Annual Commemoration of the Holocaust

Wednesday, April 11 | 7:00 pm

Please join members of Main Line Reform Temple, Beth Am Israel, Beth David Reform Congregation and Adath Israel for a solemn evening in which we remember the Shoah, Annual Commemoration of the Holocaust and the Light of the Candles for the Six Million.  The observance will feature guest scholar Thomas Childers, author of a new history of the Holocaust, The Third Reich.  It will be our sacred honor once more to invite Holocaust survivors, their families and descendants to join for the lighting of the Menorah for the Six Million. We will be joined as well by area clergy and choirs.

SERVICE
Memorial Candle Lighting for The Six Million

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Liturgy led by clergy from MLRT and Kehillah of Lower Merion Synagogues.

Musical performances by the CAPA (Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts) Alumni Quartet conducted by Dorina Morrow and the combined choirs of our area congregations.
 
Among the works to be performed are “The Twenty-Third Psalm” by John Rutter, “Hallowing Our Names” by Marshall Portnoy, “Elohim Hashiveinu” by Salomone Rossi, and “Karati Yah” by Steve Sher.

If you wish to be included in the ceremony, please contact Rabbi Straus or Cantor Portnoy.

WE REMEMBER!

This is a sacred and sanctified observance.
It is our one opportunity to bear witness to history,
and to give testimony that we will never forget that Holocaust,
and those that may threaten yet again.
Please be with us in solidarity and in community.
The entire community, both Jewish and non-Jewish,
is invited to join us and school-aged children are encouraged to attend.

We are grateful to Suzanne and Norman Cohn
and their family for the annual support of this
most important commemoration.

YOM HASHOAH YELLOW CANDLES PROGRAM

The historian Hayden White remarked presciently “in history, we don’t just remember the dead, we do their remembering for them.  And that’s an awesome responsibility, but a necessary one.”  We are a people of memory.  The Yom HaShoah Yellow Candle Program was begun in 1981 by the Federation Jewish Men’s Clubs, the Conservative Brotherhoods, and now also embraced by our own Men of Reform Judaism.  The program has a single purpose:  to remember the six million children, women, and men who were murdered senselessly and with indifference during the Shoah.
Our Brotherhood wants you to have a Yellow Candle, which you will light on Erev Yom HaShoah, April 11. The candles are available at MLRT for the asking.  They will also be available at our annual Yom HaShoah service.  Questions can be directed to Gary Brock at 610-517-3870.
Brought to you by Men of Reform Judaism and MLRT Brotherhood.

DOWNLOAD FLYER

PROGRAM

In The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, Thomas Childers shows how the young Hitler became passionately political and anti-Semitic as he lived on the margins of society. Fueled by outrage at the punitive terms of the Versailles Treaty that ended the Great War, he found his voice and drew a following.

As his views developed, Hitler attracted like-minded colleagues who formed the nucleus of the nascent Nazi party. The failed Munich putsch of 1923 and subsequent trial gave Hitler a platform for his views, which he skillfully exploited. Between 1924 and 1929 Hitler and his party languished in obscurity on the radical fringes of German politics, but the onset of the Great Depression provided Hitler the issues he needed to move into the mainstream of German political life. He seized the opportunity to blame Germany's misery on the victorious allies, the Marxists, the Jews, and big business—and the political parties that represented them. 
 
The Third Reich charts the dramatic, improbable rise of the Nazis; the suffering of ordinary Germans under Nazi rule; and the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust.  This is the most comprehensive and readable one-volume history of Nazi Germany since the classic Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
 
Since 1976, Professor Childers has taught in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright scholarship, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung Research Grant, a fellowship in European Studies from the American Council of Learned Societies, and a West European Studies Research Grant from Harvard University. In addition to teaching at University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Childers has held visiting professorships at Trinity Hall College, Cambridge, Smith College, and Swarthmore College, and he has lectured in London, Oxford, Berlin, Munich, and other universities in the United States and Europe. Professor Childers is the author and editor of several books on modern German history and the Second World War.