A series of several concerts with world-famous performers, composers and material from the works of Grigoriy Kanovitch will be held to celebrate Kanovitch’s 90th birthday. Kanovitch is the author of a number of classics in Jewish literature and is a recipient of the Lithuanian National Art and Culture Prize. Lithuanian Jewish Community members will receive a 40% discount on the ticket price.
For more information, see here.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Levy, embassy aide Adi Cohen and writer Kristina Sabaliauskaitė wish you a good, happy and sweet new year. It’s customary to invite friends and relatives over for New Year’s both to have a party and to keep a mitzvah.
Rosh Hashanah is a happy holiday with pomegranate, round challa bread and apples essential elements. Pieces of apple are immersed in honey and eaten while wishing others a good and sweet new year.
Dear friends,
Yossi Levy, Israeli ambassador, sends you his greetings on the upcoming holiday of Rosh Hashanah, and sends you greetings from Israeli president Reuven Rivlin,
We wish you tranquility, concentration and a happy and sweet 5780!
Shana tova u’metuka!
__________________________________________________
Embassy of Israel to Lithuania
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The most iconic image of the Rosh Hashanah or Jewish New Year celebration is the blowing of the shofar horn. It is a ram’s horn and it is difficult to blow it correctly. The shofar reminds believers of the coming Day of Judgment. Jews gather at synagogue and read prayers for two days during the holiday.
An important Rosh Hashanah tradition is to take clothing to a body of water and shake the pockets out, symbolically ridding oneself of remaining sin. A special prayer is read for this. The ritual is called tashlikh (Hebrew “cast off”).
The main holiday treat on Rosh Hashanah is the pomegranate. This is replaced by apples and honey in Lithuania where the fruit doesn’t grow to maturity. The honey is intended to make the coming year sweet. In fact the salutation “sweet year” is a requisite part of the well-wishing involved in the holiday.
Often guests are served fish and it must have a head, because Rosh Hashanah literally translates as “head of the year.” A round loaf of challa bread is baked for the dinner table symbolizing the cyclicity of the year. On Rosh Hashanah G_d decides a person’s destiny for the coming year, in this case 5780. There is a Rosh Hashanah greeting, “khatima tova,” which is a wish for success you will be written into the Book of Life.
The tenth day of Rosh Hashanah is Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement. The Torah tells us not to do anything on that except reflect on our actions over the preceding year. It is the time when a final decision will be made regarding the destiny of the individual over the coming year. Jews wish one another “gmar khatima tova,” good luck with the final inscription.
The Vilnius Jewish Religious Community, the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Goodwill Foundation greet you with “shana tova u’metuka,” or “sweet new year,” and hope to see you at synagogue!
Simas Levinas, chairman
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community
For years now the Kaunas Jewish Community has been giving thanks to our active members who take part in activities and help make them possible.
In earlier years this has mainly taken the form of a dinner party with live music, but this year we decided to take the volunteers on a tour in and around Kaunas.
Members learned about the town of Kačerginė, its history and cultural legacy, listening to the enthusiastic narrative of Lina Sinkevičienė while taking in the rural beauty of the place. Members were received warmly at the headquarters of the Kačerginė aldermanship. The beautiful landscape conceals a bloody history and Kaunas Jewish Community members paid their respects to the Holocaust victims in Šakiai, Lukšiai, Zapyškis and surrounding areas.
The Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Chess and Checkers Club celebrated its 30th birthday Sunday with a gathering of well-known Lithuanian chess players, families and children.
Everyone congratulated Boris Rositsan on the milestone, including Israeli ambassador Yossi Levy, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Lithuanian politician Vytautas Landsbergis and others.
Two brothers, FIDE chess master Boris and Michail Rositsan, founded the chess club 30 years ago using their own money and enthusiasm.
The Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium began the school year Monday with a large welcome-back ceremony attended by new Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yossi Avni Levy. Principal Miša Jakobas spoke to the large audience of pupils, parents and teachers:
“This is my last September today. All these years I’ve been with you, I’ve shared my heart and feelings with you. There is no greater feeling today than that which I feel seeing Lithuanian and Jewish children sing the Israeli anthem. I would like to thank everyone who believed in me. The school and the high school understand that nothing lasts forever. Today I can only take pride in our wonderful teachers and great atmosphere,” he said. After thanking teachers by name, he added: “I am very proud that our 70 gymnasium students are doing especially well.”
Lithuania’s new president Gitanas Nausėda sent a greeting to Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Miša Jakobas on the official first day of the school year Monday. Presidential aide Sigitas Mitkus read the president’s words at the school ceremony.
Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Miša Jakobas greeted students, parents and teachers with the start of the new school year September 2.
Our birthday greetings to Moisejus Šeras, long-time member of the LJC and the minyan at the Choral Synagogue. We wish you great health, love and happiness! May you live to 120! Mazl tov!
Birthday greetings to long-time volunteer doctor at the LJC’s Social Department Maja Moskovina. We love and respect our doctor with her positive and comforting manner, smile and professional explanations to clients on medicine and infirmities.
May you live to 120! Mazl tov!
Lithuania’s National Olympic Committee have sent their congratulations to the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club on the latter’s outstanding showing at the 15th European Maccabi Games held in Budapest in early August. Makabi Club president and head of delegation Semionas Finkelšteinas said their win was unprecedented both in the last hundred years of Lithuanian Jewish sporting history and in Lithuanian athletics overall.
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club teams contain many young people, which might explain their outstanding recent victories and should insure many more victories to come.
This year Lithuanian Makabi athletes took home around 62 medals, 25 of them gold. Although the athletes from Lithuania originally won 81 awards, but in the final count only medals won individually or in pairs or teams with athletes from a single country were registered, leaving Lithuanian Makabi an appreciable haul. During awards ceremonies the Lithuanian national anthem played a whopping 25 times and the Lithuanian flag was raised the same number of times.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is pleased to send our congratulations to Miša Jakobas, principal of the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium, on his milestone birthday. You are an excellent and accomplished teacher, and your school is among the top-rated in Lithuania. Not only do your students learn excellent Lithuanian and Hebrew, they also learn responsibility, ethics and good behavior. You have succeeded in preparing young people for responsible citizenship.
We wish you health, strength, love and the respect of your students. May hope and joy always follow you! Mazl tov!
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance commends the brave action taken by mayor Remigijus Šimašius to remove the plaque honoring Jonas Noreika due to the controversy surrounding his actions during the Holocaust, including his role in the ghettoization and expropriation of property of Jews in Šiauliai district in 1941.
It is important to remember that any distortion of the history of the Holocaust can allow for more violent and more dangerous forms of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism to take place. We will continue to work with the governments of our 33 member countries to counter distortion and antisemitism to honor the memory of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
Ambassador Georges Santer
IHRA chair
August 1, 2019
Photo: Erika Filipviciutė, Kamile Ilijonskytė, Robert Nikitin, Kristijonas Sreiberis, Andrei and Aleksei Fadeev, trainer Oksana Sinkevič, team captain Artiom Perepelica and head of delegation Semionas Finkelšteinas
The 15th European Maccabi Games have concluded in Budapest. Thirty athletes from Lithuania won 81 medals. Six swimmers won the highest share of medals, 65. In the yoouth group Erika Filipavičiūtė won 13 medals, consisting of 11 gold and 2 silver. Kamilė Ilijonskytė won 7 gold medals and one bronze. Kristijonas Šreiberis won 7 gold medals, 2 silver medals and 2 bronze medals. Robertas Nikitinas won 5 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze medals.
The Fadeev brothers made a good showing in the adult group. Andrei won 3 gold, 5 silver and 3 bronze. Aleksei won 5 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze medals.
Fencer Alan Rinkevič won a gold medal in one-on-one and one gold and 2 silver medals in team fencing.
Dear Faina Kukliansky
Thank you.
As chairman of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel, and in the name of all of our members I wish to express our sincere gratitude for your support and participation in the events memorializing the liquidation of the Kovno Ghetto and the Siauliai Ghetto.
We appreciate your good will and hospitality, and hope you will share our appreciation with your members, families and colleagues.
This was an outstanding demonstration of co-operation between Lithuanian and Israeli authorities, national and municipal, and between the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel and the Lietuvos Žydų Bendruomenė (Lithuanian Jewish Community), and the Jewish Communities of Kaunas and Siauliai.
Respectfully,
Arie Ben-Ari Grodzensky, chairman
Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel
Your excellency, president Gitanas Nausėda,
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is gladdened by and confident in the decision of the Lithuanian people and congratulates you as the new president of the country. Our wishes to you are to overcome all obstacles in aspiring to make Lithuania known in the world and in working for the benefit of the people of Lithuania. We also wish inexhaustible strength to your family who support you in your difficult tasks of governance.
It is a great honor and privilege to become head of state in the run-up to marking the 300th birthday of the Vilna Gaon in 2020. The memory of the Vilna Gaon, the symbol of Litvak learning and identity, is not subject to time, crossing national borders and uniting entire generations, as an echo from the past of the grandeur of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Jerusalem of Lithuania. We hope the rationality, philosophical thinking and spiritual legacy of this man will inspire you as well and serve as a guidepost in your future decision-making.
This is the best opportunity to consolidate political will in solving the old problems of historical justice, Holocaust commemoration, restitution, conservation of the Jewish physical and cultural legacy and improvements in the institution of citizenship.
Lithuania is a small country with a gigantic history and the Jews of Lithuania are an inseparable part of the country for 700 years now. As we move into 2020 together, we invite you to undertake an important moral challenge: to provide a new opportunity and stimulus for this history to continue.
With deepest respect,
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community
URM.lt
Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius awarded a Foreign Ministry award called the Star of Lithuanian Diplomacy to Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky July 5.
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry’s highest award was bestowed on chairwoman Kukliansky in recognition of her active involvement in organizing international dialogue and important agreements, cooperation between the LJC and Foreign Ministry, her contribution to making the Goodwill Law a reality and the active involvement of the LJC under her leadership in projects at Lithuanian diplomatic offices.
“I am proud of our friendship and cooperation. This is vital to the interests of our state. Your work goes beyond just leading the Jewish community, and your work for the good of Lithuania is very visible,” Lithuanian foreign minister Linkevičius said.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community sends birthday greetings to Panevėžys Jewish Community member Konstantinas Chružkovas on his milestone birthday. A long-time and active member, Konstantinas is a talented folk artist and blacksmith producing amazing objects. His work is on display in the headquarters of the Panevėžys Jewish Community and he also manufactured the menorah at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. One menorah he made was presented to Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon as a gift. Community chairman Gennady Kofman also sends his warm wishes, wishing Konstantinas even greater creativity, energy, resolution, good emotions, a long life and the love of family, wishes echoed by the LJC as a whole Happy birthday, Konstantinas.