Garden of Peace – Plaza of 100 Cambridge St, Boston, MA (Beacon Hill neighborhood).


The Garden of Peace is a memorial commemorating victims of homicide and a living reminder of the impact of violence. It is a visual testament to the need for eliminating violence. The Garden is a symbol of hope for peace and renewal in our lives, our community, and the world.

While we seek to provide comfort, our goal is to focus our grief on the actions we all can take to eliminate marginalization and increase understanding so that all in the LGBT communities may be free from oppression and be proud of who they are. This is a call to action.

The Holocaust was a time when those in power felt superior to Jews and LGBT people, creating a systematic process of imprisonment, torture, and extermination of those that didn’t fit neatly into their narrow, specific, and preferred model of race, religion, sexuality, or nationality.

Today, we seek to eliminate the thinking that allows such inhumane treatment to happen and to encourage each of us here today to participate fully in increasing understanding, respect, and love for all others no matter how different they may be from us.

Our country and our world today is rounding a path back toward intolerance. As history teaches us about events beginning in Weimar Germany in the early 20th century, a more open society prior to the rise of Hitler, the closing down of acceptance may start slowly. But, without action from an informed community to organize in fighting against it, it quickly picks up speed.

We seek to eliminate the unjust treatment of all people. Today. Right now. We hope that when you leave this program, you will think deeply about what you yourself can do to take action against homophobia, transphobia, bigotry, intolerance, and oppression.

The Holocaust simply may seem like a historical event long ago in a different world affecting only those you may not understand or even know. It may seem that because it happened so long ago and so far away that you have no place in trying to commemorate it. You may mistakenly think the Holocaust is relevant only to Jews.

However, the Holocaust is profoundly significant to each of us here today to teach us how drastically things can go wrong, and learning more about it gives us opportunity to realize how taking action to value and to protect each other right now is the only way to ensure our survival.

Garden of Peace

Garden of Peace

Boston Pride Remembrance is an annual observance that reaches out to those of all religious faiths and non-believers without judgment to commemorate the lives our communities have lost due to violence against us.

While we seek to provide comfort, our goal is to focus our grief on the actions we all can take to eliminate marginalization and increase understanding so that all in the LGBT communities may be free from oppression and be proud of who they are. This is a call to action.

The Holocaust was a time when those in power felt superior to Jews and LGBT people, creating a systematic process of imprisonment, torture, and extermination of those that didn’t fit neatly into their narrow, specific, and preferred model of race, religion, sexuality, or nationality.

Today, we seek to eliminate the thinking to allow such inhumane treatment to happen and to encourage each of us here today to participate fully in increasing understanding, respect, and love for all others no matter how different they may be from us.

We have four featured speakers: Marvin Kabakoff, Laurie Wolfe, Joshua Lakin, and Renee Manning.

Marvin Kabakoff

Marvin Kabakoff

Marvin Kabakoff is a retired archivist for the National Archives and is a board member of the History Project, Boston’s LGBTQ archives. He did his undergraduate work at Brandeis, and received a Ph.D. in European history from Washington University-St. Louis. He’s been involved with the gay movement since the early ’70s, in the Gay Liberation Front, a gay community center and hotline, the LGBT synagogue in Boston, and various other groups. He currently chairs the Rainbow Committee at Temple Sinai in Brookline.

Laurie Wolfe

Laurie Wolfe

Laurie Wolfe is a writer/performer, a poet, and an activist. She is also a speaker/trainer with SpeakOut Boston, the nation’s oldest LGBT speakers bureau. She’s served on the board of the Bisexual Resource Center, and was a featured performer in Bilicious for several years. She last appeared at Hebrew College at an event for Keshet, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition and Freedom (for all) Massachusetts. That event supported the Jewish community in turning out the vote to say Yes to trans rights in Massachusetts, in the face of an upcoming referendum that would remove those rights.

Joshua Lakin

Joshua Lakin

Joshua Lakin currently leads Am Tikva, and as part of the Pride Interfaith Committee, he’s helped bring together communities of faith on Pride morning to pray and honor faith leaders supportive of the LGBT community.

Renee Manning

Renee Manning

Renee has lived near Boston her entire life. She’s a Sr. CAD illustrator on the PATRIOT Missile Project at Raytheon, starting her 35th year. She has two beautiful daughters: Evelyn, 28, and Erin, 26. She married her wife Serena in 2014; Serena has two boys: Andrew, 27, and Ricky, 25. Renee has had a very colorful religious heritage. She was raised Catholic, Universalist Unitarian, Baptist and now, Congregationalist-United Church of Christ. She is currently in her final year in the Masters of Divinity program at Andover Newton Theological School, and she’s a Member in Discernment for the UCC ordination process. In her free time, she enjoys astronomy, model rocketry, re-enacting 8 historical characters in the local school systems, and model building. She also is a facilitator for Merrimack Valley PFLAG. Renee is a Transgender and GLBIQ advocate, and she teaches “Trans 101” in churches, police stations, and venues throughout Massachusetts. Renee was raised in a very happy middle-class home with her dad, mom, two brothers, and two sisters. Renee knew she was transgender at the age of four. The word “transgender” did not exist until late in her life. She transitioned seven years ago at the age of fifty. Transition is an amazing journey.

MOURNER’S KADDISH

The Kaddish or Qaddish (Aramaic: קדיש‎, qaddiÅ¡ “holy”; alternative spellings: ḳaddish) is a hymn of praises to God found in Jewish prayer services. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God’s name. In the liturgy, different versions of the Kaddish are used functionally as separators between sections of the service.

The term “Kaddish” is often used to refer specifically to “The Mourner’s Kaddish”, said as part of the mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services, as well as at funerals (other than at the gravesite, see Qaddish aḥar HaqqÉ™vurah “Qaddish after Burial”) and memorials, and for 11 months after the death of a close relative. When mention is made of “saying Kaddish”, this unambiguously refers to the rituals of mourning. Mourners say Kaddish to show that despite the loss they still praise God.

Along with the Shema Yisrael and Amidah, the Kaddish is one of the most important and central elements in the Jewish liturgy. Kaddish cannot be recited alone. Along with some prayers, it can only be recited with a minyan of ten Jews.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba
b’alma di-v’ra chirutei, v’yamlich malchutei
b’chayeichon uvyomeichon uvchayei d’chol beit yisrael,
ba’agala uvizman kariv,
v’im’ru: “amen.”
Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam ul’almei almaya.
Yitbarach v’yishtabach, v’yitpa’ar v’yitromam v’yitnaseh,
v’yithadar v’yit’aleh v’yit’halal sh’mei d’kud’sha, b’rich hu,
l’eila min-kol-birchata v’shirata, tushb’chata
v’nechemata da’amiran b’alma,
v’im’ru: “amen.”
Y’hei shlama raba min-sh’maya v’chayim aleinu v’al-kol-yisrael,
v’im’ru: “amen.”
Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu v’al kol-yisrael,
v’imru: “amen.”

 

About this event

Rain or
Shine
Free and
Open to the public
Wheelchair
accessible
Government Center (Blue and Green lines)
Bowdoin (Blue line)