In a special and highly anticipated visit to the Los Angeles Jewish community, the Chief Rabbi of England, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, will serve as the keynote speaker during services on Tisha B’Av, August 2-3, at the Young Israel of Century City (YICC), an Orthodox Union synagogue. Tisha B’Av, the Ninth Day of the month of Av, commemorates the destruction of the Jewish Temples and other catastrophes.
The Chief Rabbi will speak to the congregation, which is led by Rabbi Elazar Muskin, both on Wednesday, prior to the evening service and the reading of Eicha (Lamentations), and again as an introduction to the Kinos (Tisha B’Av elegies) on Thursday morning. Congregation B’nai David-Judea, led by Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, and Kehillat Yavneh of Hancock Park, led by Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, will partner with YICC for the morning program. Rabbis Muskin, Kanefsky and Korobkin will join the British Chief Rabbi in offering expositions on selected kinot.
Rabbi Sacks’ presentations will serve as a prelude to the launching of a new Orthodox Union West Coast Region program in the fall, designed to memorialize the six million individual Jews destroyed in the Holocaust and to create a living bond between them and the contemporary generation of the Jewish people. Sixty Days for Six Million, which originated in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia to coincide with the sixty years that have elapsed since the Holocaust, commits each participant to set aside at least 15 minutes every day over a sixty-day period to study a portion of Torah in memory of a specific Holocaust victim whose name appears on a card given to the participant. The program will begin on Sunday, October 22, Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, and culminate on Thursday, December 21, during Chanukah, in conjunction with the OU’s annual West Coast Torah Convention.
“Sixty Days for Six Million memorializes and gives merit to the millions of holy souls who gave their lives for the sanctification of God’s name. We are proud to bring this worthy program to our region,” declared Rabbi Korobkin, who also serves as Director of Community and Synagogue Services for the Orthodox Union West Coast Region.
The opportunity is being presented to the West Coast Region’s affiliated communities, synagogues and schools throughout the United States and Canada to participate in this special project, which ultimately seeks to inspire the person doing the learning to remember the lost Jewish lives of the Shoah and to devote oneself to help ensure the future of the Jewish people.
For further information, or to sponsor Sixty Days for Six Million, contact Rabbi Korobkin at (310) 229-9000, x205, or at dkorobkin@ou.org.