Yiddish

Rabbi Heschel’s “Sabbath” Issued in Lithuanian by Catholic Publisher

A new Lithuanian edition of “Sabbath” by Abraham Heschel (1951), translated by Asta Leskauskaitė and published by Katalikų pasaulio leidiniai [Catholic World Publications] was launched at the Vilnius Book Fair last week.

Rabbi Heschel became a rabbi at age 16 and was graduated from the Vilna Mathematics and Natural Science Gymnasium in Vilnius before going on to study under some of the greatest Jewish teachers in Germany. He was arrested by the Gestapo and deported to Poland in October of 1938. He fled to Britain weeks before the Nazi invasion of Poland, and then went on to the United States in early 1940, where he became one of the most important and respected Jewish thinkers of the mid-20th century. His first book, apparently, “Der Shem Hamefoyrosh: Mentsch,” was written when he was a member of the Jung-Vilne group of writers in Vilnius, a book of poems in Yiddish published in Warsaw in 1933. Heschel’s poems attracted attention, including a letter of praise Chaim Nachman Bialik sent to the author from Israel.

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LJC Gesher Club Meets for Havadalah

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The Gesher Club of the Lithuanian Jewish Community invited members and friends to a ceremony to end the Sabbath, havdalah, on Saturday, February 13. Many community members attended a Gesher evening for the first time. The decorations, beautifully set tables and pleasant music set the mood for celebration. Organizer of the event and LJC program coordinator Žana Skudovičienė greeted each guest individually with a smile. Skudovičienė, who took over administration of the Gesher Club to fill the gap left by Junona Berznitski’s departure as administrator, has many years of experience doing organizational work.

Vilnius Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yatom led the havdalah ceremony. He spoke about the significance of the ceremony and of maintaining tradition. “The word havdalah, it’s verbatim translation from Hebrew means to separate or usher out. This is the meaning of this brief but beautiful symbolic ritual of Judaism which ends the Sabbath, because havdalah separates the Sabbath from other days, in other words, it separates the holy day from daily life. The ceremony is not mandatory according to the Torah. According to the Talmud, Sabbath celebration began in the fourth or fifth century before the Common Era. The havdalah ceremony evolved as the conclusion of the Sabbath to prepare the individual for the coming work week, and the havdalah ceremonies are for our soul, to provide another opportunity to become focused together before the beginning of the week, to gather strength and to ask for G_d’s blessing. According to Judaic tradition, havdalah begins at dusk when you can see at least three stars in the sky. After darkness falls, the havdalah candle is lit.”

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Opening of Exhibit “YIVO in Vilnius: The Legend Begins”

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You are invited to the opening of the exhibit “YIVO in Vilnius: The Legend Begins” at the Lithuanian National Museum at Arsenalo street no. 1 in Vilnius at 4:00 P.M., February 18. Exhibit curators: Dr. Lara Lempertienė and Dr. Giedrė Jankevičiūtė.

The exhibit was created to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the creation of YIVO in Vilnius. It includes previously unseen material from Lithuanian state collections on the history and work of YIVO. It demonstrates how YIVO’s work gave stimulus to the intellectual life of the Jews of Vilnius and the wider Central and Eastern European arena. It also presents the city and urban community as a source of inspiration and as the historical and cultural hearth and sustenance for the institute’s work. The exhibit was first shown at the Galicia Jewish museum in Cracow from September 30 to November 8, 2015. The exhibit to open in Vilnius contains additional material.

The Smell of Fresh Jewish Bagels Returns to Vilnius

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The Bagel Shop, a new kosher food café, opens its doors February 4. The café will prepare kosher food and different traditional sweets according to the rules of Judaism. The Bagel Shop’s main draw will be freshly-baked bagels and bagel sandwiches. Adhering to the strictest rules, the bagels will be made under the supervision of a rabbi versed in kosher food rules.

Bagels are a traditional European Jewish food product often referred to as a “baronka” in Lithuania in the past, and when cooked may be cut in half and made into a sandwich. The book Joy of Yiddish furnishes one version of the origin of the bagel, according to which the recipe for bagels was created in Cracow at the beginning of the 17th century, and that bagels were given then as gifts to women giving birth. The bagel was supposed to symbolize the “wheel of life” because of its roundness. The bagel’s popularity quickly grew and spread to other countries where Jews speaking Yiddish lived, and was quickly adopted in America, where today about five million bagels are baked daily!

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For the Love of Yiddish

Sara Ziv, chairwoman of the National Authority for Yiddish Culture, is optimistic about the future of the mama-loshn in Israel.

When Eliezer Ben Yehuda was reviving the modern Hebrew Language a century ago, Yiddish was the lingua franca for the majority of Europe’s Jews and even further afield as the great waves of migration spread Yiddish culture and language to the America’s and even to Palestine.

In 1939, around 11 million of the world’s Jewish population of 16 million spoke Yiddish, but then the Holocaust decimated the great Yiddish speaking masses and in the nascent state of Israel, Yiddish ran up against the emergence of Hebrew culture and was sidelined and even frowned upon.

Full story here.
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Vilnius Yiddish Institute Announces Summer Program for 2016

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The Vilnius Yiddish Institute at the Vilnius University announces the Vilnius Yiddish Summer Program for 2016 to take place from July 17 to August 12, 2016, and offering four levels of intensive language instruction for beginners, intermediate, higher intermediate and advanced students.

For more information please contact Indrė Joffytė, program coordinator: info@judaicvilnius.com

http://judaicvilnius.com/

Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Universiteto g. 7
Vilnius 01513
Lithuania

Jewish Cultural Heritage in Lithuania

The Cultural Heritage Department under the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture has posted a PDF document called Jewish Cultural Heritage in Lithuania:

Jewish Cultural Heritage in Lithuania

Jews settled in the territory of historic Lithuania during the rule of Grand Duke Gediminas in the first half of the 14th century. Economic and historic conditions in the Lithuanian lands proved to be conducive for the emergence of a unique community of Lithuanian Jews, which later became known as the Litvaks. The growing Lithuanian Jewish communities attracted rabbis, who were knowledgeable and experienced in the field of education. Jewish quarters were formed in each town, with a synagogue and a synagogue yard as a prayer house and schooling and administrative centre of the local community. As the authority of Lithuania-based rabbis grew and the Lithuanian Jewish communities prospered, yeshivas, Jewish spiritual high schools, were founded in various Lithuanian towns. From the end of the 19th century, and with yet greater intensity after World War I, a network of secular educational institutions developed in the Republic of Lithuania, in Vilnius, and in the surrounding areas, offering instruction in the Yiddish and Hebrew languages. Local printing houses produced sacred and secular books needed for the educational process. All this collectively created a solid foundation for the Jewish press and high culture—theatre, art and literature—to grow and flourish. The Lithuanian Jewry, like Jewish people everywhere else in Europe, was subjected to the horrors of the Holocaust in 1941–1945. Their cultural heritage fell victim to the destruction alongside its creators. In present day Lithuania, the quiet witnesses of this formerly glorious culture can be encountered in various Lithuanian towns and villages.

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LJC Chairwoman on Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaitė’s Visit to Israel

I was included in the delegation which went together with Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė to Israel. As the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community I participated in everything and I can say the visit was historic. Despite the tension in the air because of the terrorist attacks by Palestinians, the leaders of Israel found the time to meet with the Lithuanian president on her working visit and to discuss the most urgent issues in regional security and bilateral cooperation. The Lithuanian president also discussed measures for strengthening Israeli and Lithuanian ties with Israeli president Reuven Rivlin, who emphasized his Litvak roots. The two leaders also spoke about the situation of the Jewish community and the commemoration of Holocaust victims in Lithuania. The Lithuanian president said Jews had contributed very much to the establishment of the Lithuanian state and that the two countries could combine forces in creating their future and prosperity. I remember moving moments when Litvaks in Israel met the president with tears in their eyes and how they spoke about the most beautiful times of their lives in Lithuania. These were times of youth, of the struggle for Jewish identity and for freedom. For them, Lithuania is the land of their forefathers from the time of Vytautas the Great, the land they call home and which they often recall even now.

Before her meeting with the president of Israel, the Lithuanian head of state visited the Yad Vashem museum to commemorate Holocaust victims and planted an olive tree in the Garden of the Righteous among Nations there. In her meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Lithuanian president said could help Lithuania directly with security. “Israel is prepared to help Lithuania directly in the sphere of security: by training our military personnel, in the area of cyber-security and can even organize courses for our personal protection.”

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First Chairwoman of Švenčionys Jewish Community Remembered

A memorial plaque has gone up on the building at Vilniaus street No. 5 in Bluma Katz’s hometown of Švenčionys. Bluma Katz was the first chairwoman of the Švenčionys Region Jewish Community. City and regional administration leaders, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, deputy Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Yehuda Gidron and local residents gathered to remember her at the ceremony to unveil the new plaque.

Katzs was born in Švenčionys in 1913, studied at a Jewish gymnasium and continued her education in Vilnius where she was an active participant in Jewish life. Her teachers included well-known Jewish scholars and writers such as Max Weinreich and Zalman Reyzen, among others. She moved to Russia with her future husband Sh. Yavich. They were both arrested there in 1937, with Bluma Katz sentenced to ten years at a Stalinist gulag in Kolyma. She returned, remarried to her second husband Segalovich, to her hometown, Švenčionys, in 1947. She completed nursing courses and worked for the next 42 years at the city hospital. After Lithuanian independence Katz formed and led the Švenčionys Jewish Community and was noted for her sincere and personal concern for every member of the community. Katz’s memoirs have been published in Lithuania and the West and she always consented cheerfully to meet students from around the world coming to Vilnius to study Yiddish. Katz also attended Yiddish workshops at Oxford University in Great Britain.

2015 Vilnius Yiddish Institute Summer Course Graduation Ceremony

2015 Vilnius Yiddish Institute Summer Course Graduation Ceremony

The 2015 Yiddish summer course at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute of Vilnius University concluded at the usual location, the courtyard of a restaurant adjacent to the university in the Old Town, with music, a theatrical presentation, the issuance of diplomas and plenty of food to go around. An addition this year was a sort of daycare center-corner for small children with toys and books.

Šarūnas Liekis, the head of the institute, served as MC and addressed the audience in Yiddish.

This summer’s crop of students included a Japanese individual, an American contingent, a Polish contingent, ethnic Lithuanians and people hailing from other parts of the world.

Arkady Vinokur presented a preview of the New Yiddish Theater project he is working on.

The audience included all the faculty and staff of the summer course, former students, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and LJC deputy chairwoman Maša Grodnikienė, local Jewish and Jewish-friendly residents and what seemed like an unusal number of primary-school-age children who left before the event was over.

Pictures:

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Vilnius Yiddish Institute Summer Course Students Celebrate Sabbath at Lithuanian Jewish Community

Vilnius Yiddish Institute Summer Course Students Celebrate Sabbath at Lithuanian Jewish Community

As in earlier years, this year’s crop of Yiddish summer course students were invited to celebrate Sabbath at the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The event scheduled for the Friday of July 31 was joined by the Union of Lithuanian Jewish Students and became a potluck rather than a hosted dinner.

A Lithuanian girl named Aistė served as greeter and hostess, directing people with dishes, tupperware and bottles of wine to the tables in front of the stage in the White Hall on the third floor of the Community building. Aistė said she was taking the summer course even though she had no Jewish heritage at all in her family, but is simply fascinated with the language and culture of Yiddish. There was some confusion as to the scheduled start of the evening, either 8:30 P.M. or 9, but in the end that lent to the informality of the evening.

The traditional Sabbath blessing was given by VYI summer course teacher professor Abraham  Lichtenbaum from Argentina with program head professor Dov-Ber Kerler lending assistance, after which the traditional challa bread was broken and passed around.

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Dita Shperling: Germans Did Not Distinguish Lithuanians from Jews

“During the first days of the war the Germans who came to Kaunas couldn’t tell the difference between Jews and Lithuanians, but Lithuanians helped them to do,” Kaunas ghetto prisoner Dita Shperling recalled, citing the words of the German soldiers themselves.

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Dita (Yehudit) Schperling and her husband Yuda Zupowitch

Dita Schperling tries to travel every summer to Vilnius from Israel where she lives. She agreed to discuss her experience in the ghetto with staff from the LJC webpage.

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When Zalmen Reyzen’s Vilna Yiddish Newspaper Headlined an Evening for the Yiddish Writer A.I. Grodzenski

When Zalmen Reyzen’s Vilna Yiddish Newspaper Headlined an Evening for the Yiddish Writer A.I. Grodzenski

by Dovid Katz
 

A 1922 headline in Zalmen Reyzen’s daily newspaper, the Vilna “Tog” (“Day” —  issue of 17 Jan. 1922) announced a Saturday night event dedicated to the remarkable Vilna Yiddish writer Aaron Isaac (Arn-Yitskhok) Grodzenski (1891-1941), a secular Yiddish writer who was the nephew of the world famous rabbi Chaim-Oyzer Grodzenski (whose onetime home on Pylimo [Yiddish: Zaválne gas] still attracts visitors from around the world). Zalmen Reyzen, a famous Yiddish philologist, literary historian and editor, a co-founder of the Vilna Yivo in 1925, himself lived on Greys Pohulánke (now Basanavičiaus, where a bilingual Yiddish-Lithuanian plaque marks the site at no. 17).

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Keepsakes of Old Jewish Vilna (16)

Dovid Katz’s new article (in Yiddish) on the differing Jewish names for the city Vilnius, and the cultural origin and background of each, has just appeared in connection with an old bookbinder’s ‘spine stuffing card’ made from title pages containing all three Jewish traditional names. The article points out that Vilna Jewish books started using a fourth name for the city in the final pre-Holocaust years.

The article, whose Yiddish title translates “Vilno, Vilne, Vilna — the three together in a Vilna bookbinder’s hands: three (factually four) names for the city used by its own Jewish residents”
is at:

Keepsakes of Old Jewish Vilna (16)

Yiddish Reading Circle Returns

Yiddish Reading Circle Returns

On March 12, 2015 the Yiddish Reading Circle conducted by world-renowned Yiddishist Dovid Katz returned to the large hall on the second floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community building in Vilnius.

 Dovid Katz, who was a professor of Yiddish at Vilnius University for 11 years, has been conducting the informal circle off and on for lovers and native speakers of Yiddish for several years now, as his schedule allows.

The first class in the current round of readings began in the traditional manner with those in attendance giving their names and place of origin in Yiddish to the best of their ability.

This was followed by the also-traditional reading of a short text in Yiddish by volunteers around the table. Dr. Katz offered help when needed and punctuated the reading with explanations of general and more obscure aspects of the language.

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YIDDISH LANGUAGE PROGRAM RESUMING AT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY!

YIDDISH LANGUAGE PROGRAM RESUMING AT THE JEWISH COMMUNITY!

THURSDAYS 3 PM (1500), STARTING 12 MARCH 2015
The 16th annual cycle of the Vilna Yiddish Reading Circle (which doubles as an intermediate-level class) starts next Thursday March 12th 3 PM sharp (1500) at the Jewish Community of Lithuania, Pylimo 4, Vilnius, upstairs seminar room.
Everyone welcome, admission free. Only Yiddish is spoken, but non-speakers are always invited to come and listen (hearing Yiddish is good for your health!). The project is carried forward in memory of three of its stalwarts of the first decade and a half: Dr. Sheine Sideraite, Dr. Izraelis Lempertas (Yisroel Lempert) and Mr. Meilach Stalevich.
The program is led by Dr. Dovid Katz, who founded it at the Jewish Community in September 1999, and was professor at Vilnius University from 1999 to 2010, after many years of teaching at Oxford and a stint at Yale (information on his works in Yiddish studies at: www.dovidkatz.net).
Additional classes and seminars may be added in due course.
EVERYBODY WELCOME!
Yiddish mini-museum of old Jewish Vilna

Yiddish mini-museum of old Jewish Vilna

Latest addition to our Yiddish mini-museum of old Jewish Vilna (50th artefact): an advertisement from 8 August 1919 inviting parents to enroll their children in the Hebrew high school at Zaválne 4 (the gymnasium founded by Dr. L. Epstein in 1915). That is the building we all know here today as Pylimo 4, headquarters of the Jewish Community of Lithuania Lietuvos žydų bendruomenė). At that particular stage of the Hebrew movement in Vilna, the street name retained its final Yiddish shewa vowel (later to be hebraicized to -a).

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