Clergy

Welcome Clergy

Dear Rabbi or Cantor,

Thank you for your interest. The Remember Us Project is a free and voluntary program that supports and empowers children in their encounter with the Holocaust.

We invite each child who is preparing for bar/bat mitzvah to remember one child who was lost in the Holocaust before having the opportunity to be called to the Torah, and to act in his/her name.

Participation is very simple. Click here for the participation registration form. (This is an invitation, not a curriculum.) It does not add any time to the student’s or the teacher’s schedule.

To order program materials to distribute to bnai mitzvah students and their families, including memorial sheets with names or a one-page information form directing families to request a name online, click here.

Your student chooses how to remember. In the program materials we offer suggestions about doing mitzvot in the name of the remembered children, speaking about him/her from the bimah, etc.

More than 13,000 children at over 526 congregations of all denominations have participated to date.

To have your students participate in the Remember Us Project

Please click here the Participation Registration form to have your students participate in the Remember Us Project. You can either:

  1. request names for you to give to your students, an opportunity for a teachable moment, or
  2. request informational brochures that direct parents to our web site to request a name.

A Special Note

Your participation in Remember Us helps mend the torn fabric of Jewish history. It is as if the life story of the child you are remembering now continues through you, your family, and your community. Your commitment becomes part of that child�s biography. The good that you do in the child�s name becomes part of his/her life story as well as your own.

You can help build the continuity of this story by adding to the culture of memory.

  • Tell your friends, family about remembering
  • Participate in Yom Hashoah
  • Provide ongoing financial support for Remember Us, in any amount
  • Involve the next rising cohort of children in your congregation or community

Through your good works, we make real our traditional phrase about the remembered children, “May his/her memory be for a blessing.”

“We now live at a time where very quickly the generation who are survivors are dying out, so anything that starts to ritualize this in some way, and make people mindful of this, is of importance. The Remember Us Project is done in very fine taste, and it's not terribly complicated for a congregation to take on. It also has a religious quality to it, so it just makes sense. We need these types of creative responses.”

–Rabbi Robert Abramson
Director of Education
United Synagogue of Conservative Judasim

Six million is a difficult number to fathom– but the fate of one little boy or girl in Italy, Poland, or Germany tells a story that a young person instantly understands. Remember Us has consistently provided our B'nei Mitzvah and our congregation an experience in connecting to the Holocaust that is immediate, personal and profound. Its sheer simplicity, in contrast to the complex pressures that often surround Bar/Bat Mitzvah in America, provides a poignant expression of the young person's past and an elegant promise for the future. The modest demands that it makes on families, yet the wonderful dividends it affords, is a welcome and most meaningful aspect of Bar/Bat Mitzvah preparation at Main Line Reform Temple, which endorses and hopes to expand its support for the program.”

–Cantor Marshall Portnoy
Main Line Reform Temple

“The story of this bat mitzvah is a stirring example of the potential healing power of the simple spiritual practice that is Remember Us. As the bat mitzvah service unfolded we witnessed its palpable effect on family members. For me, it was as if painful, scattered, unspeakable memories were being knit together, as if something lost was being reclaimed. It felt to me that important tikuneem (sacred fixings) were being made from a very deep�and to us, incomprehensible�level of soul.”

–Rabbi Areyh Hirschfield
Pnai Or Congregation