c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ When observant Jews mark the annual fast day of Tisha b’Av (the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av, which begins at sundown on July 21 this year), they mourn for virtually every tragedy that has befallen their people throughout history except one _ the Holocaust, which has its own day of remembrance.

Now, one prominent rabbi is calling for the day to serve as a day of mourning for the Holocaust as well. The proposal has sparked criticism from some in the Jewish community who believe the loss of 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis should continue to be memorialized on its own unique day.

The Holocaust is currently commemorated on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, the 27th day of the Jewish lunar month of Nisan, which falls in April or May.

In addition, many communities mark Nov. 9 as the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the”night of broken glass,”the 1938 Nazi riots in which the windows of German synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were smashed by rioting Nazis.

To Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the chancellor of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary, the seat of Conservative Judaism, that amounts to an unhealthy emphasis on suffering in the Jewish calendar.”A world view predicated on a history of suffering is going to make us very parochial,”Schorsch said.”It’s going to make us turn inward. We’ll turn our backs on the larger world.” Tisha b’Av traditionally commemorates the destruction of the first and second Jerusalem Temples; by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., and the Romans in 70 A.D. On Tisha b’Av, observant Jews refrain from eating and drinking, among other signs of mourning, and they read the biblical Book of Lamentations.

Schorsch noted that Tisha b’Av historically has absorbed virtually every tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people other than the Holocaust. Poems read in synagogues that day recall not only the destruction of the temples, but the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and various pogroms that swept across czarist Russia.

Schorsch noted that the day has proven tragic even in modern times: World War I erupted on Aug. 1, 1914, which that year coincided with the Ninth of Av.

Under Schorsch’s proposal, the Holocaust would be given elevated priority on Tisha b’Av and other days of mourning for the Holocaust would be canceled.

He also proposed abolishing the three-week period of mourning that leads up to Tisha b’Av. During that period, which began with a sundown-to-sunset fast on the 17th of Tammuz _ July 1 this year _ observant Jews refrain from listening to joyful music and men do not shave their faces as a further sign of mourning.

Schorsch’s idea has provoked opposition from the Orthodox world, where changes of the sort he has proposed are anathema.

Rabbi Avi Weiss, the activist head of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York City, said the three-week period slowly builds and intensifies feelings of mourning in”an attempt to really feel the horror of the past.””Tisha b’Av without the three weeks is an experience that cannot be felt in depth,”Weiss said.

Rabbi Irving Greenberg, a prominent Orthodox Jewish theologian and author of”The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays,”said the Holocaust was of such enormity that it is paralleled in Jewish history only by the Exodus from Egypt and the destruction of the temples.

The event demands its own day of mourning, he said, and cannot be swallowed up by Tisha b’Av, as has the Spanish Inquisition, which, though tragic, had less of an impact on Jewish religious thought than has the Holocaust.

Greenberg said Schorsch is misreading the motivations of those who participate in Yom HaShoah activities. Rather than an unhealthy focus on destruction, he said, the day serves as a counterbalance to the notion that all truth is found in modern culture, with the Holocaust exemplifying modernity gone terribly awry.”It opens you up to Jewish life,”he said of Yom HaShoah.”It’s the liberation from the slavishness and idolatry of modern culture.” Schorsch’s proposal has also met criticism within the institution he leads.

Rabbi David Roskies, a JTS professor of Jewish literature, advocates maintaining Yom HaShoah as a distinct day _ not for mourning but for expressing anger at God for promises deemed broken.

Noting that the Jewish calendar contains a day for virtually every emotion,Roskies asked in a recent article in JTS Magazine:”But where, in this orchestrated array of catharsis and commemoration, is there a day set aside for anger?” The Holocaust, he concluded, is unique among Jewish tragedies and should be commemorated and ritualized in a unique manner.”If there is to be a sanctified life in the wake of this catastrophe,”he wrote in the magazine,”the people must discover new sources of meaning.” But Schorsch is not without some support.

Conservative Rabbi Gerald Wolpe, the retired spiritual leader of Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley, Pa., said that as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, a centerpiece of Yom HaShoah observance _ witness testimony _ will be lost, threatening the future of such gatherings.”Tisha b’Av is so ingrained within the spirit of the Jewish people, it (the Holocaust) has a better chance of being ingrained within the Jewish people as part of that day,”he said.

Wolpe also noted that the reason the 27th of Nisan was chosen as Yom HaShoah was because it fell during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The day was intended to commemorate both tragic loss and brave resistance. The latter purpose has mostly been abandoned, leaving a day of mourning that he said makes it appropriate for combining with Tisha b’Av.

Stefanie Seltzer, chairwoman of the Bryn Mawr, Pa.-based Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust, said her organization is working to increase rather than decrease the Holocaust’s prominence in the Jewish calendar.”In the Exodus from Egypt, our people were saved, and here we lost one-third of our people. It will continue to have effects ever after,”she said of the Holocaust.

Schorsch said he understands and sympathizes with survivors’ views on the matter, but that”from a communal perspective, that is a very risky public policy.”He added that while his proposal is unlikely to find wide acceptance any time soon, he believes it will in the future.

IR END KRESS