Rituals of Remembrance: Seeking Meaning in Modern Loss

The final session in this series will address the practical and ritualistic challenges of commemorating modern Jewish suffering, specifically the Holocaust and the October 7 massacre. We will study Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” to ask why modern commemorations lack the established liturgical rituals found in traditional days like Tisha B’Av. By revisiting Psalms, Lamentations, and the Book of Job, we will seek to identify which classical texts can authentically facilitate the struggle with despair in contemporary national mourning.