The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to greet the Sabbath with guest and artist Raimondas Savickas on the 100th birthday of his father and celebrated Lithuanian painter Augustinas Savickas at 6:00 P.M. on May 10 on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community.
Victims of the Holocaust were commemorated at Ponar outside Vilnius April 2 on Yom haSHoah or Holocaust Day.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon, members of the community and Holocaust survivors placed wreaths at the central monument there, offered up prayers and placed small stones at the edge of the killing pits.
Kukliansky said this year’s commemoration didn’t include a March of the Living from the Ponar railroad to the mass murder site and that Lithuanian politicians weren’t invited. She said there will be larger commemorations in Kaunas and Šiauliai in July.
“The anniversary of the liquidation of the Kaunas ghetto will be held on July 14 and that of Šiauliai July 15, and there is the 23rd [of August?], observed nationally. We decided to do without speeches, we will just attend,” she said.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community held its main Passover seder with the Vilnius Jewish Religious Community at the Old Town Hall in Vilnius. Around 40 tables with 10 places each were filled to capacity in the historic building’s main hall on the second storey and in a large side room. Jewish public figures including MP Emanuelis Zingeris and Sholem Aleichem Gymansium prinicipal Miša Jakobas, among others, attended. The Choral synagogue;s Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinski, Rebbetzin Nechama Dina Krinsky and one of their elder sons led the candle-lighting, haggadah and kiddush, and explained the special rules for when the first day of Passover falls on the Sabbath. The entire Jewish population in Lithuania is estimated at around 4,000 people, so this seder was attended by about 10% of the Jewish population of Lithuania. In earlier years competing Passover seders by competing rabbis in Vilnius tended to attract different groups of celebrants. The largest main seders by the LJC in living memory were not as large as this year’s.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community, honoring the rule of law, has condemned the wanton vandalism which destroyed a memorial plaque owned by the Vilnius municipality honoring Holocaust perpetrator Jonas Noreika.
Despite our condemnation of violence and vandalism, we are left wondering by what system of values Liberal Party Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius on the day before the Jewish holiday of liberation, Passover, has “greeted” Lithuanian Jews with an order to create a facsimile plaque honoring the man who established the Šiauliai ghetto and to place it at the same location.
It seems the placement of memorial plaques in the Lithuanian capital corresponds to Šimašius’s personal likes and dislikes. In February of 2018 Šimašius criticized a commemoration of interwar pro-Zionist Lithuanian president Antanas Smetona, saying: “Vilnius is a cosmopolitan and open city and must symbolize these ideas. I am truly not a fan of the Smetona statue.” Apparently mayor Šimašius believes the multicultural legacy of Vilnius is much better symbolized by honoring a Lithuanian Nazi.
Nobel prize-winning Litvak and American neurologist Paul Greengard passed away April 13. Although he was born in New York City, he was descended from Jews from Virbalis, Lithuania. He won the Nobel prize for physiology and medicine in 2000. He was born December 11, 1925 and died at the age of 93.
His mother died in child-birth and his father Benjamin remarried an Episcopalian. While studying at MIT Paul helped develop warning systems for attacks by Japanese kamikaze pilots. After World War II he attended Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, where he was graduated in 1948 with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics. He decided to forgo graduate school in physics because post-war physics research was predominantly about nuclear weapons, and became interested in biophysics. Greengard began work on the molecular and cellular function of neurons. In 1953 he received his PhD and began postdoctoral work at the University of London, Cambridge University and the University of Amsterdam. In 2000 Greengard, Arvid Carlsson and Eric Kandel were awarded the Nobel prize for physiology and medicine for their discoveries made in chemical and electric signal transduction in the nervous system. Paul Greengard used his Nobel Prize honorarium to help fund the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize, an award for women scientists named after his mother and established in 2004 to shine a spotlight on exceptional women in science. He is survived by two sons. Our deepest condolences to his family, friends and many colleagues.
The Litvak cemetery catalog organization Maceva (www.litvak-cemetery.info) began documenting the old Jewish cemetery in Seirijai, Lithuania, last year and the work is almost complete.
During an international summer camp held August 6 to 19 in 2018, all surviving headstones were cleaned, cataloged and digitized. A total of 692 were found. Maceva has issued a map of the cemetery following the intense clean-up and cataloging there. The Lithuanian Jewish Community has partially funded some of the cemetery renovation and digitization project.
This year marked the 75th anniversary of the horrific Children’s Aktion [mass murder operation] in the Kaunas ghetto. This year as in past years the event was commemorated at Robertas Antinis’s statue Torah of the Children, with an expanded commemoration to mark the milestone date at the J. Gruodis Concert Hall.
Lithuanian actor Aleksandras Rubinovas read excerpts from eye-witnesses and historians about what happened on March 27, 1944: “The aktion commanded by oberfuehrer Fuchs and oberscharfuehrer Kittel, was conducted in order to transform the ghetto into a concentration camp where only those fit for work would be held; the children and elderly were supposed to be liquidated.”
A passage from the book “Išgelbėti bulvių maišuose” [Rescued in Potato Sacks], a collection of memoirs by survivors rescued as children from the Kaunas ghetto: “We saw a bus. There was loud music coming from it which was supposed to drown out the children’s screams, the begging of the mothers and the barking of the dogs. Drunken berserk Ukrainians wielding axes and crowbars hunted the children and elderly out of their hiding places. The atrocities ended at about sunset.
Time: 6:00 P.M., April 4, 2019
Location: atrium, 5th floor, Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library, Gedimino prospect no. 51, Vilnius
The Sacred Texts of the World lecture series by the Philosophy Faculty of Vilnius University continues with a seventh lecture on the Talmud by Dr. Aušra Pažėraitė.
She will attempt to answer the questions of who the Talmudic sages were/are, what the structure of the Talmud is and what the special features of Talmudic discourse consist of.
The lecture is free and open to the public.
Rabbi Borukh Gorin from Russia gave a presentation of the life and work of Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer at the 2019 Lithuanian Jewish Community Limmud held in Druskininkai this month.
Gorin is editor-in-chief of the Lekhaim magazine and the Knizhniki publishing house. The magazine is published on paper (about 7,000 copies per issue) and the internet, and is read by about 80,000 internet subscribers. The hard-copy magazine is sent out to readers in Israel, Europe and America, as well as 75 other countries. Gorin says Lekhaim is a window on the contemporary Jewish world and contains articles on history, religion and modern Jewish life. It is published in Russian. It often contains information about Lithuanian Jews. Some time ago the magazine featured Chaim Grade, one of the most important writers in Yiddish who was born in Vilnius on April 4, 1910. He passed away in New York on April 26, 1982. Following the death of his widow, unpublished manuscripts by Chaim Grade were discovered and should be published within a few years. Grade wrote about Vilnius.
In Druskininkai Gorin spoke about Bashevis Singer, calling him one of two well-known Yiddish writers, along with Sholem Aleichem. Singer wrote about Polish Jewish life before the Holocaust. Gorin pointed out Singer came from a family of talented writers, with his brother Israel and sister Ester respected writers in their own right. His father was a rabbi and a good storyteller and his mother was a rationalist and aristocrat. Bashevis Singer moved to the USA before World War II and wrote for the Forward, where he published a cycle about a Polish Jewish family. Singer describes Polish Jewish life and he wrote after the war as if the Holocaust had never happened.
The Panevėžys Jewish Community celebrated Purim with a play, carnival costumes and masks this year. “The Purim holiday is full of fun, community and the faith the Jewish people are strong and able to overcome all afflictions,” Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told celebrants. Holiday greetings from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and others were also delivered.
The Purim play was performed by A. Narevič as Ahasuerus, V. Savinčė as Esther, G. Kofman as Mordechai and G. Šteimanas as Haman.
O. Juošpaitienė served as MC at the celebration and told the story of the Purim holiday contained in the Book of Esther.
Students at Ruth Reches’s Hebrew classes at the Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated Purim the way it should be celebrated, with masks and treats.
The Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community celebrated the spring holiday of liberation, Purim, with masks, games, good talk, good music, good food, coffee and hamentashen.
You’re kindly invited to the opening of Leonid Plotkin’s photography exhibit “Nostalgia for Eternity: The Indian Subcontinent: Religion, History and Myth”. The opening reception is to take place at the Tolerance Center of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, Naugarduko street no. 10/2, Vilnius, at 5.30 P.M. on March 28, 2019.
Chabad Lubavich of Lithuania is celebrating Purim this year with a Mexican theme.
The celebration begins at 6:00 P.M. on Wednesday, March 20, at the Grand Resort Hotel (formerly the Villon Hotel) in Vilnius.
There will be a reading of the Esther scroll, followed by a klezmer concert, with Mexican food, a kosher piñata, more music, dancing and a Mexican bar (margaritas). There will also be a carnival costume contest for the kids and adults, and lots of games.
Tickets are 10 euros for adults (15 at the door), 5 euros for senior citizens and children, and children under 12 get in free. Tickets are available at the Choral Synagogue (Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius), Chabad House (Bokšto street no. 19, Vilnius) or via bank transfer to the Jewish Religious Community Chabad, account no. LT35 7044 0600 0137 1339.
Greetings to everyone on this perhaps happiest of all holidays, Purim, celebrated in spring.
We wish you uplifting emotions, happy moments and success. Make sure to have a mask at the ready! The holiday celebrated on the first month of spring is filled with fun, community and the faith that the Jewish people are strong and able to overcome all problems. Happy Purim!
The Bagel Shop Café has made a tradition out of offering Litvak-style hamentashen pastries on Purim and this year is no different. Purim, the 14th and 15th days of the month of Adar on the Jewish calendar, falls on March 20 and 21 this year. The Bagel Shop Café is located at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius inside the Lithuanian Jewish Community but with its own street-level entrance.
Roza Bielauskienė will speak on the topic of the “The United Kingdom: King David” at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 1:00 P.M. on Sunday, March 24.
The United States embassy in Tallinn condemned an incident in the Estonian capital during which a man hurled insults at Rabbi Efraim Shmuel Kot.
A 27-year-old was being detained by traffic police Saturday for riding the tramway without a ticket when Rabbi Kot and family walked past on their way to shul. The man reportedly yelled “Heil Hitler,” “Sieg heil” and “What are you staring at, Jew? You’re going into the oven” in Estonian.
The US embassy issued a statement condemning the verbal assault, calling it hate speech, and saying it had no place in modern society. The embassy warned words matter and can turn into action if ignored.
The Limmud tradition is about Jewishness and identity. Once per year the LJC organizes the traditional Limmud conference so members can come together, celebrate Sabbath together, take in many interesting lectures. Limmud comes from the Hebrew word “to learn.”
LJC programs director Žana Skudovičienė, veteran Limmud organizer, says this tradition demands a lot of work, energy and ingenuity.
This year our Lithuanian Limmud was held at the Europe Royal Hotel in the southern Lithuanian spa town Druskininkai with heavy attendance by LJC members and guests and young families with toddlers. Skudovičienė said some of the parents had themselves attended Limmud as children decades ago.
This year’s Limmud seemed more intimate than in former years, according to attendees, with Jews gathering from all over Lithuania, less formal speeches and more music, dance and fun–with a real spirit of yidishkayt.
Speakers and performers to include:
Ilya Kalmanovskiy, journalist, teacher, educational program enthusiast and moderator (Moscow)
Boruch Gorin, journalist, writer, editor of Lekhaim magazine (Moscow)
Juriy Tabak, religious studies expert, translator, author (Moscow)
Aleksandr Dukhovny, senior rabbi of progressive Jewish congregations (Kiev)
Sasha Galitsky, artist, author (Israel)
Regina Pats, cinema expert, to speak on new program of Israeli films (Tallinn)
Dr. Lara Lempertienė, scholar, director of Lithuanian National Library’s Judaica Studies Center