New ritual aims to bridge Holocaust remembrance to a post-survivor world

(JTA) - Holocaust remembrance day programs in Jewish communities have stuck to a familiar form for decades, featuring Holocaust survivors sharing their stories followed by the lighting of yahrzeit candles and the recitation of commemorative prayers.

But that model of memorial faces a problem that is growing more pressing each year: the dwindling number of survivors still living and able to share accounts of their painful past.

That reality drove Michal Govrin, an Israeli writer and professor, and the daughter of a survivor, to adapt perhaps the most universally recognizable Jewish practice, th...