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A prayer of the Holocaust:
Father, Adonai, Creator,
who set the round course of the world,
birth, death and disease-
Father, who caused veins, brains, and bones to grow,
who fashioned us air that we might breathe and sing-
Remember that we are incomplete
and inconsolable, our vision clouded by ashes.
Remember the chimneys, the ingenious habitations of death
where part of Israel's body drifted as smoke through the air.
Remember the mutilated music of their lives.
We lament infields of loneliness
for six million of our number torn away.
Remember them.
There are some who have no memorial.
They are perished as though they had never been.
Forget them not.
Remember the landscape of screams
engraved at entrance gates to death.
Remember the unborn dreams.
Remember the terror of children, whose tears were burned
Remember the agony of parents, whose blessings were consumed
Remember the prayers of the dying,
the shame and the suffering of the innocent.
Remember. We have not forgotten You
though all this has befallen us.
Remember the God-forsaken millions in a silent world;
their loneliness was matched only by Yours.
Who is like You, 0 Lord, among the silent,
remaining silent through the suffering of His children?
Are You not God, 0 Lord, that we may hope in You?
Renew the light of Your creation, which has been dimmed.
Renew in Your creatures Your image, which has been desecrated
Restore the covenant, which Your people have maintained
Remember the hopes of the slain
by sending redemption to Your shattered world.
In spite of everything which strangles hope,
help us to continue the sustaining song of their lives.
We know that a time will come when there will be no strong and no weak, no hunters and no hunted, no oppressors and no
oppressed, no slayers and no slain, no masters and no servants, no rich and no poor.
Are our enemies mightier than we?
Torah is stronger than their might,
and our dream is greater than their night.
We know that this world will be saved from evil.
Should this not be true, may we know nothing further,
as nothing will be worth knowing.
For we know how difficult, how dangerous, how piteous it is to be a human being. And we know how grand, how glorious it
is to be a human being.
When we recall the pain of our past, we also must recall its splendor, the foundation with which our lives began, and
our debt to all those of blessed memory who have come before.
Their lives and their teachings sustain us. As surely as something in all of us died with them, the merit of their lives
stands at our side today.
Because of the strength and the beauty and the piety of their lives, because of our hope for the future which they have
planted within us we say Yes to creation and we say Yes to our Creator and to His eternity and holiness.
We know that a time will come ...
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