The state's oldest interfaith Holocaust service will mark its 30th anniversary on Sunday, April 15.

Local clergy and congregants at the annual South Orange/Maplewood Interfaith Holocaust Remembrance Service will light candles, hear speeches from Holocaust and Rwandan genocide survivors, and pray that all faiths have learned the lessons of the Shoa.

Rabbi Jehiel Orenstein, now rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth El in South Orange, a founder of the event, said the service is as critical today as ever.

"Every day there's another genocide," said Orenstein. "People who have nothing to do with anything are killed."

He pointed to Darfur and Iraq, where, he said, "All males of a certain sect are being put to death. It's inhumane. This service is dedicated to humanity."

A survivor of the Rwandan genocide, Jacqueline Murekatete, will be one of the event's speakers this year.

Although it is now an established tradition in the community, the service almost did not happen that first year. Pearl Randall Lehrhoff remembers attending an interfaith Holocaust memorial service at a church in Manhattan with her late husband, Max Randall, in 1976.

"We were really moved," she said, and her husband brought the idea to Orenstein. While the rabbi embraced the idea, his fellow clergy had other priorities. "They were not too enthusiastic," said Orenstein. "The Catholics and Protestants barely spoke to each other, and no one spoke to the Jews."

He and Randall persisted. "I saw it as an opportunity to gather around a common loathing of the Nazis and their treatment of the Jews," Orenstein said.

They realized, however, that rhetoric would not be enough. So Orenstein brought the idea to Sister Rose Thering and Father John Morley at Seton Hall University. "They broke the ice," recalled Orenstein.

Brian Bamforth, a member of St. George's Church in Maplewood and a longtime service committee member said, "The Catholics couldn't say no to Sister Rose."

But even with the help of Sister Rose – the late Dominican nun and Seton Hall professor who devoted her life to fighting anti-Semitism – neighboring churches were not jumping to join the effort. Orenstein recalled the meeting he and Randall attended with the minister at the Episcopal church.

"Max started the meeting by saying, ‘Every Episcopalian minister I've ever met has been anti-Semitic.' He was nonplussed," Orenstein remembered. "I was hiding under the table! But after that, we began talking very frankly."

The Episcopalian minister was the first to join the project.

Randall used a similar strategy with other clergy, recalled his widow.

"He said to one priest, ‘I was taught to be afraid of gentiles.' The priest responded by telling him, ‘That's because you've never met a true Christian.'" And, she said, one by one, the congregations agreed to participate and work together.

The first service was held at Beth El, and Sister Rose gave the homily. Lehrhoff said Sister Rose thought the other clergy "would kill her. She looked them in the eye and told them not to blame Hitler but to blame themselves and the things the church had taught."

"She was way ahead of her time," said Orenstein.

After that year, the service became an annual event, alternating between churches and synagogues and moving around to all participating congregations. And for many years, wherever it was held, the street was temporarily renamed "Jerusalem Street."

Bamforth of St. George's expressed some frustration that participation in and congregational support for the service is, in his view, waning.

"It's getting harder and harder to get the Christian denominations and synagogues to really support it," he said. "Some denominations have not made contributions in recent years."

He added that many clergy no longer name a lay person to the committee, which was a longstanding practice. And while "the host congregation really puts its shoulder to the wheel and does a magnificent job," said Bamforth, "the next year, no one from that congregation comes to the meetings."

This year, the service will be hosted by St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Maplewood. For the first time, the Orthodox Jewish community will be represented at the service as Rabbi Mendel Bogomilsky of Congregation Beth Ephraim-Maplewood Jewish Center leads the march.

Bogomilsky has still not decided whether or not he will enter the church, due to a traditional prohibition in Judaism against entering churches. The prohibition, which is based on the notion that the Holy Trinity violates the notion of one true God, was an issue Orenstein confronted years ago.

"We are not worshiping idols. We are all worshiping the one true God. We can all have our own church or synagogue or mosque," said Orenstein. "We are reaching toward the best ideals of our faiths. Each has things that should be kept quiet. But the best things can be acted upon, prayed upon, making us all better."