There was a time when I felt it was much more important attending Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemorations than Yom Kippur services. Not only did I attend them religiously, but many times I was involved in the planning of them.

The first time was when I was involved in student government at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work of Yeshiva University. I invited David Szonyi the Co-Editor of “Living After the Holocaust: Reflections by Children of Survivors in America”. It was the first book at the time written by children of Holocaust survivors about their experiences. The commemoration was simple; all the students and professors were sitting in a circle with David and talking. Just talking. There was a rawness and an honesty about that afternoon. It was one of the most moving afternoons of my lifetime.

That event took place just over thirty years since the end of the Holocaust. The Jewish community was still grappling with the horrors of the Shoah and its seismic aftershocks. We were unsure how to appropriately mourn the extermination of one-third of our people. Traditional Jewish methods of mourning and prayer did not fill the void we all felt within ourselves.

Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, a major thinker at the time and today, stated that it would take years,........

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