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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Dubi and Ilan Clubs for children at the Lithuanian Jewish Community are kicking off their re-opening this season with a special interactive play called The Fairy and the Clown. Blim the fairy is the saddest fairy in the world, she can’t seem to make her magic tricks work. Then a real magician appears.
Registration required by writing zanas@sc.lzb.lt.
Time: 2:00 P.M., Saturday, October 10
Place: Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius
Sergey Grankin is the well-known war correspondent for Israel’s Channel 9. He’s spent decades at the center of Israel’s most important military conflicts. His reporting from the front is more than just a news chronicle, it’s a living and moving document of the times. He talks about war and peace in a simple manner, openly and without the filter of television, in line with his main mission: to be there, in the midst of pain and horror, to see everything with his own eyes and to tell the truth, never losing faith in humanity.
Now he’s coming to speak at the LJC, to speak to a small audience in a cozy and intimate atmosphere. Places are limited and tickets start from €35. The VIP ticket option is more expensive and entitles holders to a personal meeting and conversation with Grankin after the public event ends. To purchase tickets, click here. Grankin’s main presentation will be in Russian.
Time: 7:00 P.M., Friday, October 9
Place: LJC, Vilnius
The Šiauliai Jewish Community gathered Monday to celebrate Sukkot. The event was attended by a special guest: Rabbi Shalom Kaplan, the rabbi at both the Beit Izrael synagogue in Jurnala, Latvia, and the Birkat Baruch synagogue in Jerusalem. The rabbi gave a presentation on the history, traditions and meaning of the holiday of Sukkot, and shared his knowledge of and insights into the special significance Sukkot holds. The entire Community was grateful for the opportunity to learn more together and grow stronger as a community.
Hag Sukkot sameach!
Natalja Cheifec continues her internet discussion club and lecture series with a presentation about Sukkot, one of the most important Jewish holidays.
Sukkot, aka the Feast of Tabernacles, is one of the happiest and best holidays for family meals, visiting friends, talking, sharing things from your life and taking joy in life. Learn about the origins and traditions of this holiday. Learn why Jews dwell in the sukka booth for a week and what it signifies, and what the four species mean.
To register and participate, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, October 1
Place: internet
Photo: Stolperstein commemorating Nazi victim Paul Gröger embedded in the sidewalk in front of Heidenau City Hall. Robert Michael/picture alliance via Getty Images.
by Toby Axelrod, September 27
Transparent maneuver by AfD to suppress German commemorative culture, Jewish leader and Holocaust survivor says
A decision to bar the “stumbling stone” memorials to victims of the Nazis has touched a nerve in one small German town, and beyond.
At issue is a motion passed September 25 by the city council of Heidenau in the former East Germany [in Saxony] to stop installation of such memorials in local sidewalks, calling them disrespectful, and to use the town’s North Cemetery instead.
Set into the ground, the small, engraved brass Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are meant to make pedestrians stop and think about the fate of former residents. There are currently some 116,000 stones laid in 1,860 municipalities across Europe, mostly in Germany, according to the project’s website.
Alfonsas Bukontas died September 23. He was born Mordchelis Michnickis on September 11, 1941. Both his parents were murdered during the Holocaust in Lithuania and Bukontas was raised by Lithuanians. He was an accomplished poet, translator of German, Yiddish, Polish and even Sanskrit, and writer. He was a member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. Our deepest condolences to his friends, family members and members of the Union of Former Ghetto Inmates. May his memory be a blessing.
The Šiauliai Jewish Community marked the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide September 23. Students from the Saulius Sondeckas Art Gymnasium in Šiauliai began the event with a musical performance.
Deputy mayor Justinas Švėgžda attended. After the ceremony a silent procession moved from the site of the gate of the first ghetto (Caucasus) to the monument marking the gate of the second ghetto (Trakai).
Last Tuesday, September 22, a Road of Memory event and procession took place in Pabradė in the Švenčionys region to mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide (actually on September 23). A group of students from the 7th and 8th grades, their teachers from Rytas school in Pabradė and members of the community walked to the Holocaust commemoration site in Pabradė.
The event was organized by the Pabradė Culture Center in concert with the Pabradė aldermanship and chairman Moshe Shapiro of the Švenčionys Jewish Community.
The Jewish song and dance group Fayerlakh performed at the Garden of Cultures 2026 event in Kaunas this month which showcases Lithuanian ethnic cultures. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and other Community members spoke to the audience as well on Jewish culture and its place in the history of Kaunas.
We know the Great Synagogue in Vilnius was mainly subterranean, because of Christian restrictions limiting the height of houses of prayer of other confessions. Until now, we only had period illustrations of the interior, lost when the shul damaged by Nazi bombardment was demolished by the Soviets in the 1950s. For about a decade now archaeologists from the Israeli Antiquities Authority in cooperation with Lithuanian archaeologists from the Department of Cultural Heritage have been excavating the Shulhoyf, and last year, directed by Jon Seligman of the Israel Antiquities Authority (there from 205) and Justinas Račas and Zenonas Baubonis of the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Salvage Group (at the dig since 2018), they reached the floor of the main hall and uncovered most of the meter-high bimah, the central point in the main hall.
Their discoveries have inspired an exhibit of artworks by Lithuanian Eglė Ridikaitė called Depositions at the St. George the Martyr Church, K. Sirvydo street no. 4, in Vilnius, which opened May 14 and runs till October 3. Admission is from 5 to 10 euros and is payable by card only.
“Eglė Ridikaitė’s exhibition, through an unexpected artistic gesture, weaves together sites of faith, painful historical experiences, and a sense of present vulnerability. With striking clarity, serenity, and simplicity, Depositions unfolds as a silent yet conceptually dense narrative about the city. It invites us to experience, simultaneously, the layered histories of prewar Jewish and Christian Vilnius, while tracing processes of survival and extinction, life and its erasure in memory.
The first Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History exhibit as part of the Children of the Holocaust: Lighting Up the Shadows of Lithuanian History project took place at the Pabradė Culture Center last week. The exhibit will be a changeable one depending on the decisions and sensibilities of the designers and exhibit item creators. This time the Sabbath table was laden with pomegranates, figs, apples and challa.
Residents of Pabradė in eastern Lithuania, visitors and local students and teachers attended the event. Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro welcomes the attendees, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Sholem Alechem ORT Gymnasium students, moderated by Algis Davidavičius, who discussed local history, memory and modern forms of commemoration. Then visitors learned about Sabbath traditions, sampled traditional dishes and attended a Jewish cloth-dying workshop.
The Sabbath Table to Remember Jewish History exhibition is the fruit of a two-year meaningful journey during which brave and knowledge-thirsty students from Vilnius and Palanga and their teachers dove into live research on local Jewish history. The young people conducted tours, creative workshops, celebrated Purim and Sabbath together, marked commemorative dates, visited synagogue and spoke with representatives from the Palanga, Vilnius, Darbėn and Israeli Jewish communities.
The Šiauliai District Jewish Community invites you to a ceremony to mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide at the site of the former first ghetto gates at 11:00 A.M. on Wednesday, September 23. There will then be a procession to the second ghetto gates.
Time: 11:00 A.M., Wednesday, September 23
Place: Memorial marking gates of first ghetto at the intersection of Traku and Ezero streets, Righteous Gentile Square, Šiauliai