Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

Rabbi Harold M. SchulweisOn April 27, 2007, Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis of Temple Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California, California, delivered a major speech regarding genocide, the suicide of denial, and our collective responsibilities to transmit memory to our children and our children’s children.

Entitled In Honor of the Martyrs of Armenia, it commemorates the 92nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, speaks to all genocides, whether Armenian, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, or Darfur, and points out the consequences to a society which remains apathetic in the face of murder.

Listen, watch or read Rabbi Schulweis’ speech.

Rabbi Schulweis, a long-time member of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's Board of Governers and a student of Mordecai M. Kaplan said, “Silence is the slow strangulation of conscience… Holocaust denial is not only a clear and present danger. It is a clear and future danger.” Rabbi Schulweis crystallizes, in eighteen minutes of prose and poetry, that we are...we must be… our brother’s keeper.

These materials have been made available by the The Harold M. Schulweis Institute.

Audio and video media formats are also available for accompanying speeches on the Armenian Genocide given by Archbishop Hovnan Derderian and Jewish World Watch Co-Founder and President, Janice Kamenir-Reznik.

This commemoration program was co-sponsored by Jewish World Watch, Valley Beth Shalom and the Harold M. Schulweis Institute. Jewish World Watch may be contacted directly for additional information about its programs to combat genocide and other egregious violations of human rights around the world.