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Some offering Yizkor, or remembrance, prayers were doing so in honor of slain loved ones.

This week, lighting a white Yizkor memorial candle for my father, I've decided to fast in downtown Manhattan, his old haunt, remembering how lucky we were that he came home to us that night, repeating his story which is now my story — and prayer.

Only moments before, Lori Gilbert Kaye, 60, his friend of two decades and a pioneering congregant at Chabad of Poway, had stopped the rabbi to ask what time Yizkor would begin, a seasonal prayer meant to celebrate and remember those who have died.

So far, it has worked that way for Ruth Fertig, who last year won a Student Academy Award for a documentary, “Yizkor,” about her grandmother’s experience in a concentration camp, after having gotten a graduate degree in film from the University of Texas, Austin.

The controversy is over whether Yizkor, the Hebrew prayer of remembrance, should begin at military ceremonies with the words "May God remember" or "May the people of Israel remember."