The Lithuanian Jewish Community is pleased to wish Shmuel (Simas) Levinas a very happy birthday. He was the first principal of the Sholem Aleichem School in Vilnius (post Holocaust), actively contributed to the founding of the LJC Social Center and served as its first director, was the first chairman of the Goodwill Foundation and served as the chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Religious Community as well as the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community.

Dear Simas,

The Lithuanian Jewish Community with great honor and warm gratitude congratulates you today on your birthday. You are a person without whom the history of the rebirth of the Lithuanian Jewish Community would have been written much differently.

Your childhood was post-war Šiauliai, secret prayer services and speaking quietly. But from that quietude you didn’t take acquiescence, but resolution. When Lithuania regained independence, you were among the first who understood that freedom without identity is empty. You took action.

You founded the first Jewish school in Vilnius after the war. Today the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium is among the top schools in the Lithuanian capital. You directed the LJC Social Center, providing aid to those who needed it most. For many long years you presided over the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community, safeguarding traditions of worship and the legacy of the Vilna Gaon at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

When the Goodwill Foundation was formed, you were its first chairman. You were the person who grew up in the post-war period and knew what had been taken away from the Jews of Lithuania, and now you were in charge of a foundation dedicated at least symbolically to restoring what had been destroyed.

Each of the roles you played demanded not just knowledge and patience, but the belief that they were worth doing. Your life is not just a personal story, it is the foundation of the rebirth of the Lithuanian Jewish Community.

We wish you good health and the warmth and light of family and friends every day, beside those whom you love, know and hold dear.

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

Photo: 15min.lt/Ernesta Čičiurkaitė and Vidmantas Balkūnas