On Lithuanian Statehood Day, the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club delegation carried the flags of the Republic of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Jewish Community at the 20th Maccabiah Games in Israel.
The “Jewish Olympics” opened Thursday, July 6, with 10,000 Jewish athletes from 80 countries. The opening ceremony at the Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem was watched by 30,000 fans in the stands.
This is the eighth Maccabiah Games to which the Lithuanian Makabi club has sent a delegation. Back in 1989, at the 13th Maccabiah Games, Lithuanian Makabi carried the flag of the Republic of Lithuania, which was only then beginning to break away from the Soviet Union. Club president Semionas Finkelšteinas and club athletes remember the event well.
Lithuanian Makabi team at 13th Maccabiah Games opening ceremony, Israel, 1989
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club delegation is leaving for the 20th Maccabiah Games, held once every four years, in Israel, where more than 10,000 athletes from 80 countries will compete.
This will be the 8th Maccabiah Games attended by the Lithuanian team. In 1989 the team was the first to carry the Lithuanian national flag at the opening ceremonies as the country sought independence from the Soviet Union. Club president Semionas Finkelšteinas and club athletes remember well the event.
Semionas Finkelšteinas:
“The Lithuanian Makabi delegation will have 28 athletes in 8 sports: badminton, swimming, mini-soccer, judo, table tennis, tennis, chess and riding. A Canadian rider who has Litvak roots was accepted on the Lithuanian team since Canada didn’t send a team of riders this year. The Lithuanian team includes three former Maccabiah medal-winners: chess player Eduardas Rozentalis who took bronze in 1989, badminton player Alanas Plavinas who won silver in 2013 and Aleksas Molodeckis who took bronze in judo in 2013.
“It’s important to us to participate in the Maccabiah and we never miss a single Jewish Olympics. Whether our team is stronger or weaker, we have always participated and won medals. This time we have five young people, three of whom expect to win medals. We have three badminton players, and the swimmer and strong table tennis player Neta Alon who could be a medal winner. Markas Šamesas and Vitalija Movšovič are our badminton players who could come home with medals. Among the adult athletes the chess player E. Rozentalis, badminton player A. Plavinas, and judo martial artist A. Molodeckij have a good chance of winning medals. Salomėja Zaksaitė, an accomplished chess player, will be competing at the Maccabiah for the first time. Our soccer team is traveling there with their new trainer Arūnas Šteinas. Three of our strong soccer players are unable to attend for various reasons. Artūras Sobolis couldn’t take time off work, Danielius Gunevičius’s trainer won’t allow him to go and Romanas Buršteinas has to attend to family matters.
“All the young people will stay at the best hotel in Haifa. They will compete in the games after which they have a separate program of activities. The swimmers will compete at the Wingate sports complex. Athletes from 80 countries will attend Maccabiah opening ceremonies July 6 and global media always give large coverage to the event, the opening ceremony is covered outside Israel by CNN, BBC and other global televisions channels. The Jewish Olympics takes place once every four years and there is a broad cultural program arranged for all participants. This event is about more than just about sports.
Welcome to the Lithuanian Jewish Community, welcome to Vilnius.
You will soon experience it for yourself. This isn’t a promotional film, it’s the reality, slightly beautified. Beautified, because you won’t see all the hard work that goes on every day and the people who do it.
I thank them. We work, we make mistakes, we fall down and we get back up and work harder. But we’re here. There are not so many of us, of course, and we are all different, and sometimes we argue, sometimes we embrace, but we are all here together and we are beautiful, able, talented, loving and dedicated. We’re the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the family of Lithuanian Jews, a part of our country. We have been here for six centuries now. We have experienced the greatest afflictions and disasters but we never gave up and we have remained.
We have to pass something on to our children and grandchildren. I personally want to pass on to them our Jewish identity, my story and deeds and those of my ancestors. I am trying to do this together with the community because I know that I alone will not succeed. I believe it is better to act and to make mistakes than to do nothing.
I wish everyone the greatest success. Let’s take pride in our Lithuanian Jewish Community.
Sincerely yours,
Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community
§§§
The activities of the Lithuanian Jewish Community are broad-ranging and interesting, and the makers of the following film decided to include footage from just four days in the life of the LJC. To show more would require a series of films.
One of the most important goals of the Community is listening to and taking care of our members, children, adolescents and senior citizens. Care and aid from the Community’s Social Programs Department is allocated to Holocaust survivors, the ill, disabled and socially marginalized.
An important benchmark in our work recently was the restoration and protection of our country’s wooden synagogues, unique in Europe. The opening ceremony for the restored and reconsecrated synagogue in Pakrojis, Lithuania, is included in the film. Work was conducted with the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage Department under the Ministry of Culture and with local municipal and regional administrations.
If the film were continued, we would have included more young people, students, the young Jewish parents clubs, of course our regional Jewish communities and lots of fun moments from the different events and holidays put on by the Lithuanian Jewish Community.
The Makabi Lithuanian athletics club held a mini-Maccabiah May 21 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the club’s founding in Lithuania. The Maccabiah Games are an annual international sporting competition in Israel to which Lithuanian Makabi sends athletes. In the mini-Maccabiah, 74 athletes from Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Panevėžys, Šiauliai and Ukmergė competed in five sports: indoor soccer, three-on-three basketball, volleyball, men’s and women’s table tennis and chess. Everyone received participation medallions.
The Kaunas basketball team defeated the Vilnius and Klaipėda teams. Kaunas player Elvis Ušpicas won in foul shots (9 players) with six hoops in a row.
The Vilnius team on home ground won in indoor soccer and volleyball.
Time: May 21, 2107 Location: Tauras Sports School, Žygio street no. 46, Vilnius
Program
12:00 noon Basketball (3 x 3), free-throw contest
1:00 P.M. Lithuanian Maccabee Games opening ceremony
1:30 P.M. Indoor soccer
3:00 P.M. Volleyball
1:30-4:00 P.M. Ping-pong, chess
4:50 P.M. Ceremony, meal, awards
Responsible parties:
Soccer: Gercas Žakas
Basketball: Gercas Žakas
Volleyball: Gercas Žakas
Ping-pong: Michailas Duškesas
Chess: Daniel Dubrovin
Secretary: Olga Bliumenzon
Participants: Teams from Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Panevėžys, Šiauliai, Ukmergė and other towns. Director of Lithuanian Maccabee Games: Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club president Semionas Finkelšteinas. Lithuanian Maccabee Games senior referee: Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club executive director Michailas Duškesas
Note: the program might change following final applications from all teams
from left: invited guests K. Zdanavičius and V. Navickas, Makabi president S. Finkelšteinas, tournament winners A. and N. Faktorovičius
A doubles tennis tournament was held by the Makabi Lithuanian athletics club at SEB Arena in Vilnius May 14. Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon competed among the others. All participants received medals and prizes. The winners were awarded nice prizes and lunch.
First prize went to the father-and-son team of Anatolijus and Norbertas Faktorovičius who won 10:9 in the final fierce match with Vilius Navickas and Kęstutis Zdanavičius.
Third place went to Grigorij Khiterer and Šolomas Subičius.
There will be doubles tennis matches held at 11:00 A.M., May 14, at the SEB Arena in Vilnius. We invite men and women to take part. Regulations for the competition will be set after total number of participants is known. Please register before 10:00 P.M. on May 11.
In mid-April a meeting with an overflow audience was held at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius to meet the actors of the famous Vakhtangov Academic Theater in Moscow who are performing the play “Nusišypsok mums, Viešpatie!” [Smile upon Us, O Lord] under the direction of Rimas Tuminas. Actors at the meeting included Sergey Makovetsky (playing the character Efraim Dudak), Aleksei Guskov (Shmule-Sender Lazarek), Yevgeniy Kniazev, Viktor Suhorukov (Avner Rosental) Julia Rutberg (Ožkytė) and Viktor Dobronravov (playing Hloyne-Geneh).
Twenty years after its premiere at Vilnius’s Small Theater, the play was performed at the Yevgeniy Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow in 2014, where Tuminas has been director since 2007. The tour of the play in Lithuania this time is dedicated to the late actor Vytautas Šapranauskas, who died in 2013 and was unable to play again the role of Chloinė Genech in Tuminas’s presentation of the drama in Moscow. The play originally performed at the Little Theater on Gedimino prospect in Vilnius travelled around the world, winning numerous awards at drama festivals. In 1995 Tuminas won the title of best Lithuanian director for his direction of the play and the prestigious Kristoforas statue. Drama score composer Faustas Latėnas and Gediminas Girdvainis, who created the character of Avner Rozental, also won the same awards in separate categories.
The new production of the play is also a world traveller and has been seen in New York, Toronto and Tel Aviv.
The third round of the Lithuanian Chess League was held in Vilnius over the weekend during which two tournaments were played and the strongest Lithuanian clubs emerged.
After two rounds (five parties) it seemed there would be no surprises this time. The MRU team dominated the championship winning all five matches for 10 points. Gigant Chess of Panevėžys was a close second with 8 points while Makabi and Margiris from Kaunas (a Lithuanian Chess League champion many times over) each lagged behind by a point at 7. In the sixth round MRU lost 1.5:3.5 to Makabi and Gigant Chess and Margiris each gained a point (2.5:2.5).
Before that fateful round MRU was still out in front with 10 points, but Makabi and Gigant Chess were already hard on their heels, both teams holding 9 points. In the last round the chess players weren’t entirely focused on their own games and kept track of the competition as the situation dramatically changed and made mental calculations about the points needed to end with a higher standing.
After a match between Kaunas LFLS and Kaunas Makabi in 1926
The Jewish community influenced the development of the sport of soccer in interwar Lithuania. In 1916 the Jews of Vilna followed in the footsteps of their fellow Jews in Warsaw and founded the Jewish athletics and sports club Makabi. Vilna Makabi not only propagated gymnastic and other fields of athletics, but also soccer. The interwar provisional capital of Lithuania, Kaunas, was mad about soccer then and became the center of sporting activity. The Lithuanian Athletics Union was founded there in 1919, and a year later was replaced by the Lithuanian Physical Fitness Sports Union (the Lithuanian acronym is LFLS). The Jewish Makabi Union soon followed and was established in Kaunas.
The mini soccer team of the Makabi Lithuanian Athletics Club is competing successfully in the Vilnius district tournament Select II in the Sunday League, which includes 10 teams. After foru matches Makabi are now in fourth place. The tournament continues and let’s hope after some injured players return our team makes it to the top. Good luck!
A plaque has been unveiled on the western façade of the A. Martinaitis Art School at Šv. Gertrūdos street no. 33 in Kaunas with the inscription: “In this building the first Lithuanian table tennis championships took place organized by the athletics club Makabi.”
Lithuanian Table Tennis Association director Rimgaudas Balaiša said at the unveiling ceremony Kaunas was the cradle of table tennis in Lithuania. Young people imported the game from abroad and by 1922 Kaunas began to see its first enthusiasts. In 1925 the first ping pong tournaments were held in Lithuania. A year later the Ping Pong Committee was established in the Lithuanian Athletics League. And here on March 12 to 13, 1927, the Makabi Club decided to hold the Lithuanian Ping Pong Championship. Makabi was the pioneer in this historic activity.
The Jewish Makabi Club was established on October 19, 1920 in Lithuania. It was the most affluent of any ethnic minority sports organization. The winners in the ping pong championship they held were Ona Gurvičaitė and Josifas Šimensas.
The fall tennis tournament of the Makabi Lithuanian athletics club was held November 27 at SEB Arena in Vilnius, with 10 athletes (7 male, 3 female). The matches were held with a minus 2 handicap. Danielius Merkinas was the overall winner. In the women’s group promising young professional tennis player Alisa Gaivaronskytė took first place. Valentina Finkelšteinienė and Tatjana Podkolzina took second and third in the women’s.
In the men’s, the brothers Kęstas and Norbertas Faktorovičius took third. The best player among veterans was Grigorij Khiterer, followed closely by Faktorovičius and Eduardas Gurvičius. All contestants received participation prizes and the women got flowers as well. The awards ceremony and dinner followed the competition.
Photo of 1927 Lithuanian table tennis champions. Sitting: O.Gurvičaitė, champion in women’s group. Standing from right: I. Šimensas (first place), I. Keperis (second place), B. Podzelneris (director of the table tennis section of Makabi), I. Godas (third place), Ch. Šimensas (fifth place).
A plaque will be unveiled at 2:00 P.M. on Tuesday, November 29, on the western façade of the A. Martinaitis Art School in Kaunas located at Šv. Gertrūdos street no. 33 with the inscription:
“In this building on March 12 and 13, 1927, the first LITHUANIAN TABLE TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIP took place, organized by the Makabi athletics club.”
Makabi Athletics Club Lithuanian Table Tennis Association Kaunas Jewish Community
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Chess and Checkers Club invite you to a chess tournament dedicated to the memory of Kaunas Chess Club director Abraomas Šulmanas at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 11:00 A.M. on August 21.
Tournament director Boris Rositsan, FIDE master
For further information and to register, contact:
info@metbor.lt
tel.: +3706 5543556
“All riders have reached the finish line and the injured have been brought by automobile, but we haven’t seen Mr. Anolik and he isn’t found among the injured. Everyone has left. The stadium is empty, but he’s still not here. Asked by telephone, all the checkpoints reported they didn’t know and that there was not a single cyclist left on the route. He only came back at 11 at night, cold and hungry.”
This is how the newspaper Sportas reported the debut of the Lithuanian state at the Olympic Games in 1924. The subject of the report, Isaac Anolik, was a Lithuanian athlete of Jewish origins and the country’s cycling champion many times over. His accomplishments didn’t matter during the Holocaust. The leading Lithuanian cyclist was shot at the Ninth Fort.
On June 19 Lithuania’s Makabi Athletics Club held a mini-Maccabee games in Kaunas dedicated to the bicyclists I. Anolik and T. Murnik. Over 72 athletes from all over Lithuania divided into six teams according to larger nearby city participated in field soccer, basketball, volleyball, table tennis and chess. The veteran team defeated the younger team in basketball in Kaunas with Erikas Griškevičius and Elvis Ušpicas taking home prizes for their efforts.
Eight athletes competed in chess. Sergey Alifanov won with 6.5 points, with tournament organizer Roza Joffė coming in second with 5.5 points. Aleksandr Korkhatov was a close third with 5 points. Unfortunately Makabi board member Roman Burštein with the highest rating in chess was scoring goals in soccer during the chess matches.
Team Klaipėda easily beat Kaunas in volleyball with a score of 3:1. The best players, Eugenijus Tarachovskis and Samuelis Ušpicas, were awarded prizes.
The Lithuanian Athletics Club Makabi’s Mini-Maccabee Games are dedicated to Lithuanian Jewish bicyclists I. Anolikas and T. Murnikas, participants in the Olympic games.
Location: Krėvės prospect no. 50, Kaunas
Date: June 19, 2016
The Makabi Lithuanian Athletics Club held a tennis tournament at the SEB Arena in Vilnius May 21 with seven contestants, 5 male and 2 female. All contestants received a participation medal and the women also received flowers.
A dinner party for the contestants followed. Young professional tennis player Alisa Gavronskytė took first place and Grigorij Khiterer and Kęstas Faktorovičius took second and third.
