Yom HaShoah: Community remembers victims, survivors

By Deborah Moon Seldner

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As Rabbi Emanuel Rose looked out over the 200 some people at Portland's community Yom HaShoah Memorial Service, he lamented that every year he has watched attendance at the service shrink.
In addition to lamenting the dwindling interest in the day, which he said he believes should become an important fast day on the Jewish calendar, Rose also lamented other genocides in the world.
"My heart is in dispair," said Rose during the April 24 event at Congregation Shaarie Torah. "As I contemplate those words 'Never Again,' I have in the last several years become cynical in using them. We are all very much aware of what fundamentalists--religious as well as political--have done since the Shoah ... to slaughter so many innocent men, women and children."
Rabbi Aviva Bass of Vancouver's Congregation Kol Ami, also reflected on "Never Again."
Noting that several Jewish organizations are co-sponsoring the Save Darfur Rally April 30 at Pioneer Courthouse Square, Bass said "It is good timing for us as Jews. We can take what we have learned from our pain" to help prevent an ongoing genocide.

Rabbi David Rosenberg, whose congregation hosted the ceremony planned by the Oregon Board of Rabbis, said, "We are blessed in this community to have a group of rabbis interested in working together as a group."
Others participating in the service were Rabbi Shlomo Truzman, Rabbi Daniel ISaak, Rabbi Laurie Rutenberg, Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfeld and Dr. Erica Goldman, Jill Neuwelt and the Portland Jewish Academy Middle School Choir.
Artist Diana K. Lubarsky, who recently moved here from New York, exhibited nine sculptures from a series of 40 that reflected various aspects of the Holocaust. The sculptures, which drew admiration from many present, can be viewsd at www.holocaustimages.com.