Abstract
Religious Jewish tradition has specific rituals for mourning the loss of a relative. They include receiving visitors during shiva, the recitation of the Kaddish in the first year, and the annual marking of the Yahrzeit. There are also customs for commemorating collective disasters. Foremost among them are the diminution of joy on specific dates, and setting permanent fast days. Towards the end of World War II, when the extent of the destruction became apparent, initiatives began around the world to process the collective mourning and to perpetuate the disaster in religious settings. Many survivors later joined these initiatives, seeking to establish new customs, out of a deep sense that this was an unprecedented calamity. The growing need to combine private and collective mourning stemmed from an awareness of the psychological and cultural power of private mourning customs. Proposals therefore included the observance of a community yahrzeit, a collective Jewish shiva, along with a fast for the ages. This article explores the initiatives undertaken between 1944 and 1951—the time when intensive processing was needed for the survivors and the relatives of those who had perished—discussing their motivations, unique characteristics, successes and failures, and the reasons for them.
Highlights
On the eve of World War II and while it was being waged, prayer rallies were held in Eretz Israel and around the world, some of them accompanied by a day of fasting, in an effort to avert the horrors of the war and the terrible persecution of the Jews in Europe
Towards the end of World War II, when the extent of the destruction became apparent, initiatives began around the world to process the collective mourning and to perpetuate the disaster in a religious setting
The growing need to combine private and collective mourning stemmed from an awareness of the psychological and cultural power of private mourning customs
Summary
On the eve of World War II and while it was being waged, prayer rallies were held in Eretz Israel and around the world, some of them accompanied by a day of fasting, in an effort to avert the horrors of the war and the terrible persecution of the Jews in Europe. A notable example relates to the regulations instituted in Poland in the wake of the 1648–1649 pogroms waged by the Ukrainian Cossacks, led by Bogdan Chmielnicki, against the Jews of southeastern Poland This calamity was one of the greatest in Jewish history. Yerushalmi listed four tools for imparting Jewish remembrance in the Middle Ages: writing commemorative books designed to preserve the names of those who perished and describing the destruction and slaughter that befell the affected communities; observing days of Purim Katan in Jewish communities to commemorate rescue from danger or calamity; reciting Selihot and Kinot (lamentations); and the institution of special fasts, intended to remember more severe occurrences from which there was no liberation Despite the historiographical introduction that discusses the causes of the Cossack uprising, it is essentially written in the spirit of the cyclic and supertemporal conception of Jewish memory that characterized the books of remembrance in the Middle Ages (Ibid., pp. 48–50; Mintz 1984, pp. 102–5)
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