Memorial service for Kirk Douglas held in parents’ hometown of Minsk

Douglas, the son of Jewish parents from the Mogilev region of Belarus, embraced his Judaism at an old age after a near-death experience in the early ’90s.

By Aaron Sull, World Israel News

A moment of silence and a remembrance prayer took place at a memorial service in Minsk on Sunday evening to honor recently deceased Jewish actor Kirk Douglas.

The memorial service was held during the first day of a joint Limmud FSU/Regional Nahum Goldmann Fellowship, a program aimed at addressing the needs and concerns of Jewish leadership in Russian communities.

“This evening this community honored the memory of one of its greatest descendants, who in addition to being a world-renowned movie star, was, first of all, a proud Jew,” said Chaim Chesler, founder of Limmud FSU.

“Even the young members of the Jewish community of Belarus know about and honor Kirk Douglas, and that is evidence, more than anything else, of the special connection that existed between the star, his Judaism in general and Jewish history in particular,” he said.

Douglas, the son of Jewish parents from the Mogilev region of Belarus, embraced his Judaism at an old age after a near-death experience in the early ’90s.

In his 1988 autobiography Climbing the Mountain: My Search for Meaning, Douglas shared his quest for spirituality and Jewish identity.

He said that it all began after a helicopter crash in 1991 that left him severely injured and two others dead. While in his hospital bed, the actor couldn’t shake a question that kept haunting him: Why had two young men, who haven’t lived out their lives, died, while he at age 74 survived?

Rather than dismiss it as a stroke of luck, Douglas set out to search for spiritual meaning and seek to understand what it meant to be a Jew.

Douglas hired a rabbi to teach him the Bible and found the Jewish faith deeply satisfying. He also said that it enriched his relationship with his children and taught him to listen to others.

During his lifetime, the legendary actor donated a number of playgrounds in Jerusalem, as well as the Kirk Douglas Theater at the Aish HaTorah Center across from the Western Wall.

Douglas died last Wednesday at the age of 103.