Amy Winehouse’s family will light yahrzeit candle

Published on July 10, 2012

The family of Amy Winehouse will mark the first anniversary of the singer's death using Jewish tradition, a British magazine reported, quoting the singer's mother.

From Bar Mitzvah to Yahrzeit, Breed Street Shul comes full circle

By Julie Gruenbaum Fax
Published on May 2, 2012

Milton “Muttie” Siegel celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1937 at the Breed Street Shul, the largest synagogue in Boyle Heights.

Yom HaShoah 2012 events calendar

By Ryan Torok
Published on April 11, 2012

Rabbi Heschel at 100—still the voice of God

By Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater
Published on January 11, 2007

This past week was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's yahrzeit, which falls during Parshat Shemot, the beginning of slavery and our fight against Pharaoh, which is also when we celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. How appropriate!

A Little Light Seeps Into Dark Times

By Roberta Fahn Schoffman
Published on November 13, 2003

It is hard to recall such despairing times.

A young Tel Aviv man spat three times on Yitzhak Rabin's memorial -- the same number as the bullets that felled him -- in front of a Channel 2 news crew a few days before the anniversary of his murder. Glaring swastikas were found splashed across the site on the morning of the yahrzeit (anniversary of his death). Both of these events bring to the surface some of the toxic undercurrents running through this country.

It is hard to believe, eight years later, that this national day of grief becomes an opportunity for some to demonstrate their despicable, baseless hatred. But maybe that is the point, as suggested by many since that terrible night, and in retrospect, we will remember it as the beginning of the destruction of the Third Temple. But just when you think we have sunk as low as we can go, more than 100,000 people turn out to honor Rabin in a memorial rally in the huge square that bears his name and to voice a collective "yes" for peace that hasn't been heard here in the last three years or more.