The Sabbath begins at 9:52 P.M. on Friday, July 10, and concludes at 11:32 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:34 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:52 P.M. Tuesday, July 14, is Bastille Day. July 15 is St. Vladimir Day in the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
Photo: celebrate. My grandfather, Jonas Noreika, is in the third row. My mother, then two years old, is among them. Source: Silvia Foti, The Nazi’s Granddaughter (Regnery History, 2021).
by Silvia Foti
An open letter to Liam, on his bar mitzvah
Dear Liam,
You do not know my background and what I carry, as I know your background and your family history. You barely know me, and there is no gentle way to tell you who I am. I read about you in an article your cousin Grant Gochin published in The Times of Israel, about your family and mine. I am writing to a boy I have met just once, for a singular moment, at your cousin Grant’s home, to bless you shortly after the day you were called to the Torah and became a man. I am the granddaughter of the man whose orders helped empty your family’s world of Jews.
My grandfather was Jonas Noreika. He governed the Lithuanian district of Šiauliai, where the town of Papilė lies. He signed orders that confined its Jews and gave away what was stolen from them. Your family was murdered inside the system he ran. Tsile Gochin, the sister of your great-grandmother Sarah, was one of them. My grandfather bears responsibility for her murder, and that of your cousins, relatives, friends and neighbors.
Rabbi Harry Pell whose family roots lie in Ukmergė (Vilkomir) visited the Ukmergė Jewish Community recently. Pell teaches Judaism and Israeli studies in the United States and also works as a chaplain in the armed forces.
Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas provided Pell a tour of Jewish sites in the town and they spoke about Jewish history and heritage there. They also sampled imberlakh at a local restaurant.
For the last two weeks a Lithuanian crew of diggers have been uncovering new archaeological strata at the site of the Great Synagogue or Gros-Shul in Vilnius. No Israeli Antiquities Authority archaeologists have been seen this summer, although they were always in charge during past summers. Several teams of mostly young men were seen digging at the bimah and northern wall of the synagogue, but not at the mikvot which remain under a make-shift shed. The young men were wearing t-shirts identifying them as working for Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Protection Department. They used shovels to pile mounds of debris on the western side of the synagogue and appeared to collect bricks at the northeast corner inside a gate next to the Vilna Gaon statue. No archaeological sieves were visible during several visits to the site. The dig at the eastern side of the complex appeared to reveal a descending staircase made of stone and an eastern wall of the synagogue just to the west of the staircase.
Jewish educator Natalja Cheifec will lead a tour of the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius this Thursday, July 9, at 6:00 P.M. She’ll tell the story of the only traditional synagogue still operating in Vilnius and explain its architectural secrets, symbolism and storied traditions. Cantor Shmuel Ya’atov will also be on hand to offer his extensive knowledge of the edifice and to talk about his work there as cantor. The tour will be followed by an informal discussion with questions and answers. Natalja asks participants to make a 5 euro donation to the synagogue. To register, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, July 9
Place: Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius, around the corner from the Conti Hotel and the egg statue, across the street from the Leonard Cohen statue
The Sabbath begins at 9:57 P.M. on Friday, July 3, and concludes at 11:25 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:39 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:57 P.M. Thursday, July 2, is the fast day of Shivah Asar b’Tamuz, commemorating the breach of Jerusalem’s city walls in AD 68, AD 69 or AD 70 (3828, 3829 or 3830), according to different sources, just three weeks before the destruction of the Second Temple, and also commemorates four or five other tragedies associated with this date on the Jewish calendar. Saturday, July 4 is Independence Day in the United States, with Monday included as a day off work in many parts of the country. Monday, July 6, is Coronation of King Mindaugas Day in Lithuania, a state holiday.
by Mindaugas Surblys
Today we commemorate the men and young men of the Palanga Jewish community who were murdered in Birutė Park in Palanga in 1941. Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilnius Gutmanas, Palanga deputy mayor Rimantas Mikalkėnas, Palanga municipal culture department director Robertas Trautmanas and members of the community lit commemorative candles and placed commemorative stones.
The army of the Third Reich occupied Palanga on June 22, 1941, and by June 26 all of the town’s Jews had been locked up inside two synagogues, mothers, children and the elderly in one and men and young men in the other. The 106 males were taken on June 27 to Birutė Park and murdered, along with 5 Lithuanians accused of collaborating with the Soviet government. The remaining 300 or so women, children and elderly were murdered on October 11 and 12, 1941, in the Kunigiškiai forest.
The males were exhumed in July of 1958 and moved to the Palanga city cemetery, where a single marker marks the mass grave.
Memory lives so long as we remember.
Chairman Gutmanas said: “Eighty-five years have passed but time is powerless to erase our pain. People who had families, dreams and lives were silenced forever. They were murdered because of their origin. It is our duty today not just to commemorate them, but not to allow their stories to be forgotten.”
The Sabbath begins at 10:00 P.M. on Friday, June 26, and concludes at 11:31 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:42 P.M. and completed before sunset at 10:00 P.M. Monday, June 29, is the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul in the Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican Churches this year. July 1 is Canada Day.
The Sabbath begins at 9:59 P.M. on Friday, June 19, and concludes at 11:32 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:41 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:59 P.M. Celebrations of the summer solstice or Midsummer’s Eve, the longest day of the year, take place around the world starting Friday, but the Lithuanian state holiday called Švento Jono diena, or St. John’s Day, is on Wednesday, June 24, with solstice celebrations taking place the evening before, called Joninės.
Ellen Germain, the special envoy for Holocaust issues at the United States Department of State, visited the old Jewish cemetery in the Shnipishok or Šnipiškės neighborhood of Vilnius last week, spoke with representatives of the Lithuanian Jewish Community about the site housing the ruins of the Soviet Palace of Sports complex and discussed plans for the site.
The Sabbath begins at 9:55 P.M. on Friday, June 12, and concludes at 11:27 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:37 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:55 P.M. Sunday, June 14, is Flag Day in the United States and Freedom Day in Malawi.
by Geoff Vasil
The first task in the American and Israeli war against Iran is to open the Strait of Hormuz. This isn’t an impossible military task. It simply entails a cold, hard slog up the coast, reducing by attrition Iranian radar, speedboat, drone and missile sites.
For Donald Trump to lose the military engagement in Iran would be an American tragedy. Never mind he forgot to sell the war to the American public and Congress. Maybe he thought a 4-day war’s results would speak for themselves. I might be misremembering, but George Herbert Walker Bush spent about 6 months selling his First Gulf War and about 4 months actually fighting it, to a semblance of victory. My flawed memory doesn’t recall any war at all America engaged in which didn’t include a prequel to war, a long build-up and more importantly an argument or explanation of why it was in America’s national interest. The secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos might be an exception, but “Ho Chi Minh Road” was kind of self-explanatory in the end. Did fourth American president Madison make the case against Canadian terrorism and British imperialism in the War of 1812? I don’t know, I wasn’t born yet, but I kind of think he did make that case to the American people in that weirdest of all American wars. America’s third president Thomas Jefferson definitely did make the case in the two Barbary Pirate Wars before that..
Donald Trump as the most significant American president since George Washington can’t afford to lose. Of course he never wanted to be a “wartime president” and he probably isn’t cut by nature or nurture to be a great military leader. Maybe there was some hubris involved in the technically good military kidnapping of the Venezuelan president a month before; if we can do that, we can do anything.
Natalja Cheifec continues her lecture series and discussion club Thursday at 6:00 P.M. with a presentation on King Solomon, both on his monarchy considered a time of peace and plenty, and on his renowned wisdom. To receive zoom credentials and participate, click here.
Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas in cooperation with the US Holocaust Museum, the Sugijara House Museum in Kaunas and the Ninth Fort Museum in Kaunas is holding a conference called “Jewish Life in the Baltic Countries, 1917-1945: from June 9 to June 11. The conference marks the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Holocaust in the Baltic states with presentations on Jewish life including art, music, literature, education, languages, religion, government, land and nature, emigration, resistance, the rescue of Jews and commemoration. The Kapela Kotra trio will perform Litvak music and documentary films by Saulius Beržinis will be screened.
The conference will be held in the Senate Hall at Vytautas Magnus at Donelaičio street no. 28 in Kaunas. The program begins at 9:00 A.M. on Tuesday, June 9. It begins at 11:00 A.M. on June 10 and at 9:30 A.M. on June 11.
by Geoff Vasil
Last night the Israeli-American relationship was cast into doubt when Trump told the press he was about to call Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “tell” him not to respond to Iranian missile attacks on Israel.
Trump has gone back and forth for weeks now claiming he’s close to “a deal” with some group of Iranians on a peace plan. It’s fairly obvious the gangsters in the Islamic Republic have been goading and cajoling him on into some sort of idea of a peace plan, but that’s what Iran is best at, endless negotiations on a set of untenable principles.
It should be obvious to everyone watching that the best way to end the impasse with Iran is through military victory. They’re claiming some sort of sovereignty over the choke-point on world commerce, the Strait of Hormuz. They want Israel to stop bombing Hezbollah. They want war reparations from America. There are no common points for negotiation, but Trump keeps pretending there are. Even regarding nuclear enrichment.
The Sabbath begins at 9:49 P.M. on Friday, June 5, and concludes at 11:18 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:31 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:49 P.M. Saturday, June 6, is D-Day in the United States. Sunday is Father’s Day in Lithuania and Curaçao.
A delegation of three guests from Israel visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community last week. Mordechai (Moudi) Ben Shach’s father and grandparents had lived in Panevėžys and ran the former Kommerts Hotel there. His grandfather Yaacov Chachvich from the Tuch family came to Panevėžys in 1890 from the town of Gedera in what is now Israel.
The rabbi accompanying the other two visitors was looking at the Community’s photography exhibit and was surprised to see a photograph of his great-grandfather, also a rabbi. He said it was a great honor to visit Panevėžys, one of the most important Jewish religious and cultural centers in the world.
Moudi Ben Shach said the foundation for the life of the community is not just various activities and projects, and that meeting and talking to people, keeping in contact and working together for the good of the community are just as important if not more so.
Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium is offering a day camp for children aged 8 to 12 starting next Monday. Activities include creative workshops, sports, educational field trips, origami lessons and jewelry-making, films and a discotheque and a challa-making workshop. The day camp will run from June 8 to 12 from 8:00 A.M. till 6:00 P.M. at the Sholem Aleichem school located at Kraševskio street no. 5 in Vilnius. For more information, contact Vilma Bieliūnienė by telephone at +370 659 41244 or write vilma.bieliuniene@ort.lt.
Educator and lecturer Natalja Cheifec will lead another guided tour of the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius Thursday. The synagogue is generally closed to tourists at this time. During the tour, Cheifec, will talk about the architecture, traditions and symbolism of Vilnius’s only working traditional synagogue. The tour starts at 6:00 P.M. on Thursday, June 4, at the Choral Synagogue located at Pylimo street no. 38 in Vilnius. Participants are asked to donate 5 euros to the synagogue during the event. To register, click here.
The Sabbath begins at 9:40 P.M. on Friday, May 29, and concludes at 11:06 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 9:22 P.M. and completed before sunset at 9:40 P.M. Sunday is Orthodox Pentecost.