It can also display
Yahrzeit dates for consecutive years.
Given the Yiddish world's tradition of honoring
yahrzeit more than birthdays, a number of commemorations and celebrations have been organized in his honor.
And the very same part that now lights
yahrzeit (5) for the shtetlach, pining for their mamaloshen, (6) has always wanted to get out.
On June 11, Eugene Levy, the temple's part-time rabbi for the past three years, conducted the two-hour service, which included reading the names of every single person whose
Yahrzeit was observed in the long history of the congregation.
The Jewish songs--"Kol Nidre" and"
Yahrzeit Licht"--are about renunciation and the unceasing memory of death.
But what if we don't know the date of a
yahrzeit? That is what happened to the first woman rabbi, Regina Jonas, who was deported from Terezin on October 12, 1944, and arrived at Auschwitz on October 14.
Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, just before a pilgrimage to Germany in the summer of 1994 for ceremonies to mark the fiftieth
yahrzeit of his grandfather at a school he had directed in Esslingen.
Dozens of
yahrzeit candles flicker, remaining lit despite the dampness and the light rain.
To celebrate her birthday, in addition to lighting a
yahrzeit candle, I will also listen to what was her most beloved CD in the years before her death: Mamma L'shonThe Best Yiddish Songs, performed by the Israeli-born cantor and entertainer David "Dudu" Fisher.
On that day we had asked the rabbi if we could have the evening
yahrzeit service for my mother before the synagogue elections, and the rabbi said that was no problem.
Reminiscent of public Holocaust commemorations in which candles are lit to represent the six million Jews who perished in Europe, the children steal six
yahrzeit candles from the large store the grandmother kept "because there was often a
Yahrzeit for somebody in her family who had remained Over There" (p.
In 1986, the Jerusalem Institute, which has been editing a cache of Ganzfried's unpublished manuscripts, brought together several hundred descendants in Bnei Brak to commemorate the writer's centennial
yahrzeit. The occasion, accompanied by an outpouring of full-page articles in the religious press, was followed three years later by the publication of the first of the new Ganzfried volumes.