JOINT HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE EVENT

This year, we celebrated an amazing memorial service with the SSPC church, as is our tradition of many years. This service is held alternately at our synagogue or at the church, and this year, we hosted at the synagogue.

The commemoration centered around the showing of the film, The Power of Good, which tells the story of Nicholas Winton, a British citizen, who saved over six hundred Jewish children from Czechoslovakia in 1939. The film includes interviews of those children who as adults, finally discover who was responsible for their freedom. The film is remarkable, and you can read more about Mr. Winton at the website http://www.powerofgood.net.

Paul Grayson shared with us the following poem, which he wrote "In Comtemplation of Yom HaShoah, 5764 (2004)":

Ashes

You ashes,
You handfuls of crumbling bone,
Adrift on the forst floor,
I reach across the years to you
Across the distances
Across the winds that blow and mix
Your ashes and mine.
Did you once dance to the nimble fiddle?
Did you once cry out when the clarinet squealed?
Did you once sing with the Choral symphony:
    Alle menschen werden bruder?
The ashes of your synagogues and homes
Leave a sweet and bitter taste upon my teeth;
Your dust and ashes.
Lodge in my throat, my nostrils.
I cannot breathe.

Adonai, who commanded that your Holy People
Should be offered up as a burnt sacrifice?
Where was it written?
Did you hear the roaring clouds of smoke?
Did you mistake our ashes for the heifer?
Did you miss the spice of frankincense and spikenard?
Was our sacrifice pleasing in your sight?

Deep in this woodland, morning fog hangs low,
A beam of sunlight lances through the leaves.
What rises from the ashes in this green clearing?

Is it defeat, despair?
Or fragrant flowering and fresh new growth?
Ashes, I call to you,
    Speak to me.