The University of Mary Washington will host two events as part of the Jewish Cultural Awareness Celebration, sponsored by the James Farmer Multicultural Center. Both events are free and open to the public. The Kristallnacht Commemoration will take place on Monday, Nov. 10 at 6 p.m. On this day 76 years ago, tens of thousands of Jews awoke to find their stores, businesses, homes and synagogues destroyed. Immediately after, more than 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, marking the beginning of the Holocaust. The event, which features talks by Marcel Drimer, a Holocaust survivor, and Porter R. Blakemore, associate professor in the Department of History and American Studies, takes place in Lee Hall, Room 411. Vanessa Ochs, author of “Inventing Jewish Ritual,” will give the keynote lecture on Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m. in Lee Hall, Room 411. Ochs won the National Jewish Book Award in 2007 and was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts. A professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies Program, she teaches Judaism, spiritual writing and anthropology. For more information on either of these events, please visit students.umw.edu/multicultural or call (540) 654-1044.