Natlja Cheifec’s Shalom discussion club will hold a meeting Monday evening, November 14. To register, click here:
This coming meeting will discuss serious topic and questions from participants. Natalja also invites you to watch a video about the upcoming virtual meeting here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0ug4OYhQg4
#NataljosKlubas #KlubasŠalom
The Sabbath begins at 4:05 P.M. on Friday, November 11, and concludes at 5:20 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you and your family to come back challa and celebrate the Sabbath in the Shabbos Project’s Global Challa Bake-Off at the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. on Friday, November 11.
Every fall millions of Jews around the world come together in an extraordinarily moving activity, baking challa, blessing the wine and bread, singing the Sabbath hymns, celebrating the Sabbath together with friends and family and lighting the havdalah candle.
Senior Bagel Shop Café chef Riva Portnaja and other Community members will share their families’ traditions celebrating the Sabbath. You are invited to come make challa together, to take the loaves home, to invite our more isolated members to come as well and to bless the loaves and the wine together with the entire world Jewish community as we enter into the blessed rest of the Sabbath. The event is free and open to the public.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community thanks Rabbi Nathan Alfred for three meaningful and fascinating days spent with our community.
We took some snapshots of the Kabalat Shabbat on Friday and the Shacharit prayer service last Saturday morning, below.
Photo: Trakai in 1952. From the personal collection of Algimantas Dočkus courtesy LRT.
by Rasa Kalinauskaitė
“Sir, I report that while inventorying the Jewish property taken to the synagogue I discovered seven fur coats suitable for police service. Three of them are of a yellow and unlined falling to below the knees, four are lined with cloth material, coming down to the knees. I request an order these fur coats be seized for police officers to wear as they perform their duties.”–from report by chief of Trakai police department to chief of district police, October 17, 1941.
I and a contingent of Trakai residents as well as two people who came from further off went on a tour of the Trakai Old Town, visiting sites recalling the Jews who lived here before World War II, stopping at former Jewish homes which are still standing. We became fellow travellers, in that those who toured Trakai in earlier times have shared their memories from many decades ago in the photographs they took, which show a town which has now completely changed. I wanted to share this with those who were not able to come, so I will attempt to describe this trip.
This is a journey through memory, because that same day, September 30, was the day in 1941 when the Jews of Trakai, Aukštadvaris, Lentvaris, Rūdiškės, Onuškis and Žydkaimis, 1,446 people of whom 597 were children, were murdered in Varnikai Forest.
Full article in Lithuanian here.
The Sabbath begins at 4:19 P.M. on Friday, November 4, and concludes at 5:34 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
Our deepest condolences to Natalija Cheifec and to her family on the death of her beloved father.
The Sabbath begins at 5:33 P.M. on Friday, October 28, and concludes at 6:45 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
Lectures:
“Raising Children in the Jewish Family,” 7:00 P.M., November 3, Conference Hall, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius.
“Sabbath for the Whole Family” under the tenets of Progressive Judaism, 6:30 P.M., November 4, prayer upstairs followed by kiddush at the Bagel Shop Café. Cost is 10 euros, young people 16 and under enter free.
Morning Prayer Service:
Shakharit, 10:30 A.M., November 5, at the site of the former Great Synagogue, Vokiečių street no. 13A, Vilnius.
To attend any or all of these events and for more information, please register by contacting Viljamas at viljamas@lzb.lt or by calling +37067250699.
Several weekends ago some members of the Kaunas Jewish Community travelled to Alytus. On the way, they stopped in Butrimonys, once a thriving Jewish town, where local school teacher Danutė Anušauskienė provided a guided tour of her hometown.
In Alytus they visited bonzai gardener Kęstutis Ptakauskas who created the Morning Dew Japanese garden there. They toured an exhibit of Litvak artists at the restored synagogue, now a museum, after which they went to the Dzūkijos dvaras restaurant to try the traditional dishes from the Dzūkija ethnographic region of Lithuania.
The Sabbath begins at 5:49 P.M. on Friday, October 21, and concludes at 6:59 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
The Sabbath begins at 6:05 P.M. on Friday, October 14, and concludes at 7:14 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
The Sabbath begins at 6:22 P.M. on Friday, October 7, and concludes at 7:31 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
Sukkot, or Sukkos in Ashkenazic, begins at 6:17 P.M. this Sunday, October 9.
The Festival of Sukkot–literally meaning booths, tents, tabernacles–is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days in the Diaspora, starting on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. It is one of the three festivals during which Jewish men were required to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the times of the Holy Temple.
On October 3 a ceremony was held in the Švenčionys city park to mark the anniversary of the onset of the mass murder of Jews in the region in the first week of October, 1941. In total over the course of the Holocaust approximately 8,000 Jews from the city and surround district were murdered.
Kristina Sizonova moderated the event. Speakers at the ceremony included Lithuanian Jewish Community executive board member Ela Gurina who is the chairwoman of the Holocaust Victims Commission, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Ruth Reches, Polish ambassador to Lithuania Urszula Doroszewska, deputy mayor of the Švenčionys district Violeta Čepukova, Pabradė’s Rytas Gymnasium history teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė and others.
Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue, Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius:
Monday, October 3:
6:30 P.M. Preparations for Yom Kippur, lesson on the holy day, kapparot ritual
Tuesday, October 4:
5:30 P.M. Supper before fast
6:10 P.M. Kol Nidre
6:30 P.M. Fast begins
Wednesday, October 5:
10:00 A.M. Shacharit morning prayer
12:00 noon Izkor
5:30 P.M. Mincha prayer
7:30 P.M. Niila prayer
7:38 P.M. conclusion of fast, dinner
Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky on Yom Kippur:
Katharina von Schnurbein, the European Commission’s coordinator for implementing strategies to combat anti-Semitism and foster Jewish life in Europe, visited the Vilnius ghetto and other memorial locations Wednesday, the Lithuanian Jewish Community reported.
She called attention to the poor state of monuments during the tour and called for more care and maintenance of such sites in Lithuania.
LJC staff member and guide Viljamas Žitkauskas provided the guided tour and told the visiting official about the 700-year history shared by Lithuanians and Jews, the importance of Vilnius as the Jerusalem of the North and the ruins left in the wake of the Holocaust.
LJC chairwoman Fainia Kukliansky accompanied von Schnurbein on the walking tour and said: “Vilnius is special in that it’s not enough to just see it. The buildings, the statues, even the paving stones have a deep and significant history. You have to hear Vilnius. I am pleased von Schnurbein found time in her busy schedule to visit the most important sites and to learn about our history, culture and traditions.”
Following a pause in activities, the first general meeting or jamboree of Litvak scouting groups will take place at 2:30 P.M. on October 6 at the Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium in Vilnius. For more information, please write skautai@lzb.lt.
The Sabbath begins at 6:40 P.M. on Friday, September 30, and concludes at 7:48 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.