The Sabbath begins at 6:18 P.M. on Friday, October 16, and concludes at 7:10 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit and prayers recited at 6:00 P.M. and completed before sunset at 6:18 P.M.
The table tennis team from Tauras Sports School took first place in the team table tennis championship for young people born in 2013 and later. Etin Matanas scored the crucial victory. Earlier this year he became the Lithuanian champion in singles competition in his age group. Congratulations to Etin, Alanas Mižigurskis, Konradas Druskis and Tauras Adamonis for their team spirit and great scores. Congratulations as well to trainer Rafaelis Gimelsteinas.
On Sunday descendants of Jews from Žagarė who live now in Šiauliai, Vilnius and other Lithuanian towns and cities gathered in front of the statue to Rabbi Israel Salanter aka Yisrael ben Ze’ev Wolf Lipkin along with Shimon Pesach from the Israeli embassy and Rabbi Kalev Krelin.
This is an annual event. On the first Sunday in October they come together to remember the Jewish history of Žagarė, to honor the Jews who lived here and to preserve their memory. Participants also visited the mass murder sites in Naryškinas Park and at the old Jewish cemetery.
The meeting then moved on to a local café where the discussion continued.
Natalja Cheifec continues her internet lecture and discussion series with a presentation of Jewish views on gossip and cursing, based on Chafetz Chaim’s book The Will to Live. What are the consequences of foul language? What is slander and gossip? How can staying silent lead to a longer life, and when is it absolutely forbidden to keep silent? Tune in and find out. To receive zoom credentials, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, October 15
Place: internet
Photo: YIVO reading room at 1048 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1958. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
by Andrew Silow-Carroll October 11, 2026
Kalman Weiser’s new history follows the institute from Vilna to New York where it had to preserve a vanished world and cultivate a future.
When YIVO was founded in Vilna in 1925 its mission was to study a living people.
The Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut was meant to be a national university for Jews scattered across Eastern Europe and increasingly the world. Its scholars studied Yiddish language and literature, but also Jewish sociology, psychology, history and contemporary life. YIVO was interested in how Jews actually lived and in helping them navigate modernity.
When the Nazis destroyed much of that world, YIVO’s surviving caretakers were forced to ponder how and why to keep their efforts going in a new world haunted by unimaginable loss.
Their efforts are explored in Kalman Weiser’s new history “Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100.” After World War II a relocated and heartsick YIVO had to become a guardian of a nearly vanished culture, a rescuer of its texts and artifacts and an institution which could somehow make that culture meaningful to Jews who were rapidly shedding Yiddish and embracing a distinctly American, English-speaking identity–all simultaneously.
Photo: Christians visiting a West Bank settlement during the International Christian Embassy’s annual conference. Courtesy International Christian Embassy
ICEJ visitors turned purchases into a show of solidarity as Ireland and the Netherlands enforce new restrictions, and Norway weighs a broader trade ban.
by Gabriel Colodro, Media Line, October 13, 2026
“This piece of legislation written by the Irish parliament shall not stand,” said Paul Coulter, national director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) in Ireland, as he held up a copy of Ireland’s new law restricting imports from Israeli settlements. Then he tore the document up in front of the camera.
The gesture came during an ICEJ visit to Israeli communities in the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, where Christian visitors traveled through Samaria, Gush Etzion and Efrat and were encouraged to shop at local businesses. The tour organized during ICEJ’s annual Feast of Tabernacles gathering in Jerusalem was intended as a direct response to a growing set of European measures restricting trade in products from Israeli settlements. Some of those measures are already in force; others are still just proposed legislation.
Last week Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky visited the Martynas Mažvydas Pre-Gymnasium in Vilnius and held an open-format discussion with students there in a tent erected outside the school. The students and the chairwoman spent several hours in the sukka discussing Jewish life after the Holocaust and today, the importance Judaism places on learning, artificial intelligence and its influence on our opportunities, as well as a number of other topics.
We’d like to thank sincerely the teachers for their invitation to come and speak and for their attention to Jewish history and identity. Likewise we are grateful to the wonderful students for their interest, keen questions and the delicious latkes they served. True friendship begins when we have the courage to question, listen to and recognize one another.
The Nobel Prize Committee awarded South African Indian Navanethem aka Navi Pillay the Nobel Peace Prize for 2026. She served as UN high commissioner for refugees, was a jurist on the International Criminal Court and has special guest-judge status on the UN’s International Court of Justice.
Israel National News wrote the following:
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in Oslo on Friday to South African jurist Navi Pillay, known for her anti-Israel positions. Pillay served as the UN’s fifth High Commissioner for Human Rights and held senior positions in the international judicial system over the course of her career.
Pillay also served as president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and as a judge at the International Criminal Court. She is known in Israel for her radical positions against the Jewish state.
The Sabbath begins at 6:35 P.M. on Friday, October 9, and concludes at 7:26 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit and prayers recited at 6:17 P.M. and completed before sunset at 6:35 P.M. Monday, October 12, is Columbus Day.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community inadvertently named a suspect erroneously in a report several weeks ago about vandalism against a Jewish partisan memorial in Kaunas. The information was not properly verified. Our deepest and sincerest apologies to the person named in this report, which has since been removed.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky addressed a commemoration of October 7 victims from the 2023 invasion of Israel by Hamas. The gathering was at the main square in Vilnius surrounding the Arch-Cathedral on October 7, 2026.
Dear friends,
We gather here today not in protest, but as a solemn commemoration to honor those who were tortured and brutally murdered. Who were the people who were killed, and who were the murderers? The murdered were visitors at the Nova Music Festival, peaceful Jews, residents of the kibbutzim, friends and employers of the Palestinian people.
What happened after that? What happened was a huge wave of anti-Semitism swept the entire world. Many Jews and non-Jews suffered; the morale and identity of humanity suffered as well. Why? Perhaps it is impossible to explain hate rationally. Maybe this is could be called the opposite of the Stockholm syndrome. Nonetheless, the hatred against Jews and the anti-Semitism is real.
What should be done about this? First, don’t forget to tell you children. Jews have been denounced for millennia, but have survived. We must stick together and join forces.
I believe it’s important to fight for something, not just against.
The Šiauliai Jewish Community marked the third anniversary of Hamas’s attack against the Jewish people in southern Israel in the central square in the northern Lithuanian city with Israeli flags, candles, flowers and lights representing the colors of the Israeli flag.
On October 3, 2023, Hamas murdered 1.221 people and took 251 hostage. Almost all of the hostages were tortured and the IDF says less than half made it out alive. CNN reported only 206 people were taken alive, the remaining 45 taken as corpses into Gaza, and that 40 of those 206 were killed in captivity.
The Šiauliai Jewish Community remembers all the victims with their whole heart and mourns with the families and loved ones of those murdered. Memory and light will always prevail over darkness, members of the Community said. The Šiauliai Jewish Community thanks the city for making the square available for the commemoration and for expressing support and solidarity.
A sizeable group gathered at the Menorah in the central park in Švenčionys on October 4 to commemorate the anniversary of the start of the Holocaust in Lithuania. Organizer of the event Kristina Sizonova began the commemoration followed by historian Nadežda Spiridonovienė who went over the historical facts with the audience. From June to November of 1941 over 80% of Jews resident in Lithuania had been murdered. By 1944 more than 200,000 Jews had been murdered in Lithuania.
Students from the Zigmas Žemaitis Gymnasium in Švenčionys gave further presentations of Jewish life there before the Holocaust.
Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro thanks attendees for coming and invited people to lay stones, wreaths and candles on the Menorah. The commemoration then moved to the mass grave in the Platumai Forest where about 8,000 Jews were murdered, including entire Jewish communities from surrounding town and villages.
MP Emanuelis Zingeris spoke at the mass grave memorial, as did Artur Soroko from the Polish embassy in Vilnius. Chairman Shapiro ended the commemoration retelling his own family’s tragedy.
Photo: Getty Images, © 2026
Leader of the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom Kemi Badenoch in a closing speech for the party’s conference in Birmingham Wednesday condemned the decision Sunday by the UK’s Green Party to equate support for Israel with racism. Green leader Zack Polanski, a Jew, failed to show up for that vote on the party’s new policy. Israeli declared Polanski persona non grata following the adoption of the anti-Israel platform plank.
“You know what else is taking us backwards? The disgraceful anti-Semitism we saw at the Green Party conference in Brighton last weekend. They are seeking to erase Jewish identity. Shame on the Green Party and shame on Zack Polanski.
“Exactly three years ago today, we saw the horrific 7th of October attacks, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The Conservative Party stands with the Jewish people. We will never stop fighting anti-Semitism,” Badenoch said.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is pleased to invite members to a musical play called The Dog Keeper performed by its Israeli authors.
A musical performance based on Stefan Zweig’s novella The Eyes of the Eternal Brother performed on 29 acoustic ethnic and electronic instruments, in Russian.
The performance is based on a philosophical and dramatic story about a man searching for truth, redemption and his own path. Zweig’s novella is famous for its depth and intense internal dramaturgy, but the stage version goes further: new plot twists are added, expanding the meaning of the story, where words and music act as equals.
The form of the performance is unique. One performer plays several characters at the same time, while simultaneously creating the musical space of the action. The performance features 29 instruments, from the ancient and exotic to the modern. Mongolian morin khuur, African kalimba, Tibetan singing bowls, khang and rav, large tambourine, ethnic flutes and metallophones, each instrument becomes the voice of a separate state, character and destiny.
The Dubi and Ilan Clubs for children at the Lithuanian Jewish Community are kicking off their re-opening this season with a special interactive play called The Fairy and the Clown. Blim the fairy is the saddest fairy in the world, she can’t seem to make her magic tricks work. Then a real magician appears.
Registration required by writing zanas@sc.lzb.lt.
Time: 2:00 P.M., Saturday, October 10
Place: Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius
The Šiauliai Jewish Community held a special Sabbath dinner also celebrating Simchat Torah last Friday. The dinner party included guests from Germany.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and writer Arkadijus Vinokuras invite you to a commemoration of the third anniversary of October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, killed over 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Time: 12:00 noon, October 7
Place: Arch-Cathedral Square, Vilnius
The Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated Sukkot Thursday in the courtyard shared with the Litvak Identity Museum of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum in Vilnius. Cantor Shmuel Yaatom from the Choral Synagogue performed the prayers. A great big thank-you to all who came and made the event a success.
In a meeting of members Sunday in the UK the Green Party voted 54% in favor of designating support for the state of Israel as racism. Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, avoided that part of the party congress and didn’t vote. Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar declared Zack Polanski persona non grata in Israel anyway. The Israeli Government issued a statement calling the Green Party’s declaration anti-Semitic under IHRA’s definition because it denied the Jewish people the right to self-determination.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a statement on the Green Party’s decision:
“This motion passed by the Green Party is an attack on the Jewish community. It is an antisemitic platform based on a grossly offensive distortion and erasure of Jewish experience and identity.”
Protests against and in favor of the declaration took place outside the party conference, as well a more general call for the Green Party to return to its roots, with signs reading “Less Hamas, more trees.”
Jews and Arabs are not considered a race anymore but ethno-linguistic groupings. In archaic race theory both groups are considered the offspring of Shem, the son of Noah, which gave rise to the word anti-Semitism, Shem represented as -Sem-.
Photo: PA
