Tuesday, June 24, 2025
The Rockville Centre Jewish community gathered at Congregation B’nai Sholom-Beth David for its annual Yom HaShoah commemoration, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day with solemn reflection and a renewed sense of urgency.
The ceremony, on April 23, brought together Congregation B’nai Sholom-Beth David and Central Synagogue-Beth Emeth. It served not only as a tribute to memory and mourning but also as a call to conscience amid growing concerns about historical denial and distortion, Rabbi David Lerner of Congregation B’nai Sholom-Beth David said. Yom HaShoah is observed annually on the 27th of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar, the date chosen to honor the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — a symbol of resistance rather than liberation.
This year’s observance emphasized that the courage of those who fought against the Nazi regime continues to resonate. Their memory, organizers said, burns in the blood of future generations.
A poignant moment in the program featured the lighting of six memorial candles, each representing a different facet of loss and resilience during the Holocaust. One candle honored the victims of the October 7 attack in Israel, a reminder that antisemitism persists. Another was lit for the six million Jews murdered in concentration camps, while a third paid tribute to those who resisted — whether through arms, prayer or spiritual defiance.
Additional candles were dedicated to the victims of the death marches, the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Shoah, and the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who continue to defend the Jewish homeland.
This year’s commemoration featured speakers Lauren Ferazani and Kate Gupta, South Side High School students, and Bill Tinglin, Tour for Tolerance founder. Not all the speakers were Jewish, Lerner said, but they are “moral individuals who, despite social pressures, have stood firmly with the truth and with their fellow citizens and neighbors of good faith.” He said that they have been challenging hatred in the schools and online and “lobbying tirelessly for Holocaust education.”
“It is unfortunate that this is necessary,” Lerner said, “but we find ourselves in a time when antisemitism is again on the rise, and their presence was a reminder that the fight against hatred is a universal obligation, a cause for all of us to join.”
