Religion

Jewish Headstones Removed From Vilnius Church, Returned to Jewish Cemetery

Jewish Headstones Removed From Vilnius Church, Returned to Jewish Cemetery

As restoration took place on the Evangelical Reformist Church [used as the Chronika cinema in Soviet times] on Pylimo street in Vilnius, it was discovered Jewish cemetery headstones had been used for the front stairs leading to the main entrance. They have been returned to a Jewish cemetery, the Lithuanian Cultural Infrastructure Center reported.

When restoration work began, local residents noticed some kind of inscriptions on the stones. Experts from the Lithuanian Jewish Community were able to determine the origins of the stones from the shallow inscriptions, in some places barely visible. They approached Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department and commission was formed which determined the stones were actually Jewish grave markers. The stairs were removed and the monuments were sent to the old Jewish cemetery.

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Lithuanian News Site on Pakruojis Synagogue

Lithuanian News Site on Pakruojis Synagogue

Pakruojis Synagogue is a Monument to All the Jewish Houses of Prayer Which Stood in Lithuania

15min.lt, reprinted from a facebook user

It’s believed there were about 500 or 600 different Jewish houses of prayer in our country, although no one knows the exact number. There might have been more than 100 synagogues in Vilnius alone.

Most of Lithuania’s synagogues were wooden, but today we only have about a dozen. On the other hand, no other European state has so many surviving wooden synagogues.

The question of restoring these historically and culturally very valuable wooden buildings is coming up more and more. One wonderful example of a restored wooden synagogue stands in the town of Pakruojis. After walking through its interior and getting a closer look at its careful restoration, I was pleasantly surprised at what had been returned from the ravages of time, people’s neglect and even fires.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

Jerusalem of the North Orchestra Camp

Jerusalem of the North Orchestra Camp

The Jerusalem of the North youth orchestra camp will take place from August 15 to 25 at the Preila Library in Preila on the Curionian Spit in Lithuania under the tutelage of renowned Lithuanian conductor professor Donatas Katkus, Martynas Švegžda von Bekker, Dalia Dedinskaitė, Gleb Pyšniak and Darius Mažintas. The 10-day orchestra workshop will conclude in a joint concert with Vilnius’s St. Christopher Orchestra and the new orchestra made up of young participants, performing a jointly-prepared program of Jewish music.

“The Jewish culture of education means the book, music and sports. It’s not for nothing that the Jewish people have been literate for more than 5,000 years. The Lithuanian Jewish Community is happy the orchestra convened at this camp will perform Jewish music. That there aren’t many Jewish children attending the camp this year is, I think, a tourism mistake. Israeli families would love to vacation in Nida while their children attend camp and learn. There should be greater state support brought to these sorts of private and NGO initiatives. The children and adults who will prepare this concert will learn about Jewish composers. We all know how to talk about tolerance, but not all of us know how practice tolerance through deeds. The LJC and the orchestra are doing tolerance, which is what the state institutions should be doing,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky explained.

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Request for Help

The Lithuanian Jewish Community has received a request from a teacher and vice-principal from the Dniepropetrovsk Jewish school in the Ukraine. She is in Lithuania at the current time with her 28-year-old son. They are looking for a place to live either for free or at a small cost. They will have no place to live on September 1. If you can help or know who can, please contact Ruth Reches by email at ruthreches@gmail.com.

The 15th of Av: Love and Rebirth

The 15th of Av: Love and Rebirth

The Jewish mini-holiday of Tu B’Av

Our sages proclaimed the 15th of Av [Friday, August 12 in 2022] as one of the two greatest festivals of the year, yet they ordained no special observances or celebrations for it . . .

The 15th of Av is a most mysterious day. A search of the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) reveals no observances or customs for this date, except for the instruction that the tachanun (confession of sins) and similar portions should be omitted from the daily prayers (as is the case with all festive dates), and that one should increase one’s study of Torah, since the nights are beginning to grow longer, and “the night was created for study.”

The Talmud tells us that many years ago the “daughters of Jerusalem would go dance in the vineyards” on the 15th of Av, and “whoever did not have a wife would go there” to find himself a bride. And the Talmud considers this the greatest festival of the year, with Yom Kippur a close second!

Full article here.

Tisha b’Av on Saturday

Tisha b’Av on Saturday

Tisha b’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av on the Hebrew calendar, falls on Saturday, July 6 this year.

Tisha b’Av commemorates the destruction of the First Temple of Solomon ca. 587 BCE and the Second Temple in 70 CE in Jerusalem and is traditionally a day of fasting and mourning. Observance includes five prohibitions, the main one being a 25-hour fast. The Book of Lamentations is read in the synagogue followed by the recitation of kinnos, liturgical dirges for the Temple and Jerusalem. Since the day has become associated with other major Jewish tragedies, some kinnos recall other events, including the murder of the Ten Martyrs in ancient Rome, pogroms against medieval Jewish communities and the Holocaust.

According to tradition, the sin of the Ten Spies is the real origin of Tisha B’Av. In the Book of Numbers, 13:1-33 when the Israelites accepted their false report of the Promised Land, they wept, thinking God could no help them. The night the people wept and wailed was the ninth day of Av, which then became a day of weeping and misfortune for all time, according to tradition, following which the Jews were made to wander the desert for 40 years.

Panevėžys Jewish Community Celebrates 30th Birthday

Panevėžys Jewish Community Celebrates 30th Birthday

On July 24 members, partners and friends of the Panevėžys Jewish Community gathered to celebrate the organization’s 30th birthday. Chairman Gennady Kofman thanked active members of the community in carrying on Jewish tradition and preserving Jewish heritage and gave special thanks to supporters and partners for their contribution in expanding the Community’s activities.

Community members recalled how the Community was formed and paid respects to its first chairman, the journalist Anatolijus Fainblumas, and others. Sincere words of gratitude went to Righteous Gentile Jonas Markevičius’s son Vidmantas and daughter Janina, who have helped promote the Community as well in the local community. Thanks were given to executive board members Jurijus Grafman and his wife Svetlana. Deep gratitude was expressed for the Lithuanian Jewish Community and its chairwoman Faina Kukliansky.

Chairman Kofman told the 30-year story of the Community. On July 8, 1991, the Panevėžys Jewish Community was officially reconstituted and articles of incorporation filed at the Panevėžys municipality. Goals and duties were set then: “To develop the national consciousness of members, to raise the level of culture and spirituality, to conduct our activities based on exemplary behavior and sincerity, to cooperate with all sorts of democratic organizations and religious confessions,” etc.

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Sabbath Times

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 9:07 P.M. on Friday, July 29, and concludes at 10:36 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

Emannuel Levinas’s Grandson Thinks This Time Best since World War II

Emannuel Levinas’s Grandson Thinks This Time Best since World War II

Although the war in the Ukraine continues, David Hansel, the grandson of French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas with Lithuanian roots, currently visiting Kaunas, thinks things have never been so peaceful as now. He rejects claims of genocide in the Ukraine by either side in the conflict. In an interview with Lithuanian state radio and television, he shared his ideas about the country of Lithuania, where his family members were murdered in the Holocaust. He attended a five-day series of events about his grandfather held in Kaunas by the Emmanuel Levinas Center of the Lithuanian Health Sciences University and by other faculties at that university and a French organization. Although he says he isn’t a philosopher, he felt the duty to protect his grandfather’s legacy. He said he is a practicing Jew, but that it’s based on what he learned from his grandfather.

Full interview in Lithuanian here.

Limmud in the Woods 2022

Limmud in the Woods 2022

The annual international Limmud conference will be held August 19 and 20 in the woods of south Estonia. To register, go to the Limmud page here. For more information, check out Limmud’s facebook page here.

Condolences

With deep sadness we report Jakovas Mendelevskis passed away at the age of 91 on July 26. He had been deported from Lithuania by the Soviets and was a member of the minyan at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.

Russia Kicks Jewish Agency Out over Alleged Violation of Privacy Laws

Israel will send a delegation to Moscow next week in response to Russia’s escalation on the matter, Times of Israel reported.

Russia’s Justice Ministry filed suit on July 21 officially calling for the Jewish Agency for Israel to be dissolved.

Earlier in July the ministry issued a series of demands to the agency which would be difficult to implement. Jerusalem Post has reported the Russian ministry is alleging that the agency unlawfully collected personal data on Russian citizens, though the Post noted it’s not unusual for organizations like the agency to “collect information about people who apply for aliyah or who participate in their activities.”

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Sabbath Times

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 9:19 P.M. on Friday, July 22, and concludes at 10:53 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

Condolences

Richard Freund passed away in Charlottesville, Virginia, on July 14 due to complications involving a bone-marrow transplant he received 18 years ago. He was 67. Freund was a frequent visitor to Vilnius and a friend of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Besides annual summer digs at the Great Synagogue site in Vilnius, revealing many new facts and the existence of surviving elements and a few surprises at that site, he also headed the non-invasive investigation of the escape tunnel dug by the brenner kommando at Ponar, Jews who were forced to exhume corpses, burn the flesh and crush the bones, who themselves were slated for death upon completion of their task aimed at hiding Holocaust crimes. The rediscovery of the tunnel was featured in an hour-long documentary by NOVA on the American public television network PBS. Freund also led the effort to map the lost Jewish shtetl of Rumshishok (Rumšiškės) just outside Kaunas flooded in the post-war period to create a hydroelectric generation station, and worked on a number of other Jewish sites in Lithuania. He also used non-invasive techniques to investigate the Warsaw ghetto in 2021.

Freund always found the time in the middle of his work to explain his finds to interested on-lookers, and presented his findings to the Lithuanian Jewish Community in a series of presentations in Vilnius.

We mourn his loss and extend our deepest condolences to his widow Eliane, his three children Eli, Ethan, and Yoni and his many other family members and friends at the University of Hartford and around the world.

Jewish Headstones Removed from Vilnius Hill

Jewish Headstones Removed from Vilnius Hill

Jewish headstones used to construct stairs up Vilnius’s Tauras Hill (Góra Bouffałowa aka Tauro kalnas) during the Soviet era began to be removed Monday, the Vilnius city municipality reported.

Illegible headstones will be taken to the old Jewish cemetery in the Šnipiškės neighborhood next to the Palace of Sports for alleged safe-keeping, according to Vilnius city officials. Those with legible inscriptions will be brought to the old Jewish cemetery on Olandų street for research. According to the city, the removal of the headstones was coordinated with representatives of the Lithuanian Jewish Community and Lithuania’s Cultural Heritage Department.

Photograph by Saulius Žiūra.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

Discussion “Judaism and Christianity: Attitudes towards Morality”

The #ŽydiškiPašnekesiai discussion club invites the public to attend a panel discussion called “Judaism and Christianity: Attitudes towards Morality” at the Bagel Shop Café at 5:00 P.M. on Thursday, July 14. Arkadijus Vinokuras will moderate the discussion which will address Christian and Jewish positions on abortion and Lithuanian views of Russia’s war in the Ukraine. The discussion will take place in Lithuanian.

Vilna Gaon Mausoleum Now State-Protected Heritage Site

Vilna Gaon Mausoleum Now State-Protected Heritage Site

MadeinVilnius.lt

Lithuanian culture minister Simonas Kairys has added the mausoleum containing the remains of the Vilna Gaon at the Sudervės road cemetery in Vilnius to the list of cultural heritage sites. protected by the state.

In his order he wrote the mausoleum is important in terms of public dignity and should be protected because of its architectural, historical and commemorative significance.

The site and surrounding territory now has a protection status intended to maintain authenticity.

The rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon, lived in the 18th century and is considered one of the most remarkable commentators on the Talmud.

Full story in Lithuanian here.