14th Annual Holocaust Remembrance Day Vigil at Temple Beth David

Rabbi Danielle Bensimhon opens the service with song and prayer.

Temple Beth David of Palm Beach Gardens held its 14th Annual Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day Vigil of Remembrance last month.

      During the 12-hour period from 9:45 a.m. to 9:45 p.m., congregants, their families and friends, and members of other communities of faith came together to read aloud names of Jewish martyrs who perished in the Holocaust, as well as those of the Righteous Among the Nations, non-Jews who risked their lives to aid and shelter Jews during that dark period in the world’s history.

      The Vigil began with the chanting of prayers and remarks by Beth David’s spiritual leader Rabbi Danielle Bensimhon, as well as moving and inspirational words by Scholar-in-Residence Rabbi Debra Eisenman and Pastor Michael Zdorow of The Gathering Place, and the lighting of six memorial candles in memory of the six million murdered during the Shoah. Then, with the generous support of Florida Atlantic University, Oren B. Stier, PhD, professor of religious studies and director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program at Florida International University, spoke on Hollywood and the Holocaust. The talk explored some of the better-known examples of the paradoxical Holocaust film genre and what they tell us about how the Holocaust has been represented and processed culturally.

      Individuals and families then read the names of Jews who were murdered by the Nazis. Art created by Jewish children martyred in the Holocaust and photos of Jewish partisan groups were on display in the temple sanctuary, as were stills from well-known Holocaust-themed films; images of pre-war Jewish life in Europe were projected upon its walls as ambient music provided a counterpoint to the ongoing recitation of names.

      Temple Beth David’s Rescued Holocaust Torah Scroll, saved from wartime destruction and recovered from a destroyed Czech synagogue, bore silent witness during the Vigil, as a living symbol of the connection between our community and the now departed congregations that read and learned from scrolls like it so many decades ago.

      Members of area churches, including The Gathering Place of Palm Beach Gardens, which holds its services at Temple Beth David, and the Church of St. Paul of the Cross of North Palm Beach participated in this ceremony of remembrance by reading the names of the Righteous Among the Nations.

      Each participant lit an individual memorial candle, which, as the day lengthened and darkened, provided greater numbers of flickering flames and more and more light. Each reader and listener signed a large placard attesting to their status as witnesses to this solemn ceremony of memory and resolve.

      Temple Beth David’s Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day Vigil of Remembrance was a unique and moving experience — communal and yet highly personal, a remembrance of horror and loss and an affirmation of survival and life, a harkening to a darker time in history and a reinforcement of the resolve of Never Again, an ongoing plea for justice and tolerance.