Sacred silence: ritual containers and Yom Ha-Shoah

Abstract

This article examines Orthodox Judaism’s religious and halakhic responses to Holocaust commemoration, focusing on Yom Ha-Shoah. Key figures like the Hazon Ish and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik opposed new Holocaust remembrance liturgies from different theological perspectives. Using Jürgen Habermas’s “linguistification of the sacred” and Wilfred Bion’s psychoanalytic containment theory, it suggests the Holocaust’s trauma exceeded existing mourning rituals, necessitating silence and deferred processing. It also examines the evolution of Orthodox Holocaust commemoration, noting gradual acceptance of innovation with change of generational and social contexts. The study offers a nuanced understanding of ritual, memory, and trauma in Jewish liturgical practice.