Schechter News | In the Media

by Annette Young, Ha'aretz Newspaper

The first liturgical text designed to commemorate the Holocaust will be read in Conservative synagogues around the world on Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day next week.

The text, known as Megillat Hashoah (the Shoah Scroll), has been published by the Schecter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and is the result of a four-year project designed to produce a meaningful liturgical work, in Hebrew, English and French, to be used in commemorating the day. Some 8,000 copies have been published and sent to every Conservative rabbi around the world.

Described as a document of "historic importance," the scroll "provides a religious context for our need to commemorate that which must never be forgotten," said Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin, president of the Schecter Institute, which runs rabbinical and advanced-level Jewish studies programs. "We hope and pray that, as time passes, this megillah will perpetuate the memory of the Shoah just as the Passover seder perpetuates the memory of the Exodus from Egypt."

While Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day has attracted growing observance in Israel and throughout the world, there have been no standard liturgical practices associated with it.

The man responsible for the idea was Polish Holocaust survivor, Alex Eisen, who now lives in Toronto, Canada. Eisen believed that with the aging of survivors and the increase in Holocaust deniers, there was an even greater need to produce a liturgy for the day itself to ensure that the tragedy would not be forgotten.

In 1995, he approached then Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau with the proposal, but was told that such a text could not be written within an Orthodox religious framework. Four years later, Eisen, a member of a Conservative synagogue in Toronto, approached Rabbi Golinkin - who was assisting at the synagogue's High Holiday services that year - with his idea. Eisen also requested approval for it from the Rabbinical Assembly, an international organization that represents some 1,600 Conservative rabbis.

With the Rabbinical Assembly's agreement, Golinkin set about establishing an academic committee to draft a text. The committee finally agreed that one of its members, Prof. Avigdor Shinan, a professor of Hebrew literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, would write the scroll in modern Hebrew, but using biblical phrases. The text was translated into English by Rabbi Jules Harlow, a renowned liturgist from New York.

"It is such a simple idea," Golinkin said, adding that he was not surprised that the Orthodox rejected the concept.

Golinkin, who has advocated turning Holocaust Day into a fast day, has written in Conservative Jewish journals on the subject, noting that Orthodox rabbis are "suffering from halakhic [Jewish law-related] paralysis" and "are afraid of any change or innovation, no matter how halakhically legitimate it is."

The scroll contains six chapters that include a testimony from a survivor whose job in a death camp was to dispose of bodies while removing the victims' gold teeth, including those of his dead brother; an eyewitness account of life in the Warsaw Ghetto; and an eulogy for those who perished. Its final chapter also commemorates the survivors, including those who went on to build the State of Israel

Said Golinkin: "We would like [the scroll] to be used, not just in synagogues, but in community centers and schools throughout the world. We also want it to be used by Jews of every persuasion - be they Reform, Orthodox, or secular. We believe Yom Hashoah should be observed by all Jews everywhere."

First published in Ha'aretz newspaper April, 2003.