In Israel, Creating New Ways to Commemorate Yom HaShoah

A Google Israel search for alternative Yom HaShoah ceremonies this year turned up quite a few options. One could go to the Habama theater to hear singer Gilad Vital of the rock group Shotei Hanvuah perform with his father Haim Vital, a Holocaust survivor, or to the Khan theater to see a play based on Primo Levi’s If This is a Man. One could attend a ceremony in Yiddish with Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai at the Yiddishspiel theater, or hear piano compositions in Jerusalem written by the composer Victor Ulman while he was imprisoned in Terezin.

This broad range of offerings, however, is a somewhat new development. In 1999, when the Israeli writer Sarah Blau was 25, she noticed that her friends weren’t attending the country’s official Yom HaShoah commemorations. When she asked why, they told her that that while they cared about the Holocaust, the ceremonies didn’t speak to them. To fill the gap, Blau began her own Yom HaShoah commemoration.

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From Tablet Magazine