The Lithuanian Jewish Community is deeply saddened to learn Israel’s fifth president, Yitzhak Navon, has passed away. He will be remembered as an intellectual, a wise leader and an inspiration by many Jews around the world. Israel has lost a great son. We send our deepest condolences to the entire Navon family.
Israeli Media: Šaras Refuses to Leave Žalgiris to Train for Maccabi
The Tel Aviv Maccabi basketball club, fishing for a new trainer, has cast a line into the Lithuanian basketball market. The Israeli media are reporting the post of senior trainer for Maccabi was offered to Šarūnas Jasikevičius, but the 39-year-old assistant to Gintaras Krapikas wasn’t intrigued by the offer and decided to stay on with the Kaunas Žalgiris team.
There were also reports in the Israeli media that Jonas Kazlauskas recommended Šaras for the post of senior trainer at Maccabi.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
BNS: Jewish Community Calls Noreika Report “Contradictory”
VILNIUS, November 9, BNS–Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky has called an assessment of actions by Lithuanian officer Jonas Noreika during World War II released by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania “contradictory.”
At the end of October the center announced Noreika hadn’t taken part in the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania during World War II, but that the Nazi occupational regime had involved him in the ordering of affairs connected with the isolation of Jews.
“It appears to us, the Lithuanian Jewish Community, that this assessment of the actions of Jonas Noreika is very contradictory,” the statement Faina Kukliansky issued said. She said: “the imprisoning Jews in ghettos, or any other kind of ‘isolation,’ or ‘ordering of affairs connected with the isolation of the Jews,’ is nothing other than the extermination of Jews.”
Yitzhak Navon, Fifth President of Israel, Has Died
Dear members of the community,
Yitzhak Navon, who served as the 5th President of the State of Israel from 1978 to 1983, passed away on Saturday, November 7, 2015 at the age of 94. His funeral took place on Sunday, November 08, 2015 on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem.
Through the years Navon combined public activity, political activity and writing, which centered mostly on preserving the cultural heritage of Sephardic and Mizrachi Jewry. In 1978 he was elected to serve as the fifth President of the State of Israel. He served in office until 1983.
During his Presidency, he strove to act as a bridge between Israel’s ethnic groups, religious and secular, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, left and right, Jews and Arabs and to allay high tensions following the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Sinai Peninsula pursuant to the peace agreement with Egypt.
US House of Representatives Urges Europe to Safeguard Jewish Communities
(JTA) — A House resolution calls on the United States to urge European governments to act to keep their Jewish communities safe.
The resolution, introduced by rep. Chris Smith, Republican from New Jersey, passed unanimously Tuesday. Smith is the chairman of the Helsinki Commission, a congressional body which monitors compliance with human rights overseas.
The resolution, which had 89 co-sponsors, calls on the U.S. administration to encourage European governments, law enforcement agencies and intergovernmental organizations to formally recognize and partner with Jewish community groups to strengthen crisis prevention, preparedness, mitigation and responses related to anti-Semitic attacks.
Lithuanian Jewish Community Responds to Report on Jonas Noreika
The Lithuanian Jewish Community responds to a report presented by the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania about the activity of Jonas Noreika in Nazi-occupied Lithuania during World War II. The report is available in Lithuanian on their website:
http://genocid.lt/UserFiles/File/Pazymos/201510_noreika_pazyma01.pdf
________________________________________________________________________
Lithuanian Jewish Community
Pylimo street no. 4, LT-01117 Vilnius, tel.: (8~5) 261 30 03, fax: (8~5) 2127915, email: info@lzb.lt
November 6, 2015
To: Teresa Birutė Burauskaitė, director
Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania
Didžioji street no. 17/1, LT-01128 Vilnius
Lithuania Wants Chiune Sugihara Included on UNESCO Memory of the World Register
Mr. Hajime Furuta, governor of Gifu Prefecture, center, discusses Sugihara initiative.
photo courtesy Lithuanian Foreign Ministry.
Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius met the governor of Gifu Prefecture Hajime Furuta in Vilnius October 30 where Mr. Furuta presented an application made by Japan to have documents connected with the activity of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
“Lithuania is prepared to contribute to this wonderful initiative and our country and Japan are looking at ways to work together on this,” foreign minister Linkevičius said.
The mayor of Yaotsu, the town in Gifu Prefecture where Sugihara was born and raised, Shingo Akatsuka, who initiated the UNESCO application, accompanied governor Furuta to Lithuania. His town hosts a memorial museum with much space devoted to Kaunas, where Sugihara operated, and Lithuania.
The Lithuanian foreign minister said: “Chiune Sugihara represents one of the most important cultural and historical connections between Lithuania and Japan.”
Orthodox Rabbi Calls Ban on Female Rabbis Political and Unfortunate
RCA resolution on female ordination ‘political and unfortunate,’ says Riskin.
“I believe the resolution they made wasn’t halachic as much as it was political,” the rabbi said.
Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of Efrat and one of the most prominent leaders of modern Orthodoxy, has criticized a recent resolution adopted by the Rabbinical Council of America that banned its member rabbis from giving any form of ordination to women or hiring women in a role of religious or spiritual leadership.
The RCA resolution said its members may not “ordain women into the rabbinate, regardless of the title used,” or “hire, or ratify the hiring of, a woman into a rabbinic position at an Orthodox institution.”
It appeared to be mostly aimed at institutions associated with the liberal-Orthodox movement loosely defined as Open Orthodoxy, including Yeshivat Maharat in Riverdale, New York, founded by Rabbi Avi Weiss, which gives ordination to women to serve as spiritual guides and to give rulings in Jewish law, or Halacha.
Riskin, along with other rabbis in Israel, is himself an RCA member and oversees the Susi Bradfield Women’s Institute for Halachic Leadership (WIHL) at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Jerusalem, which gives women a qualification that amounts to ordination, although it is not labeled as such.
Two Steps Forward, One Back
Two Steps Forward, One Back
by Geoff Vasil
Readers of the Lithuanian Jewish Community website might have been surprised yesterday by a news item appearing there in which Jonas Noreika was absolved, seemingly, of complicity in the Holocaust. Noreika is one of those names which lives on in infamy among scholars of the Lithuanian Holocaust but proffered as an anti-Soviet hero by Lithuanian nationalists. The intent of the LJC, of course, was merely to report the Lithuanian news to Jews here and abroad, and not to white-wash Noreika in any way. The news item would not have been surprising even a few years ago, but now it comes as a shock exactly because Lithuanian society has moved forward so rapidly in coming to terms with the horrible loss to the country known as the Holocaust.
In summary, a Lithuanian state institution, the Center for Research on the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania, charged with sorting out history, issued a politicized report claiming Noreika was only involved in isolating Jews during World War II, not murdering them. The report came in response to a joint call by well known figures in Lithuania, including Tomas Venclova, to remove a plaque honoring Noreika from the wall of the library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences in Vilnius, a move which the LJC has long championed.
The document released this week cautions Noreika’s actions “cannot be judged categorically.”
Lithuanian Culture Minister Visits Israel
VILNIUS, November 05, BNS–Lithuanian culture minister Šarūnas Birutis is on a visit to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where he is scheduled to meet representatives of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, cultural organizations and immigrants from Lithuania.
The minister will also visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum.
The Lithuanian Culture Ministry of Culture said in a statement Thursday Lithuania and Israel share important concerns such as the preservation of common history and culture, protection of the Jewish cultural heritage in Lithuania and maintaining contact with Lithuanian immigrants in Israel and their descendants.
BNS
Lithuanian Military Officer Jonas Noreika Not Guilty of Holocaust Crimes
Controversial Lithuanian military officer Jonas Noreika didn’t participate in the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania during World War II, but the Nazi occupational regime did involve him in matters connected with the isolation of Jews, according to the Center for Research on the Genocide and Resistance of the Residents of Lithuania.
The center drafted this report following a demand by a group of public figures for a plaque bearing Noreika’s name to be removed from the library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, claiming he collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation of Lithuania. The plaque commemorates Noreika as an anti-Soviet fighter.
The center’s report was released to the public but addressed to the Government chancellor, the mayor of Vilnius and the Academy of Sciences chief librarian. It reads in part: “during the German occupation Jonas Noreika did not participate in operations for the mass extermination of Jews in the districts of Telšiai and Šiauliai.”
The document cautions Noreika’s actions “cannot be judged categorically.”
Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theater to Perform up to Eleven “Marriages of Figaro” in Israel
Ona Kolobovaitė photo © 2015 by M. Aleksa
The Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theater has gone on tour in Israel and will perform Mozart’s opera “Marriage of Figaro” at the Israeli Opera Theater in Tel Aviv from November 4 to 15.
Eleven performances are planned. Two teams of singers are scheduled to be used and the opera’s choir, orchestra, costumes and decorations have also been sent from Vilnius to Tel Aviv. This is one of the biggest tours in recent times for the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theater.
Conductor Martynas Staškus will conduct the opera with director’s assistant Jūratė Sodytė helping adapt the work for the stage.
Lecture Series Invitation
J. Greisman, “Curses, the Evil Eye and Porcha (Instilling Fear) in Judaism”
12 noon, Sunday, November 8, 2015
Lecture to be held in Lithuanian in the Jascha Heifetz Hall, third floor, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street No. 4, Vilnius
Concert to Honor Lithuanian Holocaust Rescuers Held in Munich
The Order of Malta and the Jewish communities of Lithuania and Munich, Germany held a concert and reception in the Hercules Hall at the Munich Rezidens palace, with proceeds and donations collected during the concert going to support still-living rescuers of Jews.
Lithuanian ambassador to Germany Deividas Matulionis attended the event on November 2 and delivered a message from Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė, the patroness of the event.
LJC Chair Speaks at Benefit Concert in Munich
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky delivered the following short address at a concert held in Munich Monday:
Dear honored guests,
It is my pleasure to be here and on behalf of the Lithuanian Jewish community to express my utmost respect and gratitude to our honored partner, the Order of Malta, and to all of you for paying the tribute to the Lithuanian Righteous of Nations, some of the all-time greatest ambassadors of humanity.
Over 90 percent of the once-flourishing, vibrant and influential Lithuanian Jewish or Litvak Community was destroyed during the Holocaust by the Nazis and their local collaborators. This means that out of approximately 210,000 Lithuanian Jews, an estimated 195,000 fell as victims of the Holocaust, and not without the help of local citizens, despite having more than 600 years of shared history.
A significant number of courageous and kind-hearted Lithuanian people, however, found inner strength when it was needed most to take a stand against evil at all costs, despite having very limited resources and facing an immense threat to the lives of their families and their own.
Their heroic act of saving their innocent Jewish neighbors during the grimmest of times, often involving much self sacrifice, demonstrated great human compassion; the hearts of the Jewish rescuers became shelters of hope for the hopeless, their eyes saw light in time of darkness. The life-saving decisions they made and the actions they took set the true example of morality for every of us to follow to this day.
The Lithuanian Jewish community is alive today thanks to the compassion and courage of the Righteous among Nations. I thank you all for remembering them together today and for recognizing their noble cause as well as their colossal contribution to our history.
80-Year-Old Woman among 3 Stabbed in Rishon Lezion Terror Attack
Three people were wounded Monday afternoon in a stabbing attack by a Palestinian in the central city of Rishon Lezion, a southern suburb of Tel Aviv.
Two people—a man in his 40s and a woman in her 80s—were in serious condition, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. The third victim, 26, was lightly hurt.
The attacker, identified by authorities as a 19-year-old Palestinian man from Hebron, stabbed the 40-year-old man from behind on a bus on Tarmab Street, got off the bus and ran to the adjacent Herzl Street, where he stabbed the elderly woman and the young man.
Erdogan Victory Could Mean More Turkey-Israel Crises
Turkish president Erdogan’s resounding election victory came as bad news for Israel, which has suffered the brunt of his insults and schemes.
Erdogan’s ruling Islamist AK Party now has a free hand to continue their crackdown against local media which criticize the Government, and against others deemed enemies of the state.
Erdogan, a Sunni Muslim who supports the Muslim Brotherhood–including Hamas–in the region, could become even more aggressive in pursuing his regional ambitions.
Condolences
The Lithuanian Jewish Community express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the victims of flight 9268 on Kogalymavia Airlines and to all the Russian people. We are with you in our hearts and minds.
Invitation
Actress Helen Mirren on Cultural Boycott of Israel: The Craziest Idea
British actress Helen Mirren spoke out against the cultural boycott of Israel on Wednesday as she was honored at the 29th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles, California.
Talking to the press before the ceremony, the Academy Award winner described the campaign to boycott Israeli through cutting off cultural ties as “a really bad idea.”
“The people who are the most inspiring in Israel tend to be from the cultural community. The writers, the directors, the poets, the musicians, they are truly extraordinary people doing amazing work, peace giving work, working towards peace all the time,” she said. “To cut them off is the craziest idea, I don’t agree with it at all.”