Learning, History, Culture – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Delegation of Rabbis Visit Lithuania

A delegation of 80 rabbis from the Dirshu organization recently visited Lithuania. They visited the graves of the Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Baruch ber Leibowitz, then visited the grave-site of Chafetz Chaim. The kosher kitchen of the Lithuanian Jewish Community played a role in their visit in receiving the rabbis and catering to their needs. Members of the delegation were thankful for their sincere concern over their kosher needs. The LJC also organized a Sabbath celebration. Three rabbis from the same organization were the victims of an anti-Semitic attack in Vilnius last summer.

2026-10-212026-10-21

Mini Makabiada

The Lithuanian Makabi Sports and Athletics Club invites sporting enthusiasts and friends of the club to our annual mini-Makabiada on October 25. The event opens at 10:00 A.M. at the Vilnius City Tauras Athletics school at Žygio street no. 46, Vilnius. Participants can play in 3-on-3 basketball, volleyball, table tennis and badminton.

All participants will be invited to lunch after the final matches and awards ceremony. Those wishing to attend should register by October 23 by clicking here. For more information call Daniel at +370 687 83 005.

Time: 10:00 A.M., Sunday, October 25
Place: Vilnius City Tauras Athletics School at Žygio street no. 46, Vilnius

2026-10-212026-10-21

Kaunas Jewish Community and Ninth Fort to Mark 85th Anniversary of Grosse Aktion

Eighty-five years ago the persecution and extermination of Lithuanian Jews began. The Nazis and Lithuanian Nazis called their mass murder operations aktionen. The Grosse Aktion, or Great Operation, was the largest single mass murder of Jews in Lithuania, where around 10,000 inmates from the Kaunas ghetto were murdered at the Ninth Fort in just over 24 hours.

The Kaunas Jewish Community and the Ninth Fort Museum invite you to mark the tragedy this year with a commemoration at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas followed by a concert at the fort called Muzik fun zikoyrn, or Music from Memory, featuring the trio Trise, saxophonist Petras Vyšniauskas, pianist Aleksandra Žvirblytė and percussionist Arkadijus Gotesmanas, performing works by Jospeh Achron, Max Helfman, Anatoly Shenderov and others as well as Jewish melodies.

The Ninth Fort Museum will screen a short documentary (by Karolina Vilkelienė, 2026) about the Grosse Aktion during the commemoration there. The commemoration at the Ninth Fort will conclude with a candle-lighting and stone-laying ceremony on the actual killing field.

The event is free and open to the public.

Time: 6:30 P.M., Wednesday, October 28
Place: Ninth Fort Museum, Žemaičių highway no. 73, Kaunas

2026-10-21

Šiauliai Jewish Community Visits Kupiškis

Members of the Šiauliai Jewish Community and guests from Germany took a trip to Kupiškis, a town with a deep and rich Jewish legacy. There they visited the Kupiškis museum and learned about the town’s cultural and historical heritage. Then they took a guided tour of Kupiškis’s central square where once three synagogues operated. Two of the synagogue buildings remain standing. They learned about Kupiškis before the Holocaust, Jewish life, traditions and history there, and that Lithuanians and Jews lived next to one another in peace before the Holocaust.

2026-10-212026-10-21

Anti-Semitism in England’s Schools

by Ben Bloch, October 20, 2026

Report set to reveal vast scale of anti-Semitism in English schools

A landmark report is set to detail the vast scale of anti-Semitism in English schools and colleges, Sky News can reveal.

The review, conducted by former schools inspector Sir David Bell, will on Wednesday set out 27 recommendations to create change, which the government is poised to accept in full.

It will call for teacher training and resources to tackle anti-Semitism in schools, strengthened guidance on political impartiality, and giving students the tools to recognize and confront online anti-Jewish hatred and conspiracy theories.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Sir David said he was “very struck” by the evidence of rising anti-Semitism in schools, but also the extent to which it actually goes underreported.

2026-10-21

Australia Delays Release of Report by Royal Commission on Anti-Semitism

Photo: Richard Dobson/News Corp Australia

Commissioner Virginia Bell has defended her push to delay the release of her final report of the anti-Semitism inquiry, saying she did not want to cause a “distraction” for the Jewish community on a “solemn” day of remembrance.

On Wednesday [August 26], the final day of the Antisemitism and Social Cohesion Royal Commission’s public hearings, Bell said the findings would be released on December 18. Commissioner Bell said she is required to present her final report to the Governor General and the governors of all states no later than December 14, but will request a “short extension.”

“December 14 is the anniversary of the massacre. It will be a solemn occasion marked by memorials,” she said. “I’m aware of concern within the Jewish community that delivery of the report on the anniversary would be a distraction. I fully understand that concern and to avoid that distraction, I have asked for a short extension of the term with a view to the submission of my final report on Friday, December 18.”

2026-10-202026-10-20

Natalja Cheifec’s Internet Discussion Club to Meet Thursday

Natalja Cheifec’s internet discussion club continues Thursday evening at 6:00 P.M. To receive zoom credentials and participate, click here.

Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, October 22
Place: internet

2026-10-202026-10-20

State Media on Litvak’s Visit to Žagarė

Photo: Joanne Fedler by Vilmantas Raupelis/LRT

Lithuanian state radio and television on their website LRT.lt featured Sydney-based writer Joanne Fedler’s visit to Žagarė, Lithuania, in spite of her family’s injunction never to set foot in Lithuania.

Fedler is the author of 17 books and teaches creative writing. She operates a small publishing house called Joanne Fedler Media. She was born and raised in South Africa to a family of Litvak immigrants before coming to Australia in 2001.

In fall of 2025 she was at a month-long writing workshop in Finland and decided the family hearth, Žagarė, was too close not to visit. She told LRT a dream of her grandfather as a young man was the sign for her which sealed the deal. She decided she would honor her family by travelling to Lithuania rather than avoiding it.

2026-10-202026-10-20

Congratulations to Our Young Ping Pong Champions

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.

2026-10-142026-10-14

First Sunday in October in Žagarė

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.

2026-10-142026-10-14

Natalja Cheifec on the Power of Speech and Silence

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

2026-10-14

YIVO Studied a Living Yiddish Culture. What Happened When That World Was Nearly Destroyed?

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.

2026-10-132026-10-13

From Sukkot to Artificial Intelligence: A Meeting with Students

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.

2026-10-122026-10-12

Apology

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.

2026-10-092026-10-09

LJC Chairwoman Speaks at October 7 Commemoration

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.

2026-10-092026-10-09

Commemoration of 85th Anniversary of Onset of the Holocaust in Švenčionys and Lithuania

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.

2026-10-08

UK Conservative Party Condemns Green Party over Anti-Semitic Resolution

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.

2026-10-072026-10-07

Šiauliai Jewish Community Holds Sabbath/Simchat Torah Dinner

The Šiauliai Jewish Community held a special Sabbath dinner also celebrating Simchat Torah last Friday. The dinner party included guests from Germany.

2026-10-07

Sukkot Celebration in the Courtyard

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.

2026-10-05

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