Heritage – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Hazamir Choir from Helsinki to Perform

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is pleased to host a concert by the exceptional Jewish choir Hazamir from Finland. The choir has existed for more than 100 years (founded in 1917) and has performed Jewish music or audiences in Europe and America, and has even appeared on MTV. Their repertoire includes traditional songs in Hebrew and Yiddish, but also Swedish, Finnish and more recently Russian as well. This will be their only appearance in Vilnius during this tour.

Registration is required by sending an email to zanas@sc.lzb.lt.

Time: 2:00 P.M., Sunday, June 8
Place: Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius

2025-05-15

Lecture on Early Jewish Photography in Lithuania

The Vilnius Picture Gallery and the Lithuanian Museum of National Art will host a lecture by Dainius Junevičius called “Early Lithuanian Photography: Jews on Both Sides of the Lens” at the picture gallery at 5:30 P.M., Tuesday, May 20. The event is free and open to the public.

Junevičius is an expert on the history of photography. He will speak on the role Jewish photographers played in early Lithuanian photography from the Jewish owners and photographers of first photo studios in Vilnius to the work of talented photographer Miron Butkovski (1865-1938) who earned the Vatican’s gratitude fir his photos of Vilnius’s churches in the late 19th century, and will also speak about the evolution of photography in Lithuania and in general and the pioneers in other locations in Lithuania.
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His lecture will include demonstrations of the earliest photographs of Jews starting with those from a Russian ethnographic exhibit in 1867 and extending through the Jewish ethnographic field surveys led by An-sky from 1912 ro 1914.

The lecture and slideshow is part of the exhibit “You Shall Not Make an Images” the Vilnius Picture Gallery and YIVO opened March 5 and which will run till September 14. Registration is not required for the lecture and there is no fee for admission..

Time: 5:30 P.M., Tuesday, May 20
Place: Vilnius Picture Gallery, Didžioji street no. 4, Vilnius

2025-05-152025-05-15

Vilna Gaon Museum Offers Free Entrance on Museum Night in Vilnius

The Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum is staying open late and offering free admission at three of its facilities to celebrate Museum Night on May 17, the night most museums in Vilnius offer free addmission and stay open late. The Litvak Identity Museum, the Holocaust Exhibit at the Green House and the Samuel Bek Museum at the Tolerance Center are offering their own programs including an outdoor café open all evening and new exhibit openings. For more information, send an email to aiste.brusokaite@jmuseum.lt.

2025-05-082025-05-08

Moishele, Mayn Fraynd

An evening of music dedicated to the memory of Mikhail Filyopov-Jablonskis

Fayerlakh invites you to a special event dedicated to remembering and honoring the late Mikhail Filyopov, one of the most outstanding performers of Jewish music in Lithuania, a man who dedicated his life to music, the stage and culture.

Tickets are available starting from €20.00 here.

Time: 5:00 P.M., Sunday, June 8
Place: House of Polish Culture, Naugarduko street no. 76, Vilnius

2025-04-30

Integration and Inclusion Forum

The Ethnic Minorities Department and the British Council are holding a two-day conference and discussion on integration and inclusion on May 22 and 23 at Novotel Hotel in Vilnius. Those wishing to attend should register by May 15 at www.inforum.lt.

The conference will host experts on minority integration and human rights, media representatives, politicians, members of Lithuania’s ethnic minority communities, foreign speakers and more.

The Integration and Inclusion Forum is part of events to celebrate Lithuania’s Ethnic Minorities Day May 21, which kicks off with an awards event at St. Catherine’s Church in Vilnius at 3:00 P.M. The awards will be given to those who have distinguished themselves through their work with Lithuania’s ethnic minorities.

2025-04-30

Šiauliai Jewish Community at Auschwitz for March of the Living

For the fourth time now the Šiauliai District Jewish Community participated in the annual March of the Living at Auschwitz in Poland.

Members followed the path of Jewish prisoners marched to their deaths.

The event was attended by Jews and others from around the world.

2025-04-28

Remembering the Victims at Ponar

Members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Lithuanian foreign diplomats, politicians and members of the community at large marked Yom haShoah at Ponar Thursday with a solemn ceremony, an air-raid siren, a moment of silence and speeches. Yom haShoah is one of several days on the calendar dedicated to remembering the six million victims of the Holocaust in Europe. In Israel air-raid sirens sound and all activities cease in memory of the dead on this day.

“I call myself a Lithuanian woman of Jewish ethnicity and I would like to live in my own country not in fear, and it’s not Jews who must combat anti-Semitism, it’s the state which must provide for the safety of all its citizens,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said at the event. She also noted there is still no monument to the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews from the Holocaust in Lithuania, despite seven years of discussion.

“History isn;t just lines in a textbook and facts. History includes feelings which we must pass on to our children, that they might understand what children who witnessed the murder of their parents felt. What anguish mothers experienced seeing their children murdered. These are what should be the lessons of history,” she continued. She is one of the few left in Lithuania who heard stories of the Holocaust directly from her parents and grandparents who were victims of it.

2025-04-28

Yom haShoah in Ponar

April 24 is Yom haShoah, the day to remember vicitms of the Holocaust.

In 1953 prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion and president of Israel Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, signed into law Yom haShoah as an observance day. The original plan was to hold this observance day on the 14th of Nisan, which was the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. This didn’t work, because that day preceded Passover. It was then decided to move the date to the 27th of Nisan, but not strictly. When it would fall on the Sabbath, Yom haShoah is moved a day back or forward.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and others will mark the day at the Ponar Memorial Complex just outside Vilnius. A coach will leave from central Vilnius to bring people to and back from Ponar, but prior registration is required by sending an email to info@lzb.lt. Contact the LJC for exact departure time and location.

Time: 12:00 noon, Thursday, April 24
Place: Ponar Memorial Complex, Agrastų street no. 15A, Vilnius

2025-04-232025-04-23

Vilnius Jewish Memorial Plans in Limbo: No Funding for Feasibility Study

Photo: Palace of Sports in Vilnius, D. Umbrasas/LRT

BNS, April 22, 2025

BNS–Lithuania’s new prime minister Gintautas Paluckas said his Government is considering the previous Government’s proposal to build a Jewish memorial in and around the Vilnius Palace of Concerts and Sports, a now derelict, Soviet-era indoor arena, but this year’s budget does not include funds for a feasibility study.

“The process is ongoing. We’re evaluating, weighing options and holding discussions. So far nothing has changed, and if any decisions are made, the public will be informed,” Paluckas told Baltic News Service.

The previous government approved the idea of building a memorial on the site of the old Jewish cemetery in the Šnipiškės (Yiddish Shbipishok) neighborhood of Vilnius and inside the arena building based on recommendations from a working group.

2025-04-22

Happy Passover

Dear Community members, friends, supporters and dear reader,

Greetings to all Jews on the great holiday Passover. This holiday crows the liberation of the Jews from the oppression of the Egyptian pharaoh and our becoming one people and a free people.

Passover isn’t a time of noisy gatherings. It is a traditional family holiday when the home is cleansed of leavening agents, children seek out the hidden pieces of matzo, when the whole family sits down at the seder table and reads the Haggadah.

We are so very happy that this year the majority of Litvak families are celebrating Passover in line with all traditions and rules, celebrating at home with their families. Our staff and homecare workers are also visiting our members who live alone that they might also feel cared for and share in the holiday spirit of warmth and joy.

I wish everyone a happy family Passover. Let’s always remain free and let’s always be happy.

Happy Passover! Hag Pesach sameach!

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

2025-04-15

Temporary Closure of Choral Synagogue

The Vilnius Jewish religious community extends its greetings to all on one of the most significant Jewish holidays—Passover—and informs that, due to Mr. Krinsky’s (who is neither the rabbi of the Vilnius Choral synagogue nor of the Vilnius Jewish Religious Community) refusal to sign a liability agreement for an event he intended to organize, the Vilnius Jewish Religious Community as the sole owner and administrator of the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius has made the decision to temporarily close the synagogue.

On February 7, 2025, while celebrating his wife Dina Krinsky’s birthday, Mr. Krinsky gathered a group of guests at the Choral Synagogue. Some of the guests became ill after the banquet and several were hospitalized with salmonella.

Contrary to the requirements of the laws of Lithuania and the internal regulations of the Choral Synagogue, Mr. Krinsky did not report this incident in the prescribed manner and as a result, this information remained unknown to the institutions responsible for sanitation and hygiene.

The Vilnius Jewish Religious Community refuses to take any responsibility for Mr. Krinsky’s actions and therefore demanded that all events organized by his community in the Choral synagogue take place only upon the signing of a liability agreement. This agreement, in addition to Halachic laws, would include commitments to comply with hygiene, fire safety and occupational safety standards. Unfortunately, Mr. Krinsky refused to sign the liability agreement.

2025-04-132025-04-16

Lithuanian National Library Presents New Book of Grigoriy Kanovitch’s Interviews and Speeches

The Martynas Mažvydas Lithuanian National Library in Vilnius will host the launch of a new collection of talks and interviews by the late Litvak novelist Griogiry Kanovitch at 6:00 P.M. on Wednesday, April 16.

The book is called “Tiesa gydo. Vieši žodžiai ir interviu, 1988–1993–2022” [Truth Heals: Public Speeches and Interviews, 1988-1993-2022] and was edited by Virginijus Gasiliūnas.

Virginijus Gasiliūnas, Kanovitch’s son and writer Sergejus,and literature researcher Rima Kasperionytė will engage in a panel discussion moderated by Dainius Vaitiekūnas. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky is to deliver an introductory speech.

The event is expected to last two hours and is free and open to everyone.

2025-04-112025-04-11

How Yiddish Writer Chaim Grade’s Last Novel Was Rescued and Wrestled into Print

Photo: Chaim Grade’s Sons and Daughters was originally serialized in the 1960s and ’70s in New York-based Yiddish newspapers (from YIVO and Alfred. A. Knopf via JTA).

The editors discuss how a previously-lost decades-old manuscript was found and pieced together. It’s being called “probably the last great Yiddish novel”

by Andrew Silow-Carroll, April 7, 2025

JTA–Sixty years after he first began serializing it in the Yiddish press and 42 years after publisher Alfred A. Knopf acquired the book, Sons and Daughters–the last novel by the late, great Yiddish novelist Chaim Grade–lands in bookstores this week. To call it long-awaited is an understatement.

How the novel came to be published in English translation is a story of family intrigue, literary detective work and dogged creativity on the part of its translator and editors.

The result, a sprawling 600-plus-page book about a rabbi in 1930s Lithuania and the different paths taken by his children, is “quite probably the last great Yiddish novel,” the critic Adam Kirsch writes in the introduction. Dwight Garner in a New York Times review calls it “a melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny.”

Full story here.

2025-04-082025-04-08

Panevėžys Jewish Community Fixes Sign, Plants Saplings at Old Jewish Cemetery

The Panevėžys Jewish Community received a report April 2 a sign marking the boundary of the Old Jewish Cemetery in the city of Panevėžys had been removed and left nearby. Local residents called the police regarding the incident and the municipal administration was informed.

On April 4 members of the Panevėžys Jewish Community and Loreta Paškevičienė from the city’s architectural department surveyed the state of the Old Jewish Cemetery and made a number of determinations regarding upkeep and renovation.

The sign was set back up.

One of the recommendations was to remove some dead trees and replace them with sapling pines. On April 5 a group of volunteers from the Panevėžys Jewish Community did that and generally cleaned up the area. They also reset and braced some older pines blown down in the storm late last year.

Despite the bad weather, the Panevėžys Jewish Community reported the volunteers planted about 40 saplings that day with help from local arborist Algimantas Kirkilas.

2025-04-08

Lithuanian Administrative Court Blocks Removal of Nazi Monument in Ukmergė

Photo: Marker commemorating Juozas Krikštaponis. Though the city was ordered to remove the bas-relief and inscription, they didn’t do so. Photo by Gediminas Nemunaitis

Ukmergės žinios, April 5, 2025

The Lithuanian administrative court for regions handed down a decision in the case of commemorative markers honoring Juozas Krikštaponis in Ukmergė (Vilkomir).

The cort found partially in favor of the plaintiffs and annulled a decision issued by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania (Genocide Center) on August 23, 2023, calling for the removal from the marker stone of the image of the Lithuanian partisan and accompanying inscriptions.

Relatives of Krikštaponis, the Lithuanian Union of Freedom Fighters and the Lithuanian Association of Political Prisoners and Deportees opposed the decision by the director of the Genocide Center and took their complaint to the administrative courts.

The administrative court for regions found the Genocide Center’s decision to remove the bas-relief of Krikštaponis was made without adhering to the law, and that the Center failed to provide clear, specific and reliable evidence that Krikštaponis was complicit in crimes of genocide against Jews.

2025-04-06

Looking for Roots in Šiauliai

Alexander Phibbs arrived at the Šiauliai Jewish Community last week looking for more information about his ancestors.

His grandmother A. Gensaitė-Ustjanauskienė was born in Kaunas and went abroad with her mother after World War II. Gensaitė spoke seven languages and found emplyment as a translator with the US federal government.

Phibbs’s great-grandfather Jakov Gens was a Jew from Šiauliai and a veteran of Lithuania’s battles for independence during World War I. He is better known as the controversial chief of the ghetto police in the Vilnius ghetto. He was murdered in September of 1943 at Gestapo headquarters in Vilnius.

Phibbs said he spent a lot of time with his grandmother listening to stories from her homeland, which led him to seek more information about his family and to visit Lithuania.

Community members showed him around the city, including the school Gens attended and the old Jewish cemetery.

2025-04-01

The Rabbi on Shortwave

by Borukh Gorin, lechaim.ru

It was the early 1980s. On the coffee table stood a VEF-202–heavy, solid, with the smell of plastic and Soviet electronics. Its long antenna, like a taut nerve, caught the voices of a distant world. On the dial–London, Paris, Monte Carlo, and between them the frequencies that carried what was absent from Soviet news: the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Liberty.

There was a whole world on shortwave. On Kol Israel, I listened to Jewish music–old songs that seemed somehow familiar and distant at the same time. On the BBC, Seva Novgorodtsev talked about Western music, which we only knew about from rare records copied onto reels. And Svoboda talked about things that our newspapers were silent about. About Jews in the USSR, who “don’t exist.” About refuseniks, who are not allowed to leave. About synagogues that are still standing, but people are afraid to come to them.

And there was also a religious program.

I listened to Rabbi Haskelevich. I always listened alone.

2025-03-252025-03-25

Righteous Gentile Day in Švenčionys Region

The Rytas Gymnasium in Pabradė together with the Pabradė City Culture Center and the Pabradė Art School held a commemoration of Lithuania’s Righteous Gentile Day on March 14. Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Švenčionys Region administrative council member Bronislovas Vilimas, Pabradė alderwoman Ana Zingerienė and 7th and 8th grade students participated. History teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė organized the event and provided the main feature about Righteous Gentiles and those who rescued Jews in the Švenčionys district. Local music teachers and students provided musical accompaniment, and art teacher Žana Semaško and her students presented an exhibit they made about the Holocaust and rescuers.

Students from a regional history club read out the names of Righteous Gentiles and of those whom they rescued, followed by more music by local students and the Pabradė Culture Center orchestra. Chairman Shapiro and Rytas Gymnasium principal Laima Markauskienė thanked everyone for organizing and attending the event.

2025-03-24

Happy Birthday to Moshe Shapiro

Dear Moshe,

We wish you a very happy 75th.

Your dedication and many years of work conserving and celebrating the culture and history of the Švenčionys Jewish Community is a priceless contribution to our shared heritage, and your work bringing people together and spreading mutual understanding inspires us to take on new challenges.

We wish you good health, endless energy and everyday joy. May respect, human warmth and beautiful life moments always follow you.

Mazl tov. Bis 120!

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

2025-03-202025-03-20

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