News – Page 280 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Latin MPs Sign Resolution for Israel and Opposing Boycotts

Photo: Israel Allies Foundation

Venezuelan opposition member calls for strengthening ties with Israel; Argentinian congressman says government confirmation of Nisman assassination could free country from Iranian influence

Lawmakers from 13 Latin American and Caribbean countries signed a resolution affirming their support for Israel and calling for fighting boycotts, a document obtained by the Jerusalem Post Thursday confirmed.

The parliamentarians met at the Israel Allies Foundation’s Second Annual Latin America Summit on Israel which took place in Miami last week. Attending were MK Michael Oren (Kulanu) and US congressmen Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY), chairman and ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

2016-03-17

Austrian Student Groups Reject BDS, Slam US Universities

by Benjamin Weinthal

Rejection of BDS by continental student organizations is believed to the first major European opposition to the hubs of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic academic initiatives in the UK and US.

BERLIN–Student associations at the University of Vienna issued a statement Wednesday declaring opposition to every form of anti-Semitism including the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement targeting Israel.

“As student representatives it is important for us to criticize the academic boycott against Israel, which entirely excludes Israeli academics,” the student council of the University of Vienna said.

Rejection of BDS by continental student organizations is believed to the first major European opposition to the hubs of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic academic initiatives in the United Kingdom and the US.

2016-03-17

Middle East Media Watchdog Exposes Western Funding for Terrorism

The head of an Israel-based watchdog organization on Wednesday called the transfer of money to groups that encourage terrorism “both immoral and illegal.”

Professor Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, was responding to a new report prepared by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) revealing that a number of Palestinian organizations which receive funding from the West have been openly supporting terrorism.

The MEMRI report lists five such organizations in particular which “express this support with ceremonies exalting terrorists, with public displays of support for attacks and their perpetrators, by lionizing terrorists, and by posting inciting content on social media.”

2016-03-17

Kaunas Jewish Community Honors Most Active Members

Continuing a long-standing tradition, the Kaunas Jewish Community invited its most active members to a party to thank them. Participants in various clubs, students of Yiddish, people seeking a deeper knowledge of Jewish history and traditions and volunteers in different campaigns, events and cultural activities gathered for a dinner, live music and lively conversation. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas thanked everyone and said since Jews are known as the People of the Book, he was passing out books as well, about Jewish history and other Jewish topics.

2016-03-17

A Yiddish Play in Russian Translation

Under the Skin
(a drama based on real events)

Written by: Jonathan Calderon
Directed by: Rakefet Benjamin

Tel Aviv during the first Gulf War. A young German reporter knocks on the door of an elderly Holocaust survivor and starts questioning her about the secret affair that took place between her and her SS officer. Throughout the play, the Tel Aviv scene is cut into flashbacks to the concentration camp in which the reporter from Germany also plays the prisoner Charlotte while the elderly Holocaust survivor becomes the Nazi officer.

2016-03-17

Justice for the Buenos Aires Victims of Terrorism

March 16, 2016, BUENOS AIRES–More than 400 Jewish leaders from around the globe met at the plenary session of the World Jewish Congress being held in the Argentine capital.

“President Macri, you have promised that after all this time, Argentina will bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice,” WJC president Ronald Lauder said at the gala opening dinner at the Sheraton Hotel in Buenos Aires. “We believe you. We trust you. And the World Jewish Congress stands with you to help in any way that we can.”

Argentine president Mauricio Macri addressed the opening gala Tuesday night of the plenary assembly. In his speech Macri promised his government pledged to press forward with the investigation into two terror attacks which rocked Argentina in 1992 and 1994, targeting the embassy of Israel and the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires. In his speech to the dinner guests, Macri said: “Argentina is back in the world and stands ready to join in all battles for human rights, and against terrorism.”

2016-03-17

Old Jewish Cemetery in Klaipėda Added to Registry of Cultural Treasures

The old Jewish cemetery in on Sinagogų street in Klaipėda has been given legal protection, the Culture Heritage Department under the Ministry of Culture reports.

Although there used to be several dozen cemeteries in Klaipėda, only a few survive. “The only Jewish cemetery in the city is the one from the early 19th to mid-20th century period. It used to be bigger than what has survived and listed on the registry of cultural treasures. It’s now about 13,000 square meters. But what has survived obviously enriches the history of the city of Klaipėda and is an important part of the city,” Audronė Puzonienienė, director of the Klaipėda office of the Cultural Heritage Department, said.

Puzonienienė cited Jonas Tatoris’s book “Senoji Klaipėda. Urbanistinė raida ir architektūra iki 1939 m.” [“Old Klaipėda. Urban Development and Architecture till 1939”] as the richest source of information about the old Jewish cemetery in the Lithuanian port town formerly known as Memel. The author of that book says there were 22 cemeteries in Memel/Klaipėda in the period from the 16th century to the early 20th century. At the beginning of the 19th century a ravelin—part of the earthen fortification for the defense of the port city— was allocated for the Jewish cemetery. The Jewish cemetery first appears on the city map in 1840, as a still rather small area surrounded by hedgerows. It was enlarged in the early 20th century. “The layout of the Jewish cemetery was different from the Lutheran cemetery: it didn’t have a central square and intersecting paths, and the territory was divided up into rectangular blocks,” Tatoris says.

2016-03-17

Condolences

On March 15, 2016, Neli Bolotina, a member of the LJC Social Club, passed away. She was born on May 11, 1924. Our deepest condolences to professor Adolf Bolotin, chairman of the Vilnius Jewish Community from 2000 to 2005, over the loss of his beloved wife Neli. During this time of loss our hearts are with their son Viktor, daughter Ina, the grandchildren and the entire Bolotin family.

2016-03-16

Vytautas Mikuličius, Journalist and Son of Righteous Gentiles, Has Died

With deep sadness we note the passing of journalist Vytautas Mikuličius who with his parents Petras and Ona rescued Julija Remigolskytė-Flier, now a Canadian violinist, during World War II.

Petras and Ona lived with their three children at Minkovskių street no. 110 in Kaunas. Jews from the Kaunas ghetto were used as forced labor near their home, including Klara Gelman. During the winter of 1942-1943 Klara asked Ona and Petras to save her two-year-old daughter Julija. Petras and Ona took her in and raised her as their won. The little girl quickly learned to speak Lithuanian, and her foster parents told the neighbors she was the daughter of Ona’s dead sister.

From Vytautas Mikuličius’s recollections:

Our family had many friends and acquaintances. Our mother was very involved with the women in the area especially. Russians, Jews, Poles… When the Nazis put their regime in place, mother didn’t drop her girl friends, but visits became brief and secret.

2016-03-16

Fighting Anti-Semitism Demands Unity, Parliamentarians Say

BERLIN (JTA)–Jewish communities must not be left to fend for themselves against anti-Semitism, Jewish leaders and politicians said at the third major interparliamentary conference on anti-Semitism.

“We all have to do our part,” Michael O’Flaherty, director of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency, said at the opening of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism, which brought together more than 100 parliamentarians from nearly 40 countries, as well as a plethora of non-governmental organizations.

On the table are the challenges of Internet hate, community relations and anti-Semitism in sport, as well as legal, parliamentary and governmental responses to anti-Semitism. Best practices for combating anti-Semitism will be discussed at the three-day conference, which started Sunday.

2016-03-16

Canadian Jews Demand Deportation of Ukrainian Member of Nazi Death Squad

Jewish groups are calling on Canada to strip citizenship from a 92-year-old man who was once a member of a Nazi death squad.

In a letter to Citizenship Minister John McCallum, the groups say it is time to conclude a 20-year battle to deport Helmut Oberlander.

“As has been clearly established, Mr. Oberlander was a member of one of the most savage Nazi killing units, responsible for the murder of more than 90,000 Jewish men, women, and children during the Holocaust,” states the March 9 letter. “He is here illegally, was associated with a horrific and murderous enterprise for which he has neither demonstrated nor expressed any remorse, and he ought to have his Canadian citizenship revoked immediately,” it adds.

Born in Ukraine, Oberlander immigrated to Canada in 1954 and became a citizen in 1960. Ottawa began trying to strip him of his citizenship in 1995, prompting a protracted court battle.

2016-03-15

Argentine Director Returns to Jewish Roots with “The Tenth Man”

In his new movie, filmmaker Daniel Burman explores the Buenos Aires of his youth and the people who live there
by Igal Avidan

BERLIN–Usher, who heads a Jewish welfare foundation in Buenos Aires, is an unlikely movie star. But the middle-aged Argentinean Jew, whose real name is Oscar Barilka, is the central figure in Jewish-Argentinian director Daniel Burman’s new feature film, “El Rey del Once” (The Tenth Man).

Usher, playing himself, is almost always off-camera, but he is often heard as he works to bring his son Ariel (played by actor Alan Sabbagh) back to his roots.

“Usher is a real tzadik [righteous person] who doesn’t even know he is one,” says award-winning writer-director Burman, who won the Grand Jury Prize in 2004 for his film “El Abrazo Partido” (Lost Embrace), a comedy-drama about the grandson of Polish Holocaust refugees.

2016-03-15

Condolences

The Lithuanian Jewish Community express our deepest condolences to the people of Turkey following the March 13 attack on central Ankara. Terrorism is a threat the Lithuanian Jewish Community understands well and remains a great challenge to 21st century society. We condemn the perpetrators of this vicious kind of crime who hold hostage the lives and safety of many civilians.

2016-03-15

Israeli Ambassador Praises Kaunas’s Concern for Jewish Heritage

Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon met with Kaunas mayor Visvaldas Matijošaitis and other city council members last week. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas attended the meeting as well. The ambassador praised cooperation with the city of Kaunas in culture and business. Kaunas businesspeople involved in the food sector were invited to meet investors from Israel in Vilnius at the beginning of April, and the mayor was invited to attend a meeting of European city mayors in Jerusalem.

2016-03-15

Jewish Students Deliver Donations to Developmentally Disabled Infant Center

Representatives of the Vilnius Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium visited the Vilnius Developmentally Disabled Infant Center March 8 and were warmly received by director Viktorija Grežėnienė. The students delivered donations and visited some of the small wards of the center. The donations included a sofa-bed, musical mobiles and educational games which the students purchased with funds raised by a food and crafts fair held on the Tu b’Shvat holiday. Students made their own dishes and snacks as well as art works and sold them to other students during the fair.

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2016-03-15

How We Celebrated March 11

The Lithuanian Jewish Community took part in a holiday parade in Vilnius together with other celebrants. Snapshots from that event available here.

BNS–March 11 Lithuania celebrated 26 years of independence. Conferences, ceremonies and exhibits were held in different cities. A special session of parliament was held to mark the historical separation from the Soviet Union, after which a ceremony to raise the flags of the three Baltic states was held outside on Independence Square, followed by a procession to Cathedral Square.

2016-03-15

Rain and Low Turnout at Annual Vilnius Neo-Nazi March

The parade of nationalists and neo-Nazis which has marred Lithuanian independence day celebrations for 7 years in a row went forward this March 11 as well.

Despite attempts by organizers to make the event acceptable and mainstream by calling it “traditional” and “patriotic” and to play down the swastikas and calls for the death of ethnic minorities prominent in earlier years, this year’s march was smaller than last year’s.

From 200 to 300 people, according to estimates by outsiders, gathered at the statue on Cathedral Square at around 4:00 P.M. on March 11, the more important of Lithuania’s two independence days which marks the date in 1990 when the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet parliament declared independence from the Soviet Union. The square was the final point by another march earlier in the day dedicated to celebrating Lithuanian independence and tolerance, which travelled the same route but in the opposite direction, from Independence Square outside the Lithuanian parliament to Cathedral Square. A large trailer painted military colors behind the gathering at the statue for the 4 o’clock march was outfitted with an oven and volunteers dressed as Lithuanian soldiers were still passing out free hot food to children as a variety of Lithuanian ultranationalists, neo-Nazis, biker gang members and various followers milled about waiting for the march.

2016-03-12

Israelis Like Trump’s Style

Donald Trump’s Quick-to-Offend Style Wins Israeli Admirers–Despite Questions
by Naomi Zeveloff

As Donald Trump’s campaign surges to front-runner status on shock value in America, his bombast is familiar to a certain type of Israeli.

“He’s a no-bullshitter,” said Doron Mizrachi, owner of a South Tel Aviv restaurant that sells bourekas, or Middle Eastern puff pastries. Mizrachi concedes that customers in this left-wing neighborhood sometimes bristle at his unabashedly right-wing politics: “I’m like Donald Trump,” he explained. “I say the facts.”

Trump’s bluster may, in fact, often obscure his shifting and hard-to-pin-down stances on many issues, like whether he welcomed or disavowed the support of Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. But this dedication to perceived “straight talk” is embedded in mainstream Israeli Jewish culture.

There is even a name for it. Israelis pride themselves on speaking dugri. Adopted into Hebrew from Arabic, the term means to speak bluntly, even if it comes at the expense of the listener’s feelings. (In Arabic the word connotes truthfulness.)

2016-03-10

Major American Jewish Leader Changes His Mind about Israel

An Amazing Turn for a Major Leader of the American Jewish Mainstream: David Gordis Rethinking Israel

David Gordis has served as vice president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now American Jewish University). He also served as executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee and was the founding director of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel. He founded and directed the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies which became the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies.

David Gordis is president emeritus of Hebrew College where he served as president and professor of Rabbinics for fifteen years. He is currently visiting senior scholar at the University at Albany of the State University of New York. Here is the article he submitted to Tikkun. We publish it with the same sadness that Gordis expresses at the end of this article, because many of us at Tikkun magazine shared the same hopes he expresses below for an Israel that would make Jews proud by becoming an embodiment of what is best in Jewish tradition, history, and ethics, rather than a manifestation of all the psychological and spiritual damage that has been done to our people, which now acts as an oppressor to the Palestinian people. For those of us who continue to love Judaism and the wisdom of our Jewish culture and traditions, pointing out Israel’s current distortions gives us no pleasure, but only saddens us deeply.
–Rabbi Michael Lerner

Reflections on Israel 2016
David M. Gordis

While reading Ethan Bronner’s review of a new biography of Abba Eban, I was reminded of a time when in a rare moment I had the better of a verbal encounter with Eban. It happened about thirty years ago at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which brought together leaders of American Jewish organizations, sometimes to hear from a visiting dignitary, in this case Eban, Israel’s eloquent voice for many years. I was attending as Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee. Eban had a sharp wit as well as a sharp tongue. He began his remarks with a mildly cynical remark: “I’m pleased, as always, to meet with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, though I wonder where the presidents of minor American Jewish organizations might be.” I piped up from the audience: “They are busy meeting with minor Israeli government officials.” A mild amused reaction followed and Eban proceeded with his remarks.

2016-03-10

Pew Poll: 48% of Israeli Jews Want Arabs Out

Palestinian women passing an Israeli police checkpoint in Jerusalem, October 8, 2015.
photo: Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images

TEL AVIV (JTA)–Nearly half of Jewish Israelis want to expel Arabs from the country.

That’s one of several findings from a new survey of Israeli attitudes on religion, politics and Jewish identity conducted by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center.

Coming just three years after Pew’s much-discussed study of Jewish-Americans, the Israel study depicts a country divided by religion and ethnicity, where Jews of opposing religious outlooks rarely associate and marriages that cross the Jewish-Arab divide almost never happen.

Israel is 81% Jewish and 19% non-Jewish, according to the survey. Among the Jews, half are secular. The other half is divided among traditional (29%), religious Zionists (13%) and haredi Orthodox (9%).

The study, released Tuesday morning, is based on 5,600 interviews with Israelis conducted between October, 2014 and May, 2015. It has a margin of error of 2.9% on questions asked of Jews and 5.6% for those asked of Muslims. Many of the findings confirm commonly held views about Israel, but here are six that might surprise you.

1. Nearly half of Jewish Israelis want Israel to be Arab-free.

2016-03-09