Temple Sholom commemorated Yom Hashoah, or the Holocaust Remembrance Day, by lighting candles, making crafts, planting flowers and doing Mitzvah Day projects on Sunday.
Children of the Temple Sholom Religious School attended an assembly led by Rabbi Allison Berlinger, director of education, to learn the reasons to gather and light memorial candles to symbolically remember all who died during the Holocaust. Families with a Holocaust survivor lit the candles.
Holocaust Remembrance Day, a national memorial day, marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was established in 1953 in commemoration of the 6 million Jewish people and 5 million others who died in the Holocaust at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Berlinger talked about how butterflies have become a symbol of the Holocaust and encouraged the school children to look at the butterflies as a symbol of hope. Each child then had the chance to decorate cardboard butterflies to hang in the lobby of the synagogue.
Parents then joined children in participating in Temple Sholoms annual Mitzvah Day with projects that included packing camp bags and school bags with supplies for children in need and planting flowers for a local senior citizen residence. What better day to stand up and do acts of love and kindness, then a day that intolerant people tried to destroy the Jews, said Berlinger. By participating in Mitzvah Day, our children are learning that even when faced with adversity, we still need to look out for our fellow man and try to make the world a better place.
PJ Library, a project of UJA Federation of Greenwich, was at Temple Sholom during the Mitzvah Day celebrations to help preschoolers with simple projects such as drawing pictures and collecting pennies for the local animal shelter.
Did you attend Holocaust Remembrance Day at Temple Sholom?
Click here to follow Daily Voice Greenwich and receive free news updates.