Erev Rosh Hashanah, from Shalom Hartman Institute’s Memory and Hope. For each holiday and Shabbat evening in Tishrei, the institute suggests we light a memorial candle before kindling the holiday and Shabbat lights, and offers an intention to recite before lighting this candle and a text to read afterward (both in English and in Hebrew).
Each year during Elul, the month leading up to the High Holidays, the women of medieval Ashkenaz would measure each of the graves in their community cemeteries with string. They would then dip these lengths of string in melted wax that had been collected from candles lit throughout the year in the synagogue when the community gathered to pray, to study, to cook and to connect. They would light these new candles, each made from string representing the dead and wax representing the living, on Yom Kippur as yahrzeit candles, a way of honouring and remembering deceased relatives.
On Rosh Hashanah, we will welcome a new year. And then, in the midst of the 10 days of repentance that lead up to Yom Kippur, we will reach the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7 and, with it, the anniversary of the day on which at least 1,139 people were killed by Hamas terrorists and more than 240 people were taken hostage. We will pray for the return of the remaining captives, and we will mark the start of the war that has since killed so many in Israel and Gaza.
We have struggled to fully mourn these losses as this war continues to unfold and expand; as not all the hostages have yet returned home; as, in North America, many of us navigate antisemitism in our communities and shifting relationships with local allies. And yet, we feel the need to grieve. The chaggim (holidays) offer us a pause in which we can reflect, cry and pray.
The Shalom Hartman Institute has developed two rituals for the anniversary of Oct. 7, one that spans most of the month of Tishrei, for individuals to use at home, and one for communal gatherings on Oct. 7 or on Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah.
Commemorating Oct. 7 at home
Every week, we begin Shabbat by lighting candles. Every Tishrei, we usher in Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah by lighting candles. Our ritual for commemorating Oct. 7 at home is woven into these traditions.
More specifically, for each holiday and Shabbat evening in Tishrei, we suggest that you light a memorial candle before kindling the holiday and Shabbat lights. We offer an intention to recite before lighting this candle each night and a short text to read afterward. These materials – inspired by the work of Hagit Bartuv and Rivka Rosner of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Ritual Centre in Israel and in collaboration with Maital Friedman, Masua Sagiv and me from the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America – connect us with some of the central themes of the last year. Our hope is that the light of the memorial candle, the ner neshamah, literally a soul candle, and light of the festive candles flickering together will connect the strands of our grief and celebration.
Like the candles dipped by the women of Eastern Europe, this ritual honours both the dead and the living. It brings us back to the devastation of Oct. 7, and it also celebrates the artists, soldiers, teachers and ordinary people who helped us through a difficult year. Similarly, while memorial candles are traditionally lit to remember the dead, the ritual invites us to use these candles to light the way for the living – for peace, healing and hope.
While many Israeli Jews light candles on seven evenings from Rosh Hashanah through Simchat Torah, many diaspora Jews light candles on nine, the two additional candles marking the second night of Sukkot and for the start of Simchat Torah. As a statement of Jewish peoplehood, this home-based ritual is for seven nights of candlelighting, so that it will be used in Jewish homes around the world on the same days. If you want to use this ritual to accompany your candlelighting on the second night of Sukkot or on erev Simchat Torah, you might repeat an intention and text or offer an intention and reflection of your own.
Developing this ritual led us to ask about the meaning of memorializing Oct. 7. Is this ritual only about Oct. 7 or is it about everything that occurred that day and since? What do we mean by “heroism” at this time? Are we referring to military bravery or to the ways civilians stepped up to support and protect one another this year as well? Can the entire Jewish world share this one ritual, or have our experiences of this year been too different? What is the right balance between particularistic and universalistic yearnings?
For many of these questions, we looked to our Israeli colleagues to set the tone in creating a ritual that met their needs for their grief and vulnerability this year, as well as their sources of hope and comfort. For other elements, we offer suggestions to adapt the framing or created a slightly different version in the English that we thought might be better suited for those outside of Israel. You may want to use this resource exactly as is, but you may also find yourself adding different texts or focusing on different themes. We encourage creativity and would love to hear from you about how you adapt it to meet your needs for this moment.
Commemorating Oct. 7 in community
Many communities in North America will gather to mark the anniversary of Oct. 7, whether in synagogues, JCCs, Jewish federations, Hillels, schools or other Jewish centres. Our second resource is a collection of texts and prayers to be used in a communal ritual context, including suggestions of three different ways to use these rituals in your community.
The supplement also gave us the opportunity to add more texts, prayers, songs and perspectives, including texts with expressions of grief for the suffering of Palestinian civilians, which did not fit in the more particularistic framework of the home ritual above.
This Elul, as we reflect on the past year and gather up the wicks that measure our lives and our communities, may we continue to find ways to bind our wicks together, to find strength in community and ritual, and may all who mourn this tragic anniversary find comfort among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. Shanah tovah.
Rabbi Jessica Fisher is the director of rabbinic enrichment at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. To read and download various Hartman Institute resources, including Memory and Hope: Rituals for Tishrei 5785 and accompanying resources for commemorating Oct.7 in community, visit hartman.org.il.
