This Shabbat, 38 synagogues will recite prayers for dead in Arab lands

This shabbat, prayers will be recited in 38 synagogues around the world  for Jews killed in Arab lands and those buried in cemeteries inaccessible to relatives.

Baghdad Jewish cemetery

This is the second year running that this initiative is taking place. As at 9 am GMT the number of synagogues planning to take part in the mass kaddish, or Hashkaba, was 38, or about three times as many as took part last year.

 The man behind the initiative is Sass Peress, a Jew living in Montreal. It grew out of a  project to clean up Sass Peress’s grandfather’s grave in the Jewish cemetery in Baghdad.

This year Shabbat falls on 30 November, the date designated as ‘Jewish Refugee Day’.

“The specific date for the commemoration was chosen as the day following the November 29th anniversary of the passage in 1947 of the UN Partition Plan, which recommended the establishment of two separate states, Jewish and Arab, in the territory of British Mandatory Palestine, because “the measures taken by the Arab League and its member states against their Jewish communities began then,” explains Ashley Perry, President of Reconectar and Director General of the Knesset Caucus for the Reconnection with the Descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Communities, who was involved in legislating the Knesset bill with then-MK Shimon Ohayon.

This year, the participating synagogues include Ashkenazi as well as Sephardi congregations, thus demonstrating solidarity across the diaspora and in Israel.