This is a poster created by the Chief Rabbinate which calls on the public to take part in a service on 10 Tevet in memory of the Holocaust victims and the destruction of the Jewish communities in Europe. The ceremony was to take place at the Great Synagogue in Tel Aviv at 3:45 PM and was to be attended by the minister of religious services, Rabbi HaCohen Fishman (later Maimon) and the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Unterman. The poster ends by declaring: “May the rock and redeemer of Israel will turn the days of fasting into joy and rejoicing.”
With the end of World War II, the magnitude of the Holocaust became apparent. The young State of Israel decided upon ways to mark this catastrophe. The Chief Rabbinate at the time decided that 10 Tevet, which originally commemorated the beginning of the siege on Jerusalem in 588 BCE, would be an appropriate day on which to commemorate the Holocaust victims. This day was to be the general Kaddish day – a day on which the families of those Holocaust victims whose date of death was unknown could say Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer.
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Holocaust – The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide and persecution of European Jewry by the German Nazi regime and its collaborators in Europe and North Africa during World War II. The Holocaust was implemented in stages from Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party’s first rise to power. From 1933 anti-Jewish laws were passed in Germany which excluded the Jews from German society. The Nazis also began to create a network of concentration camps where Jews and other “undesirable elements” of society were imprisoned in inhumane conditions. With the Nazi occupation of Europe during World War II, which started in 1939, the formal persecution of Jews was implemented in all the occupied countries. Jews were sent to ghettos, made to work in forced labour, and lived in appalling conditions. In 1942 the Nazis held the Wannsee Conference where they decided on the Final Solution which detailed the extermination all the Jews of Europe. Initially, more than one million Jews were exterminated by death squads named Einsatzgruppen, who were assisted by local collaborators. As of 1942 Jews were deported from the ghettos to death camps in Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, where millions were murdered in gas chambers on arrival. Jews who were not immediately murdered were sent to force labour, and many died as a result of the harsh conditions, starvation, and disease. Jewish resistance was extremely difficult, but attempts to fight the Nazis were made by Jewish partisans and fighters in uprisings such as, most famously, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Sobibor Uprising. In 1944, as it became clear that the Nazis were losing the war, Nazi camp commanders began to close the camps and forced the survivors to march towards Germany. Already sick and weak from the years of violence, more than 250,000 Jews died on these death marches. The Holocaust came to an end with the defeat of the Nazis in May 1945. Six million Jews, two thirds of the Jewish population of Europe, were murdered with millions more experiencing tremendous suffering, violence, and loss. In addition to the Jews, millions of Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, disabled people, and Soviet and Polish prisoners of war were also murdered during the Holocaust.
Yom HaShoah – Yom HaShoah (יום השואה), known in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, is Israel’s national day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and the Jewish resistance during that period. Yom HaShoah is commemorated by a siren and memorial ceremonies throughout the country. The first official commemorations took place in 1951, and the observance of the day was anchored in a law passed by the Knesset in 1959. Yom HaShoah takes place on 27 Nisan, marking the beginning of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The idea of Holocaust Remembrance Day sparked a debate on how to commemorate such a tragic event – even the suitable date was deliberated. Some wanted to emphasise the rebellions and armed resistance and therefore saw fit to set this day on the day that the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising broke out; others sought to emphasise the disaster and destruction of the Jewish people and wanted to add the day to one of the days of national mourning, such as Tisha B’Av or the tenth of Tevet. Further opposition to the chosen date came from religious circles, due to the tradition not to mourn in the month of Nisan.
Tenth of Tevet – This is one of the minor fast days, marking the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 588 BCE. A year and a half later, on 17 Tamuz, the Babylonians breached the walls and finally destroyed the Temple three weeks later on 9 Av. The date 10 Tevet, already the date commemorating this stage of the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the Jewish people, was chosen by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel as a day to say Kaddish for victims of the Holocaust whose date of death was unknown.
Kaddish – The Kaddish is a prayer said in Aramaic, sanctifying and praising God and ending with a prayer for peace. It is a very important and central prayer and is said only when there is a minyan (a quorum of ten worshippers). Different versions of this prayer are used to separate the different sections of the service. A version of this prayer is known as the “Mourner's Kaddish” and it is said at the funeral of close family members and during the first year of mourning. It is also said at memorial services such as ceremonies commemorating the Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Despite the fact that the Kaddish is associated with mourning, death is not mentioned in the prayer and it is traditionally recited to show that despite their loss, the mourners still praise God. The prayer is written in Aramaic, once the common everyday Jewish language, so that the Jews would understand the important words. The oldest version of this prayer is from the ninth-century siddur of Rav Amram Gaon.
Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman – Rabbi Unterman was born in Brisk (today in Belarus) in 1886 and studied religious studies in Lithuania. He held various rabbinical roles in Lithuania, where he was a leader of the religious Zionist movement, Mizrachi. Rabbi Unterman later became a leading rabbi in Liverpool, where he was an important figure in the British Zionist movement and worked to help the refugees arriving from Nazi-occupied Europe. In 1946 Rabbi Unterman was appointed chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and later served as the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the State of Israel from 1964 to 1972. As chief rabbi, he worked to reform the rabbinical courts and to find lenient halachic solutions to contemporary issues such as conversion and marriage.
Rabbi Yehuda Leib (HaCohen) Maimon Fishman – Rabbi Maimon was born in 1875 in Bessaravia (now Moldova). He was one of the founders of the religious Zionist movement, Mizrachi. He participated in Zionist conferences and was arrested by the Russian authorities due to his Zionist activities. In 1913 Rabbi Maimon immigrated to Israel, although he was expelled during World War I by the Turkish rulers of Israel. In 1919 Rabbi Maimon returned to Israel and became the leader of the Mizrachi movement in Israel. Together with Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook he founded the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. In 1948, Rabbi Maimon was among those who wrote the draft for the Israeli Declaration of Independence and one of its signatories. He was elected to the 1st Knesset in 1949 and served as the first minister of religious services.
