An interfaith service for Holocaust Remembrance Day will take place on Wednesday May 4th at 7 pm, at the First Congregational Church in West Brattleboro. BAJC (Brattleboro Area Jewish Community) and BAICA (the Brattleboro Area Interfaith Clergy Association) will offer a service in commemoration of the six million Jews and five million homosexuals, political protestors, Catholics, handicapped, and others who were murdered at the hands of the Nazis.
Members of the BAJC community and of the larger Brattleboro community will light eleven memorial candles. An impromptu interfaith chorus and local instrumentalists will provide music and clergy from several religious communities will offer brief readings. Cantor Kate will sing the special El Malei Rachamim prayer for all who died in the Shoah. If you would like to join the chorus, please come for rehearsal at 5:30. There will be light refreshments in the church parlor after the service.
Lost My Appetite
In reading the press release through, announcing this commemorative memorial for those killed in the most heinous and barbarous manner, considering this propensity for man’s inconceivable inhumanity to man…
…In all honesty I admit a little gallows humor crept in at the end for me by the way this was worded. I was curious about those light refreshments. What might they be?
Sure, snacks are a welcoming touch, but in such a somber statement, I found it ‘a little funny.’ Not trying to be flip here, really. I’m posting this in the light of: how DO we cope with such atrocity, and the very fact of its ongoing prevalence in the world. We of course can and should reflect, and remember, and act to improve our behavior. But nothing will undo those deaths, those marks on history.
No crudités go well with crudity and cruelness.
Spinoza's Comment...
reminds me of the irony that there is now a food court and refreshment stands on Masada.
Perhaps “light refreshments” is an ironical contrast with the solemnity of a holocaust memorial service, but it is also fitting to celebrate survival in the face of genocide. There is a joke that the theme of many Jewish Holidays is: “They tried to kill us, they did not succeed, let’s eat!”
Prisoners of Grief
This extant culture keeps us all prisoners of grief. Whether it be war, suicide, murder or accident we erect lasting monuments everywhere we can, on land and in our minds. Then we protect and perpetuate them with ceremony and pastimes of remembrances.
If we only idolized the living as much as we lionize the dead, the former might supplant the latter.