream. Commuters in Japan were already reading entire novels on their mobile phones....(read more).