Yom HaShoah, the day Israel set aside to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust starts tonight at sunset and ends tomorrow night.
This is a picture I took about 10 years ago of the entrance to the B'nai Brith Martyrs Forest & Anne Frank Memorial in the Jerusalem area. Read more here on the Jewish National Fund website - make sure to scroll down.
This is a picture from the surrounding area. A beautiful area to remember those lost.
Take a moment tonight to think of those lives destroyed. A survivor reminded me a couple years ago, when she was watching my young kids running around the park, that it wasn't just the 6+ million that were murdered, but also their children and potential grandchildren and so on. Millions upon millions. Mind blowing.
It's really too big to contemplate. I suggest that we individualize it to be able to apply it our own lives. The Jews of the Holocaust were murdered simply because they were Jewish - whether they were religious or not did not matter to the Nazis. A Jew was a Jew. To honor these souls we need to think about adding something Jewish to our lives that we have not done before. There is much to choose from - reading something Jewish for 5 minutes a day, putting a mezuzah up on your doors, checking those mezuzahs, lighting Shabbat candles, spending time with someone who doesn't get many visitors, volunteering in a Jewish food bank, sign up for Jewish adult education class, sign your kids up for Jewish education... these suggestions are only a drop in the bucket of Judaism.
What do you think you'll take on?
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