Learning – Page 16 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Ninth Fort Authoritarian Regime Reading Contest

The Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas hosted their 6th reading of texts by students called “Silent Wall, Touched by Words” last week.

Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas addressed the students, judges and audience, saying: “In my name and that of Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky I thank Ninth Fort Museum director Marius Pečiulis and the entire staff for holding this important event, and I thank the students and the teachers who have prepared them, for their time spent, sincerity and sensitivity.”

The students read texts about the Holocaust, the Nazi era and the Soviet era in Lithuania. The Ninth Fort Museum includes a tunnel system were Jews were imprisoned before being shot inside the Ninth Fort. Exhibits include cells with extant graffiti by murdered Jews. In the Soviet era the Ninth Fort was a de facto Holocaust memorial, if not in name, with a monumental abstract Soviet statue which remains the center piece of the museum grounds. After Lithuanian independence they became a museum showcasing Soviet atrocities as well as Nazi crimes.

2024-10-22

Palanga Jewish Community Invites You to Herring Lecture at Jonas Šliūpas Museum

Herring fishing and consumption stretches back millennia and became an integral part of Jewish cuisine centuries ago. The Jonas Šliūpas Museum is hosting a lecture by Jewish cuisine specialist Dovilė Rūkaitė on the Jewish culinary history of herring at 5:00 P.M. on Wednesday, October 23, in Palanga.

The museum recently opened an exhibit called “From the North Sea to the Christmas Table” about herring which included an interesting archaeological find: part of a cover and barrel for a 19th-century herring selection and conservation system.

Rūkaitė plans to speak on the significance of Jewish merchants and populations in popularizing the fish in Europe and will also discuss some of the classic recipes which use herring.

Time: 5:00 P.M., October 23
Place: Jonas Šliūpas Museum, Vytauto street no. 23A, Palanga
Duration: About 1 hour

The lecture is free and open to the public.

2024-10-22

Jewish Scouting Season Opens

Weekly meetings of Jewish scouts are taking place again starting at 3:00 P.M. this Sunday at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. The gathering should last around one hour. Jewish scouting teaches scouts Jewish culture, civic-mindedness, responsibility, independence and a number of other skills and values, and includes a lot of fun and games as well. This group is intended for scouts and potential scouts aged 6 to 18. FOr more information contact Michail Kofman by telephone at 860645o94 or send an email to skautai@lzb.lt.

2024-10-222024-10-22

Mandolin Virtuoso Avi Avital to Perform in Klaipėda

Israeli mandolin master Avi Avital will perform with the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra works for mandolin and baroque arrangements at the Klaipėda Music Hall at 6:30 P.M. on October 26. His repertoire includes world beat, jazz and the opera of Vivaldi, Bach and Bartók, among others.

For more information, see here.

2024-10-21

Women’s Club Meeting Friday

Dear reader,

The Women’s Club will be expecting you again this Friday, and this meeting will be especially fun and delicious as we make quiches and pastries.

This time of year is special, the High Holy Days, and we cannot avoid the holiday spirit. THis Friday we celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, when we sit down at the table together with our families and also treat those who come by. So, dear homemakers, we will learn to make the Israeli dish pashtida, sometimes called a kugel, which resembles a quiche, and layered apple pastries.

A good time is guaranteed.

Please register before noon on Thursday by sending an email to zanas@sc.lzb.lt or by calling (+370) 678 81514. Space is limited.

Time: 6:30 P.M., Friday, October 18
Place: Bagel Shop Café, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

2024-10-15

Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and remission from sin, the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar, will be observed Saturday. No matter how religious or not, no Jew risks travelling, bathing or eating during Yom Kippur. The holiday must be observed correctly, so the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Bnei Maskilim progressive Judaism community invite you to observe the holy day together with us and Rabbi Hanoch Fields from the United States.

Program of events at the LJC in Vilnius:

October 11

6:30 P.M. Kol nidrei

October 12

10:00 A.M. Torah reading
5:00 P.M. Yizkor
5:15 P.M. Neila
6:30 P.M. Blowing of the shofar
7:00 P.M. End of fast, shared feast

Registration required. To register, contact viljamas@lzb.lt

2024-10-102024-10-10

Somber Tone as Seniors Citizens Celebrate Rosh Hashanah on Eve of October 7

Senior citizens and elderly members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community gathered for a different kind of Rosh Hashanah celebration at the LJC in Vilnius on the weekend.

With the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 invasion and mass murder of Israelis last year, there was less of the usual music and fun and more prayers in Yiddish and Hebrew performed by Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom. The cantor’s wife Natalja Cheifec spoke about the history and traditions of Rosh Hashanah and the role of the woman in the Jewish family.

2024-10-09

Panevėžys Celebrates the New Year

The Panevėžys Jewish Community celebrated Rosh Hashanah last week with music and food, including apples and honey. The prayer was performed before blowing the shofar. Yekaterna Radionova performed Jewish melodies on violin and members of the Community wished one another well in the coming year.

2024-10-09

Natalja Cheifec’s Lecture Series Continues with Discussion of High Holy Days

Natalja Cheifec’s #EDUKACIJOS discussion club invites you to join the zoom call at 5:30 P.M. this Thursday, October 10. She’ll discuss Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and what these holidays mean to Jews, traditions for observance and what to avoid to protect yourself from misfortune.

Zoom credentials available here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRZKhoOgl_UbN-IxT4SO7m4uerwQONUveXaWQvFMKDghE-1A/viewform

Everyone is welcome.

2024-10-09

Kaunas Ushers in the New Year

The Kaunas Jewish Community celebrated Rosh Hashanah with gusto and flair, and with a large number of Community members, friends and musicians.

Participants ate and chatted, and listened to Jewish melodies, which led to dancing. There was a quiz to test knowledge of the holiday, well-wishes for the coming year and prayers for more peace, love and human warmth in the world.

2024-10-07

Makabi Sporting Extravaganza

On September 29 the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club held their annual sports celebration for young and old alike to try their hand at a number of different kinds of sport, from chess and frisbee to volleyball and basketball. This year’s celebration included a workshop on krav maga, the Israeli martial art. The competition and workshop concluded with lunch and a discussion of the Makabi club’s future.

2024-10-072024-10-07

Knife-Wielding Masked Teenagers Take Over Palace of Sports in Old Jewish Cemetery

Photo: Police at Palace of Sports by Paulius Skučas

A group of 50 masked, knife-wielding teenage boys has turned the crumbling Palace of Sports complex built on top of the old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius into their gang clubhouse and have threatened pedestrians in the area, including children, with their weapons, as well as attacking a lone security guard in charge of the site, according to Paulius Skučas, an LNK television reporter who posted on Instagram as well as did a Lithuanian state radio interview about the situation.

Skučas posted photos of the incident on Instagram with textual explanations:

This is how the Palace of Sports looked after the massive attack by teenagers this evening. Police and security stood guard for several hours. It seems the gang of teenagers are so uncontrollable and undetainable that all the residents of the surround neighborhoods and buildings have become hostages.

2024-10-042024-10-04

Šiauliai Jewish Community Remembers the Murdered Jews of Žagarė

Šiauliai Jewish Community members are planning to leave the Šiauliai Jewish Community building at 10:00 A.M. on Sunday, October 6, to reach the town square in Žagarė where a ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust will be held. Everyone is invited to attend.

2024-09-30

Vilkaviškis Unveils Statue to Litvak Ballerina Sonia Gaskell

The western Lithuanian town of Vilkaviškis is to unvei a public sculpture Friday commemorating native Sonia Gaskell, a world-class ballerina who went on to teach ballet in Paris and the Hague, according to Lithuanian state television LRT. Gaskell was born in Vilkaviškis on April 14, 1904, and died in Paris on July 9, 1974.

The statue by sculptor Lukas Šiupšinskas is located in a square in front of the Vilkaviškis Children’s and Youth Center near where Gaskell is believed to have been born. She was originally named Sarah. Vilkaviškis reportedly also has a small museum dedicated to the details of her rather amazing life which includes making aliyah to Palestine and returning to Europe before the Holocaust. Vilkaviškis, aka Vikovishk, had a Jewish population which hovered at about 50% compared to the Christian population, sometimes reaching 60% and falling back to 45% just before the Holocaust. William Shatner’s maternal grandmother was born in Vilkaviškis, as were Aharon April, Jonas Basanavičius, Vincas Kudirka, Miriam Markel-Mosessohn and Galina Shurepova.

Earlier LRT reporting in Lithuanian on Sonia Gaskell here.

2024-09-272024-09-27

Correction

Yesterday Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky attended a press conference at the Lithuanian parliament and made comments which have become the object of speculation by the media and by social media posters.

The joint press conference with the LIC chairwoman, Lithuanian MP and chairman of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Emanuelis Zingeris, MP Žygimantas Pavilionis and MP Liudvika Pocienė was called to discuss rising anti-Semitism in Lithuania.

Asked by reporters for comment, LJC chairwoman Kukliansky said words to the effect Lithuania’s foreign partners were concerned by reports a political party known for its anti-Semitic remarks led by a man the Constitutional Court of Lithuania found guilty of spreading ethnic discord could come to power.

Pressed for further comment, chairwoman Kukliansky said, to paraphrase in translation: “I heard there is a very stern letter by a German ambassador regarding this.”

She was referencing a statement by Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda speaking to Lithuanian state television’s LRT Forumas broadcast who said (in unofficial translation): “These statements, which may seem as if are innocent little jokes and short songs, have travelled very far indeed. And they have travelled to those partners of ours whose support to us is so crucially important. I mean Germany.”

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and our chairwoman would like to correct the record and quell possible speculation by stating that chairwoman Kukliansky wasn’t referring to Germany’s ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmermann, nor to any other specific German diplomatic or political official. She only attempted to relay what she had heard the president say on state television, if getting some of the details perhaps slightly wrong.

Chairwoman Kukliansky and the Lithuanian Jewish Community apologize for any misunderstanding regarding this matter.

We would also like to say that during this period of intensifying anti-Semitic attacks we are very grateful to a number of foreign embassies which have provided us constant great and staunch support, including the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. In gratitude for that support, LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky has sent written thank-you letters expressing our collective appreciation for their consistent and strong support to ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmerman, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier and chancellor Olaf Scholz.

2024-09-262024-09-26

Remembering the Holocaust Victims in Švenčionys

Traditionally there is a commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust in Švenčionys held the first Sunday in October. We remember the Jews tortured and murdered, and those imprisoned in the ghetto set up in the town square and later murdered at nearby Platumai village. You are invited to attend the commemoration this year on October 6.

Program:

11:00 A.M. – 11:30 A.M. Remembering the victims in a gathering at the Menorah statue in the central park

12:30 P.M. Paying respects to the victims at the mass murder site in Platumai village approximately 13 kilometers to the west of Švenčionys

2024-09-26

Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews Marked in Kupiškis

Photos by Miglė Zakarauskaitės and Aušra Jonušytė

Local residents and politicians commemorated Lithuania’s Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews September 23 at a monument to Holocaust victims at the Jewish cemetery there and visited an older Jewish cemetery in the once-thriving shtetl, laying stones gathered from streets in the town.

The same day the public library housed in the restored synagogue held a lesson on Jewish life in Kupiškis for students in grades 1 through 4.

2024-09-262024-09-26