Holocaust Remembrance on Seder Night?
Post date: Mar 19, 2018 1:11:41 PM Updated June, 13, 2023
In the early 1950’s Jewish organizations in the United States were grappling with the problem of finding proper responses to the horrors of the Holocaust. One proposal put forth involved composing a prayer in memory of the victims of the Holocaust to be recited as part of the Seder service.
With a fascinating journey through the annals of the "Seder Ritual Committee" set up to deal with this problem, Abe Katz, Founding Director of the Beurei Hatefila Institute, describes a special prayer intended to be added to the Haggadah in remembrance of those who perished and those who survived.
Katz expounds on the endeavors of this committee, their initial successes, their eventual failure in establishing a lasting impact on the Pesach liturgy and reasons for this. He has given me permission to republish his article here and it is attached at the end of this post.
Looking through my collection of Haggadot, I can vouch for Abe Katz's claim that the prayer has been included in almost no modern Haggadah. I was very surprised that even the Hebrew Holocaust Haggadah דם ואש ותמרות עשן doesn't include it and that the "Pessach Haggadah In Memory of the Holocaust published by Goldman's Art Gallery in 1988 does not mention it.
I did find the prayer mentioned by Katz in the "Traditional Passover Haggadah for the Modern Home, prepared by Rabbi Alfred J. Kotatch (1967) in a slightly altered form:
In the Newly Revised Silverman Haggadah 1986 I found quite a different version:
In addition, this and adapted prayers can be found in many (Hebrew) Kibbutz Haggadot.
There are several Haggadot that have a special Holocaust section just before or after "Shfoch Chamatcha" e.g. The Feast of Freedom Haggadah by the Rabbinical Assembly. Likewise, we can find a Holocaust section in "The Telling: A Loving Haggadah for Passover - Non-sexist, yet Traditional" by Dov ben Khayyim (1983):
There is a Holocaust section in Kasher's Israel Passover Haggadah. Kasher adds a prayer relating to both the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, stating: “We members of the most unfortunate generation in all the years of Israel’s exile, with our own eyes we beheld the annihilation of one third of our people.... By saying the complete Great Hallel ... we give thanks to God, and pray that we be enabled to behold all His children speedily and happily gathered in our own days within the boundaries of the Land of Israel”. Besides Kasher's addition, Chaim Raphael in his "A Feast of History" Haggadah (1972) [in his introduction], places two Holocaust prayers one against the other. One is from Chaim Kaplan's Warsaw ghetto diary from mid-1941: 'Can the world sit silent? Will evil always be triumphant? O Leader of the World, where are you? But He who sits in Heaven laughs....' The other is a prayer recited in the Belsen concentration camp during Passover 1944 by those who did not have Matza to eat. The rabbis, therefore, allowed them to eat bread after reciting: "We pray to Thee that Thou mayest keep us alive and preserve us and redeem us speedily so that we observe Thy statutes and do Thy will and serve Thee with a perfect heart. Amen" I located the original text of this prayer in the Ghetto Fighters Museum in Tel-Aviv:
The Haggadah edited by Nahum Glatzer has a whole section of Holocaust readings in its introduction including a page from Anne Frank's diary and letters from a ghetto. Anne Frank is also mentioned in the Holocaust readings in "A Different Night" by Noam Zion and David Dishon.
In some Haggadot, Ani Ma'amin is sung after Shfoch Chamatcha while in others after Vehi She'amda" (e.g. The Lovell Haggadah by Matthrew Berkowitz)
The Holocaust is mentioned in countless Haggadot after Shfoch Chamatcha in footnotes and commentaries (e.g. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, The New Haggadah by Foer and Englander (2012), Rabbi Jonathan Sack in the Chief Rabbi's Haggadah ) and in illustrations (e.g. Siegmund Forst in several Haggadot, Theodore Bikel in the "Let My People Go" Haggadah, Z. Livni in 1955 Yavne Haggadah)). We find mention of the Holocaust even, believe it or not, in the "Really Fun Family Haggadah" written by Larry Stein (2000)
The Hadassa Magazine of April 1984 printed a full page prayer (sponsored by Englishtown Sportswear, Ltd.) titled "The Fifth Child, The One Who Cannot Ask" to be said before the opening of the door:
A Haggadah promoting a New York Talmud high school, Mesivta Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, added promotional materials interleaved in between the Haggadah texts. The influence the Holocaust had on American Jewry is evidenced by the following text promoting a plea to support the institute next to the Haggadah text which states that the time has come to read the morning prayers.
The failure to insert the suggested Holocaust-related text into the Haggadah text comes from a much larger resistance to structural changes. The creator of the Zionist Am Yisrael Chai Haggadah, explains in his “foreword to Commentaries” of the second edition (1977) how he had inserted a Holocaust section in the middle of the Haggadah in the first edition (1976) to which the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York had reacted in a letter wishing him to eliminate the Holocaust section because talking about this on Passover is not suitable and this addition is not part of the canonic text of the Haggadah. As a partial concession, the text was moved to the end of the Haggadah in the second edition but this shows how resistant leaders within Religious Judaism were against changes in the canonical text. Although in most Modern Orthodox Haggadot and almost all non-traditional Haggadot there is a special Holocaust section, usually following the section of Sfoch Chamatcha, the prayer for Divine Revenge, the source text and its translation is not changed.
Maybe the most suitable way to round off this post is with the very last footnote in the 1972 English translation of the Lehman Haggadah. In Germany, in the late 19th century, Lehman wrote in his Haggadah commentary: "In civilized circles today, it would no longer be suggested that Jews should be simply murdered" The laconic English 1972 footnote states: " * Written in the latter half of the 19th century, when no one dreamt that the veneer of 'civilization' would one day fall away, and produce the Nazi holocaust which devoured 6,000,000 of our brethren."
יהי זכרם ברוך