By Deborah Fripp and Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff

Originally published in the Jewish Educator, Winter 2024/5784 edition.

“We have been broken. Part of us will always be broken. We gather each precious shard and piece them together to create a new vessel that will hold our love and our pain.

“We find that we are somehow whole and broken at the same time. We discover glimmers of holiness in the cracks, for it is through these jagged windows that we see the paths to building a better world.

“There is more to a broken vessel than the hammer that shattered it.”

So begins Light from the Darkness, a new ritual designed to help us commemorate the Holocaust. These words are followed by candle lighting, as is traditional for most Jewish rituals. In this case, however, the candles are lit on mismatched candlesticks. The mismatch reminds us that in difficult times, our ancestors made do with what they had and never gave up on their Judaism.

Over the next 90 minutes of this ritual, we tell the story of the Holocaust. We talk not only of the horrific hatred and violence that we endured but also of the strength of our ancestors and those who helped them. We hear their voices. We tell their stories. We mourn our losses and celebrate our survival. We sing. We read and talk together. We engage with each other and call upon each other to learn the lessons of this atrocity and to act.

Engaging Holocaust commemorations like this one are crucial to the continued memory of the Holocaust. We can no longer rely on strong in-person interactions with survivors to carry the memory to new audiences. Without survivors, new forms of commemoration are needed to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and relevant to the next generation. With knowledge of the Holocaust dwindling and antisemitism rising, our responsibility to keep the story of the Holocaust alive and relevant has come into stark relief.

Building a text

If the description of Light from the Darkness feels familiar, there is good reason. The ceremony is loosely based on the Passover seder. The seder is the perfect model for developing a Holocaust commemoration. At the seder, we tell the story of our survival from a great tragedy – 400 years of slavery. We mourn the bitterness of the Egyptian slavery while celebrating our passage to freedom. In a Holocaust commemoration, we want to tell the story of our survival from another great tragedy. We must mourn the losses of the Holocaust while celebrating our survival as a people.

The seder gives us a roadmap for developing a Holocaust commemoration program. The haggadah includes individual voices and stories, familiar ritual actions, an honest but empowering narrative, lessons we should learn, and a call to action. An engaging Holocaust commemoration could include all of these.

• Individual voices and stories: We have an advantage over the rabbis who assembled the original haggadah – we have first person stories to draw on. A Holocaust commemoration can include direct quotes or actual individual stories from people who experienced the Holocaust – both survivors (from testimony and memoirs) and victims (from their diaries).
• Familiar and novel ritual actions: For a Holocaust program, we can use a combination of familiar and novel actions, modified to be appropriate for the context. The candle lighting in Light from the Darkness described above is one such example. Another modified ritual we can use is dipping potato skins in salt water. This action reminds us of the starvation and the tears of the dark times while simultaneously calling to mind a familiar ritual from our tradition.
• An honest but empowering narrative: How we tell a story matters. The Passover haggadah reminds us of the horrors of slavery but does not dwell exclusively on those. We also remember the strength of our ancestors and of those, like the Egyptian midwives, who helped them.

We can use the same thought process in crafting a narrative for a Holocaust commemoration. We must remember the horrific hatred and violence, but we should also remember the strength of our ancestors and of those who helped them, those whom we call the Righteous Among the Nations.

In addition, the haggadah does not begin with the Jews in slavery – it begins with our ancestors coming to the land of Egypt. In a Holocaust commemoration, we similarly want to talk about how life was before and what happened after. As we do in the haggadah, we can end our narrative in an empowered position – a terrible thing was done to us, but we survived, and that is worth celebrating.

• Lessons: The haggadah doesn’t just tell the story, it tells us what we should learn from the story. We must remember that we were slaves in Egypt, we are told, not so we can take our vengeance but so we learn to treat others better. We must remember what happened to us in the Holocaust not so we can take our revenge but so we can make sure no people ever suffer such a fate again.

It is not enough, however, to say “never again.” We must understand what that means. In Light from the Darkness, we list specific actions we will avoid. We say, “Never again shall we stay silent at the preaching of malice.” “Never again shall we allow groups of people to be separated and made unequal.” In total, we have nine specific statements that help us understand what “never again” means.

• A call to action: The haggadah ends with “Next year in Jerusalem.” As familiar, and almost cliché, as that feels, it is a call to action. It is a call to rebuild peace so that Jerusalem can be a city of peace where we can all celebrate Passover together.

A call to action for a Holocaust commemoration might be more direct. Light from the Darkness ends with “Justice, justice we shall pursue.” This is a deliberate play on the biblical quote (justice, justice you shall pursue), putting ourselves, together as a community, in the driver’s seat of building a more just world.

Added richness

A strong text like Light from the Darkness can stand on its own. The text should include group readings and ritual actions in which everyone can participate. In addition, a variety of elements can be added to enrich the experience and complement the text.

• Food: A meal in the middle of the program, as a seder would have, is not recommended. An early version Light from the Darkness included a meal in the middle and participants felt it interfered with the flow of the ceremony. However, snacks before or a meal following the ceremony can give useful additional time for contemplation and discussion.

Recipes from Holocaust cookbooks like In Memory’s Kitchen can anchor your commemoration in the lives and memories of those you are remembering. Be aware, however, that cookbooks written in the camps and ghettos relied on the uncertain memories of starving people. Many of the recipes therefore cannot be used directly and need modification.

• Storytelling: In a text like Light from the Darkness, we can, and do, hear the voices of survivors and victims. In the text, however, we get short quotes, not entire stories. A more complete, if brief, story to hear from a particular person’s voice and experience can be a beautiful complement to these shorter quotes. Live storytellers, be they family members of survivors or unrelated adults or teens, can add considerable depth and meaning to your ceremony.
• Music: Music that is meaningful to you and your audience adds connection and opportunities for audience participation.
• Other forms of art: Other forms of art, such as poetry, dance, or visual arts, can add nuance and color to your ceremony. Dance that involves participants has the added advantage of getting the participants moving, which increases engagement.
• Audience participation questions: A good way to draw the participants into the program is to actually pause and ask them to consider something. Questions designed to get them to think about themselves can help them see the relevance of the story of the Holocaust to their own lives.

Good audience participation questions for this context fall into two categories. 1) How do you relate? These questions draw recollections of participants’ own lives and help them to see connections between their own story and the story of the Holocaust. 2) What can you learn? These draw participants to consider what they can do in their own lives to learn from and act on the lessons of the Holocaust.

Developing a program for an interfaith audience

The ceremony we have been describing is a Jewish ritual, drawing on familiar traditions and understandings of a Jewish audience. Participation in Jewish ritual by non-Jews is a wonderful thing. However, if the only time non-Jews encounter Holocaust commemorations is through Jewish ritual, the Holocaust will become a “Jewish” story – i.e. one that they only have to consider in a Jewish context.

The Holocaust is a Jewish story but it is much more than that. The Holocaust is also a human story. We all, Jews and non-Jews, have a responsibility to learn from the Holocaust and keep its memory alive. An interfaith Holocaust commemoration therefore needs to speak to a non-Jewish audience directly.

Audience participation questions are a great way to draw in a non-Jewish audience. These questions allow non-Jews to see how their experiences, and the experiences of their communities, are reflected in the story of the Holocaust. These connections help them learn the lessons of the Holocaust and relate those lessons to their own lives.

In addition, there are several modifications that we can make to inspire a non-Jewish audience to see the story of the Holocaust as important and relevant to their life.

• Broaden the “we”: In the Passover haggadah, the word “we” is used repeatedly to refer to the Jewish community. In Light from the Darkness, “we” is used in the same way, to refer to the Jewish community. A non-Jew listening to this will sympathize but may not see themselves as part of this community and therefore part of this story.

In an interfaith context, the “we” needs to be more inclusive. The interfaith version of Light from the Darkness, tentatively entitled Moments of Witness, is currently in preproduction. In the first section of Moments of Witness, we make the inclusive nature of the “we” explicit:

“We are all the descendants of the Holocaust. We are the descendants of the victims and of the perpetrators, of those who stood by and of those who stood up, of those who were uninvolved and of those who were unaware. No matter who our individual ancestors were, we all have a place in this story.”

• Substitute more general quotes for many of the brachot and the Hebrew: A Jewish ritual is full of Hebrew blessings. These have a strong connection to a Jewish audience but may, in fact, increase the non-Jews’ feeling of not being part of the story. Substituting quotes from other traditions can broaden the appeal. There are many traditions to draw from – Christian, Muslim, Baha’i, Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist, to name a few. Quotes from secular sources are wonderful as well.

We do want to be careful not to erase the Jewish aspect of this story, however. References to Jewish ritual, and a few Hebrew blessings, can help even non-Jewish participants remember that at its heart, this is still a Jewish story.

Venues

Holocaust commemorations come in all shapes and sizes. Depending on the circumstances, a commemoration like the ones described here could look very different.

• In-person in a small group: In a small group setting, a Holocaust commemoration can become intimate, feeling like a home seder. Everyone can participate not only in the ritual actions, group readings, and singing but also in the reading of the text itself. Audience participation questions can lead to wonderful discussion, especially during a meal that follows the ceremony.
• In-person in a large group at tables: As with a community seder, a community commemoration can have a small group feel by seating people at multiple tables. Everyone can still participate in the ritual actions, group readings, and singing. Although a larger group requires a stronger leader, reading the text can also be shared between participants. With tables of 8 to 10 people, audience participation questions can still lead to good discussions, especially during a following meal.
• In-person in an auditorium in lecture-style seating: A commemoration like Light from the Darkness can be done in an auditorium or sanctuary with a leader on the stage or bima. It is easy for a commemoration of this nature to become a performance, however, so it is important to give thought to how to engage the audience.

Audience participation in an auditorium is more difficult but is still possible. If the entire text is available, handing this out to everyone will make them feel more included. If not, group readings and song sheets can be handed out to encourage participation. Some ritual actions will be accessible to those sitting in the pews but not all. Those that cannot be done from the seats can either be done solely by the leader or replaced with storytellers or music. Audience participation questions are still useful, with participants responding either individually on paper or in small groups.

• Online: A commemoration like this works quite well online. An online program has the advantage of being able to draw both presenters, like musicians and storytellers, and participants from a wide range of locations. Simultaneously, however, an online program can easily become a performance. It is important to give thought to audience engagement.

To ensure the best engagement, a list of items needed for the ritual actions should be sent to participants at least several days beforehand. Presenting slides with the text allows the audience to follow along. However, group readings and singing, core aspects of audience participation for in-person ceremonies, lose their power online where only one voice can be heard. Audience participation questions are therefore critical. In a small group, a verbal discussion can ensue from these questions. In most cases, however, answers written in the chat and read by one of the leaders are a better option.