Prayer for Yom Ha-Shoah

The following prayer was used in an ANTS chapel service on April 17, 2007 where we remembered the Holocaust. Following this prayer, the assembled group from ANTS walked in silence to Berenson Hall of Hebrew College where we joined their community in a joint worship service.

"The Holocaust confronts us with unanswerable questions. But let us agree to one principle: no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children."
Irving Greenberg, "The Shoah and the Legacy of Anti-Semitism, pp. 25-36 in Christianity in Jewish Terms, ed. Tikva Frymer-Kensky et al. (Boulder. Colorado: Westview, 2000).

(worship leader; congregation)

Let us pray,

Our Father, who art in heaven:

Remember the burning children.

Hallowed be Thy name,

Even if this blessing we direct toward Thee is voiced by the tongues of moral cowards who remained silent while they were burning children.

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Among the many mansions of our Father's house, there is no crematorium for burning children.

Give us this day

The very day that was denied to the children and grandchildren of the burning children.

our daily bread.

The very bread that was never tasted by the children and grandchildren of the burning children.

And forgive us our trespasses

against the ancestors and descendants of the burning children.

as we forgive those who trespass against us.

In the ledger book of atonement, there are no entries for those who did not live long enough to express the divine gift of freedom through trespass, such as the burning children.

Lead us not into temptation,

The temptation of imagining that we belong to a family that did not include, and would not participate in burning children.

but deliver us from evil.

The unspeakable evil of burning children.

For Thine is the kingdom,

"No earthly Reich or Reign or Empire has the authority of life and death," so echo the silent screams of the burning children.

and the power,

"And the power, die Macht, that makes free is surely that of love, not of work camps," protest the unheeded cries of the burning children.

and the glory forever.

Still: We dare to blend the strains of our praise, the faint embers of our faith, and the best of our feeble love in solidarity with the prayers, pleas, and laments of the burning children.

As we make now sacred pilgrimage from this holy place to another, let us walk in silent fellowship

with each other,

and with all our sisters and brothers on Institution Hill, Jew and Gentile,

and with the companions we vow to never forget, never again,

the burning children.

Gregory Mobley

Associate Professor of Old Testament