Ideas for Added Richness
For Light from the Darkness: A Ritual for Holocaust Remembrance
Adding Food
Recipes from the Ghetto:
Consider adding snacks for before the ritual, or a meal or oneg for after.
Recipes for dumplings and cookies based on In Memory’s Kitchen, a cookbook from the Terezin Ghetto, can be found on the recipes page.
These recipes can anchor your commemoration in the lives and memories of those you are remembering.
Bread:
Instead of challah, choose a special bread to honor a particular community. For instance, tsoureki (Greek sweet bread) or babcia bread (Polish sweet bread).
Wine:
Use wines from unusual regions in Europe where people were impacted by the Holocaust, e.g. Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, etc.
Adding Depth
The child’s drawing as a family program:
Have a family program during the week before Yom Hashoah where the children make drawings of things that represent Judaism to them. Choose one for the table, and hang the rest on the walls.
- Contact www.Our6million.org for yahrzeit candles with the names and stories of Holocaust victims printed on the outside.
- Place a yahrtzeit candle on each table. Be sure to put matches or a lighter with each candle.
Words of Peace:
If you have more than 16 people, there will not be enough words of peace on page 30 for everyone to read something different. Here is a list of additional words you can use.
Extra Words of Peace to download
For added depth, print them out and cut them apart. Put one word at each person’s place. Let people take the paper home as a keepsake.
In Help:
Have participants walk around the room and find someone they don’t know or don’t know well, to give them an opportunity to connect with new people.
In Memory – Covering the barbed wire Star of David picture with the pictures of the lost:
- Download this picture of a barbed wire Mogen David.
- Print out the picture and place it in the center of the table.
If you want, you can place small river stones in the corners. These serve to both keep it in place and to evoke the tradition of putting small stones on gravestones. - Print out the strip-format pictures of the lost below.
Additional pictures for downloading, for single-sided printing
Additonal pictures for downloading, for double-sided printing
Information about these pictures (note that not all of the people in these pictures died in the Holocaust) - Cut the pictures apart from each other. Place a picture at each person’s place.
- At the reading of the names of the lost, in Memory, have everyone get up and carry their picture over to the Mogen David. Read the name on the picture as you place the picture over the barbed wire until the barbed wire is entirely covered.
From Amazon
From Behrman House