The family duet of Vera Vaidman on violin and Vera Emanuel Krasovsky on piano will perform works by Beethoven and Schubert at the Organum Concert Hall in Vilnius at 7:00 P.M. on Friday, February 3. Tickets are available here and if you enter the code LZB you’ll get a 10% discount. Krasovsky was born in Vilnius and attended Vilnius University among other institutions of higher learning. The couple live in Tel Aviv currently
Silvija Sondeckienė passed away Saturday morning at the age of 80. She was a cellist, a professor and a friend of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Her father-in-law was the Righteous Gentile Jackus Sondeckis and her late husband the renowned conductor Saulius Sondeckis was also a great friend of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. We extend our deepest condolences to her sons and their families.
The writer Grigoriy Kanovich has passed away at the age of 93. Our deepest condolences to his sons Sergejus and Dmitrijus, wife Olga and his many friends and fans around the world. He served as chairman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community from 1989 to 1993, when he moved to Israel.
The Sabbath begins at 4:15 P.M. on Friday, January 20, and concludes at 5:35 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
“The whole history is packing bundles and getting away. Nobody else can be as tender and delicate with bundles. That’s a Jewish man tying a bundle.”
Those lines from Arthur Miller’s Monte Saint Angelo aptly characterizes an unusual exhibit of paintings by Marc Chagall during his period of exile from the 1930s and 1940s which opened in Frankfurt and will run till February 19, 2023. The exhibit is called World in Turmoil.
“A few kilometers from there is a place, more precisely a town, which I haven’t visited for a long time, but I always remember it. So I took advantage of your invitation to go and wander around there a little,” Marc Chagall said at the World YIVO Conference held in Vilnius (Wilno) on August 14, 1935.
This conference is mentioned in the artist’s biography and the catalog for the exhibit at that time. His journey back to Poland (now Lithuania) gave rise to works which appear unusual and dark for Chagall. His oeuvre is usually arranged chronologically, from his native Vitebsk, striving to reattain this magical homeland. In Vilnius Chagall comes as close as possible to actually returning.
The Paideia European Institute For Jewish Studies In Sweden located in Stockholm is offering a one-year program of study of the source texts for Jewish civilization and interdisciplinary exegesis.
The Paideia institute offers students Hebrew language at all levels and different disciplines within Jewish studies taught by academics from Israel, Europe and the USA.
Tuition is free and living stipends are available. Prior knowledge of Hebrew isn’t required and classes are taught in English. There are no upper-limit age restrictions for becoming a student.
The institute will hold an open-door day on January 24 over zoom. Register here shorturl.at/rwXY6. The deadline for submitting applications is January 31.
More information available here.
Wednesday, January 18, 2023–The European Jewish Congress has expressed its concern and dismay following comments today by Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov comparing Western governments’ support for Ukraine to Hitler’s Final Solution which resulted in the murder of six million Jews in the Shoah.
Lavrov claimed Wednesday the United States had put together a coalition of European states to solve the “Russian question” in the same way Hitler had organized the Final Solution for Europe’s Jews.
“We are shocked and appalled by this shameful comparison drawn by minister Lavrov between the actions of a coalition of democratic countries and Hitler’s persecution and murder of six million Jews in the Shoah,” EJC president Ariel Muzicant said.
With deep sadness we announce the death of Nina Dubrovskaja on January 18. She was born in 1932. We extend our deepest condolences to her daughter Liudmila.
To mark the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust instituted by the United Nations in 2005, the Lithuanian Jewish Community will host a presentation of Vytautas Magnus University teacher Linas Venclauskas’s monograph about Lithuanian anti-Semitism and of Vytautas Toleikis’s book about the portrayal of Jews in Lithuanian literature.
The two presentations in Lithuanian begin at 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, January 26 at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. Note the United Nations’ International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. more commonly called International Holocaust Remembrance Day, is officially on Friday, January 27, to mark the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex by the Soviet Red Army in 1945.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky is attending a conference of European Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. The conference agenda includes meetings and discussions on relations between Israel and the Jewish communities abroad, current events and rising anti-Semitism.
Israeli president Isaac Herzog met with the chairwoman at his office and spoke about his Litvak roots, saying his great-grandfather Shmuel Yitzhak Hilman was born in Šeduva in 1868 and studied under his uncles in Pašvitinys outside Šiauliai and in Pasvalys. In 1897 he became rabbi for Berezino in the Minsk region. In 1908 he became rabbi for Glasgow in Scotland. Thousands attended his funeral in Jerusalem in 1953. His great-grandson Isaac was born in Tel Aviv in 1960.
Researchers have discovered additional evidence for written historical records referencing the biblical King David.
The Moabite Stone, also known as the Mesha stele, was discovered in 1868 at Dhibān (Dibon) about 15 miles east of the Dead Sea. The basalt stone slab was damaged by locals in 1869, but not before a papier-mâché cast was made. Pieces and fragments were collected and sent to Paris where they were reconstructed. It is still the major monument of the Moabite language.
The text on the stone is written in the first person of Moabite king Mesha (ca. 850-800 BC) who claimed to have led his warrior to victory against Israel, including recapturing cities and slaying their inhabitants. The text breaks off with about five lines missing at the end.
The Sabbath begins at 4:02 P.M. on Friday, January 13, and concludes at 5:24 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
J’ACCUSE! Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust and its coverup
Date: 8:00 P.M. South African Standard Time (UTC +2, same time zone as Lithuania), Thursday, January 19, 2023
Register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_t4pEdH4LR3ano0wwyzfEnA
What would you do if you discovered that your grandfather, a national hero in Lithuania, was also a genocidal killer of Jews? Would you keep quiet or expose the truth?
This controversial documentary exposes Lithuania’s policy of Holocaust denial and its celebration of the perpetrators of the genocide of its Jewish citizens.
This is a unique opportunity to view the documentary in full and meet the filmmakers and heroes of this ground-breaking story.
Please note that this is a private screening by invitation only. The recording of this internationally award-winning documentary will NOT be available on YouTube after the event.
The two days of activities are intended to teach the traditions and customs of the Roma and Jewish communities in Lithuania and to counter stereotypes and fight anti-Semitism and Romophobia at home and abroad in various contexts. This is the first time educators from Lithuania are being invited to meeting with representatives and lecturers from both communities. We believe these teachings will be helpful for teachers working with young people as well as for cultural workers in the towns and cities where Jewish heritage is undergoing restoration. Those who work with young people and representatives from NGOs are invited to attend. The two-day workshop begins in January at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius with the participation of experts from the Lithuanian Human Rights Center and the Padėk Pritapti organization, and of course the Lithuanian Jewish Community as well. We invite you to share this invitation with your colleagues. For more information, click https://bit.ly/3PXEoTz. To register, click https://bit.ly/3jDbJa5. A program in Lithuanian is available here.
For more information, contact Dovilė Rūkaitė at projects@lzb.lt.
The Sabbath begins at 3:50 P.M. on Friday, January 6, and concludes at 5:14 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
The Old Vilnius Town Hall and the Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Institute invite you to an evening to remember the life and work of Irena Veisaitė. The event marks Irena’s 95th birthday and will also serve to launch the book “Our Irena: Memories Irena Veisaitė” edited and compiled by Reda Pabarčienė. The book will be available for purchase at the presentation. The venue is the Old Vilnius Town Hall, 6:00 P.M., January 9, 2023. It is free and open to the public. The event will be conducted in Lithuanian.
Simonas Strelcovas was appointed by the Lithuanian Culture Ministry to the post of director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum in Vilnius. He has a doctorate in history and is a credentialed teacher. Earlier he directed the Humanitarian Research Center at Šiauliai University and the Defense and Warfare Educational Center. He served as chairman of the board of directors of the scientific institute at Šiauliai University. More recently he was head of projects at the Lithuanian National Regional Development Agency. In 2019 he went to Meijo University in Japan as visiting researched and headed a project there on the collective memory of traumatic experiences.
“One of my main tasks as director of the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum is to clarify with the staff the museum’s priority activities, setting a strategic goal for ourselves to make the museum one of the leaders in the region,” he told Lithuanian Radio and Television.
According to press reports, Strelcovas began his duties in the post Tuesday.
The former American magazine-U.S. News and World Reports, now purely an internet publication, has promoted Israel as the fourth most-powerful military force on earth after Russia, China and the United States, the group of three states once regularly called the three superpowers. The former magazine publishes a list annually of what it calls the best countries, based on an algorithm developed in concert with academics.
“The study and model used to score and rank countries were developed by BAV Group–a unit of global marketing communications company WPP–and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, specifically professor David Reibstein, in consultation with U.S. News & World Report,” the internet publication states.
In the category of “military strength” Israel placed fourth on the magazine’s list this year, with Russia ranked first, followed by the U.S. and then China in third place. Confusingly, the magazine placed Israel in tenth place under the category of “most powerful countries” where it placed the U.S. first, followed by China and Russia.
The American music industry magazine Rolling Stone published their list of the top 200 performed for the past hundred years January 1, based on the opinions of editorial staff and others. This year along with Aretha Franklin and Billy Holiday they included the late Israeli singer Ofra Haza.
Full story in Russian here.
World Jewish Congress president Ronald S. Lauder mourned the passing of Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday night.
“It is with great sadness that I learned today that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has passed away,” he said. “He was a towering figure of the Roman Catholic Church, both as pope and before that as the cardinal who gave the Catholic-Jewish relationship solid theological underpinning and enhanced understanding. No pope before him visited as many synagogues, and he made a point of meeting with local Jewish community representatives whenever he visited foreign nations.”
Lauder recalled having met the former pope at the Vatican three times and said that each time, he was “deeply moved by his affection and friendship for the Jewish people, his commitment to remembrance of the Shoah, and his unambiguous condemnation of Holocaust denial in any form.”