Lithuanian Jewish Community

C.P.J.C.E. Press release regarding Snipiskes cemetery

The Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe

344 Fairholt Road, London N16 5HW Tel: 020 8802 6853 Fax: 020 8802 6905/8800 0279

23rd August 2015

Press Release

We are pleased to inform that the CPJCE and its USA counterparts Admas Kodesh and their affiliated Organisations and Rabbinical Boards in the USA and Europe, haw engaged in intense negotiations with the Lithuanian Government in conjunction with the Lithuanian Jewish Community with regard to the Government proposals over the Sports Palace at the Snipiskes cemetery.

The CPJCE and Admas Kodesh have been heavily involved in achieving the initial successful agreement in 2009, which secured the the comprehensive preservation and protection of the remainder of the Snipiskes Jewish cemetery that resulted in scrapping the planned development on the cemetery grounds, the removal of the parking lot and ensuring that no digging or construction would take place within the boundaries of the cemetery.

2015-08-23

Jewish Community of the City of Šiauliai letter

To:

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman, Lithuanian Jewish Community

Rabbi Chaim Burshtein

The members of the Board of Directors of the Jewish Community of the City of Šiauliai are writing to you.

Critical attacks upon the chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community authored by the Rabbi Chaim Burshtein have appeared recently on the internet.

We do not know the reasons behind the hostile position taken by Ch. Burshtein towards the leaders of the community, but we are displeased by the rabbi’s position. We cannot determine what role he plays in the life of the city of Vilnius, but as Chief Rabbi of Lithuania, he, in our opinion, is required to take an interest in the life of the regional communities. And this is exactly what has been missing.

2015-08-23

LJC Volunteers Clean Up Žasliai Jewish Cemetery

Members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community took part in a call for volunteers to clean up the Jewish cemetery in Žasliai in the Kaišiadorys.
A large contingent of LJC members including chairperson Faina Kukliansky, Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon, Kaišiadorys mayor V. Tomkus and Žasliai alderman Mindaugas Nasevičius all took part in the clean-up effort.

Photos:

2015-08-22

Pope Francis’s Visit to Israel in 2014

Dear readers,
The ambassador from the State of Israel to the Republic of Lithuania, His
Excellency Amir Maimon and His Excellency, the Metropolitan Archbishop Gintaras Linas Grušas

and the Ecclesiastical Heritage Museum of Vilnius have the pleasure of inviting you to the opening of an exhibition of photography,

“Pope Francis’s Visit to Israel in 2014,”

to take place at Cathedral Square in Vilnius (Katedros a. no. 2, Vilnius) at 4:00 P.M.
on Friday, August 26, 2015.

2015-08-22

Exhibit of Works by the in Plein Air L’école de Paris Art Workshop Opens

The opening of an exhibition of works produced by participants in the edcuational workshop Litvak Artists: The L’école de Paris Period 2015 has taken place. Dozens of people attended the event at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius, demonstrating something important and significant has taken place.

All of us together–the in plein air workshop participants, teachers and those just beginning to do art, plein air organizers and Jewish Community members and staff–have created something which has provided new opportunities for every participant and has given rise to a new creative artistic group. The result is a wonderful exhibit which surprised everyone. Most of the ceramics and painting works were done by people who have never worked with oil paints or clay before in their lives.

We hope this is only the beginning and that the creative work will continue.

Everyone is warmly welcomed to visit the exhibition.

2015-08-22

Movement in Spain: A Case Study

The overturning of the decision by a Spanish festival on Wednesday to cancel the singer Matisyahu’s planned concert for political reasons was a major victory for the World Jewish Congress and the FJCE, and it marked a defeat for the BDS movement.

On Sunday afternoon, August 16, a member of the WJC professional staff in New York became aware that the American-Jewish music artist Matisyahu had been disinvited from the Rototom Sunsplash festival in Spain after he had refused to sign a pro-Palestinian statement. He alerted members of the senior WJC staff in New York and Brussels who, within a matter of hours, in consultation with myself and with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) and their President, Isaac Querub Caro, drafted a statement condemning the festival’s action, especially since it was the recipient of public funds. I then consulted with our President, Ronald S. Lauder, and the statement was issued in his name that same day.

2015-08-21

Invitation

2015-08-21

“Have fun, safe ride”

This time the Israeli Embassy invites everyone to the bicycles ride in a beautiful Vilnius! Accompanied by the slogan “Have fun, safe ride” we will ride in the streets of Vilnius dressed in specially for this event designed T-shirts. In the end of the trip we will taste apples with honey: to meet the upcoming Jewish new year.

More info at Facebook

2015-08-20

Explosives Attack Near Jerusalem Wounds Israeli Soldier

An Israeli soldier was wounded by an explosives attack along a tunnel road just outside of Jerusalem. The IDF is currently in pursuit of the terrorist.

According the Israel Defense Forces, an explosive was thrown by Palestinian terrorists onto a military lookout post. An Israeli soldier was wounded in the eye but remained conscious.

The terrorist who fled the scene is being pursued by a large military force that is searching the Jerusaelm-Bethlehem area.

Israeli’s opposition leader Isaac Herzog warned that “those who harm Israelis will suffer the consequences.” He added that “without drastic changes, we may find ourselves in a third intifada.”

2015-08-20

Call for Volunteers to Clean Up Jewish Cemetery in Žiežmariai

The mayor and active citizens of the region of Kaišiadorys (Koshedar) are calling for more people to volunteer their time and labor to clean up the old Jewish cemetery in Žiežmariai (Zhezhmer) on Friday, August 21. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky invites members of the community and especially youth to take part in the effort. Tools will be provided.

Work begins at 10 A.M. and those who want to go should contact the Lithuanian Jewish Community by 5 P.M. on Thursday, August 20.

for more information, see: Facebook Event

According to the Lithuanian newspaper and website Lietuvos žinios [News of Lithuania], the town of Žiežmariai is first mentioned in the historical sources in the 14th century and received charter rights as a city in 1792. Besides the Old Jewish Cemetery, the town has other attractions such as buildings surviving from the 16th century, a monumental neo-Gothic church and a unique wooden synagogue from the 19th century. The Old Jewish Cemetery contains hundreds of burials witnessing to the bustling Jewish life there until World War II, when almost all remaining Jews of Žiežmariai were murdered.

2015-08-19

ANNOUNCEMENT

lzb_rastas_en

2015-08-18

Conference to mark the 90th anniversary of YIVO

In 1925, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was founded in Vilna (Wilno, Poland; now Vilnius, Lithuania), by key European intellectuals, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud, to record the history and pioneer in the critical study of the language, literature and culture of the Jews of Eastern Europe. In 1940, YIVO moved its permanent headquarters to New York City, becoming the only pre-Holocaust institution to transfer its mission to the United States from Europe. In 1941, the Nazis destroyed YIVO in Vilna and ransacked the archives and library. A portion of YIVO’s archives was sent to Frankfurt to become the basis of the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question; another part was hidden in Vilna; another part was destroyed. In 1946, the U.S. Army discovered the seized YIVO materials in the train depot in Offenbach, Germany and returned them to YIVO. The part that remained in Vilna was saved from the Soviets by a Lithuanian librarian, and remained hidden in the basement of a church until 1989. In 2014, YIVO along with its partners the Central State Archives of Lithuania and the National Library of Lithuania, launched the YIVO Vilna Collections, a seven-year project to preserve, digitize and virtually reunite YIVO’s prewar archives located in New York City and Vilnius, Lithuania. The project encompasses some 10,000 rare or unique publications and approximately 1.5 million documents to add to the existing 24 million documents and 385,000 books and periodicals the YIVO Archives and the YIVO Library currently hold. The conference in Vilnius will feature top YIVO officials, researchers and prominent members of Lithuanian, US and Israeli academia delivering presentations on a wide ranging variety of topics regarding the political, social and cultural context of the founding of YIVO, its current activities and future prospects.

2015-08-18

Klezmatics Live!

Presented by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Jewish Community of Lithuania: The Klezmatics, the gold standard of the klezmer revival, are celebrating their 30th anniversary! Rather than rest on their laurels ground-breaking recordings, a Grammy award, collaborations with the likes of Chava Alberstein, Itzhak Perlman, Allen Ginsberg, Tony Kushner and Woody Guthrie the band continues to push boundaries. Letters To Afar is an ongoing artistic collaboration between the Klezmatics and the award-winning video artist Péter Forgács that brings to life the rich and vibrant life of Jews in inter-war Poland using historical film footage from the YIVO Institute. The original ground-breaking video art installation was commissioned by POLIN and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in 2013 and has been seen by over 100,000 people on two continents.

2015-08-18

Reading from the Diary of Yitzchak Rudashevski

Yitzchak Rudashevski was born in Vilna in 1927 – his father, Eliyahu, worked in a publishing house, and his mother, Rosa, was a seamstress. In September 1941, when Yitzchak was not yet 14 years old, the Nazis forced the boy and his family into the Vilna Ghetto. At some point during the Nazi occupation, Yitzchak started writing a diary in Yiddish where he described the day to day horrors the Jewish population had to endure. In the main part of the diary, which encompasses the period from September 1942 to April 1943, the young man chronicled all aspects of the ghetto, using his literary talents to not only describe, but also to reflect with great clarity and insight for a 15 year-old upon what was happening within the walls of the houses and streets he had been confined to. As the author himself put it, “I consider that everything must be recorded and noted down, even the most gory, because everything will be taken into account”. In the fall of 1943, as the Vilna Ghetto was being liquidated, the Rudashevskis managed to hide away in a secret shelter, but after only two weeks the Nazis discovered their hiding place and executed everyone. Only Sarah Voloshin, Yitzchak’s cousin, managed to escape and flee to the forests surrounding Vilna. After the Soviets re-occupied the town in the summer of 1944, she returned to the shelter and found a small notebook, its more than 200 pages filled with handwriting, some in pen, and some in pencil. It was the diary of Yitzchak Rudashevski.

2015-08-18

2015 Vilnius Yiddish Institute Summer Course Graduation Ceremony

The 2015 Yiddish summer course at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute of Vilnius University concluded at the usual location, the courtyard of a restaurant adjacent to the university in the Old Town, with music, a theatrical presentation, the issuance of diplomas and plenty of food to go around. An addition this year was a sort of daycare center-corner for small children with toys and books.

Šarūnas Liekis, the head of the institute, served as MC and addressed the audience in Yiddish.

This summer’s crop of students included a Japanese individual, an American contingent, a Polish contingent, ethnic Lithuanians and people hailing from other parts of the world.

Arkady Vinokur presented a preview of the New Yiddish Theater project he is working on.

The audience included all the faculty and staff of the summer course, former students, Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky and LJC deputy chairwoman Maša Grodnikienė, local Jewish and Jewish-friendly residents and what seemed like an unusal number of primary-school-age children who left before the event was over.

Pictures:

2015-08-16

On the Establishment of the Yachad Organization

The Lithuanian Jewish Community would like to inform you that the Jewish organization Yachad is not connected with the Lithuanian Jewish Community, the Vilnius Jewish Religious Community of the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Association. On the organization’s webpage, they say they invited everyone who so desires, without regard to ethnicity, belief or place of residence, to become members and participate in Jewish religious life. The Lithuanian Jewish Community does not support this invitation and does not support the establishment of this organization because we believe it violates the principles of Judaism. This organization seeks to establish itself in the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius, although no permission has been given for this.

We would like to remind them the synagogue is the property of the Vilnius Religious Jewish Community.

2015-08-15

LJC Chairwoman Responds to Attacks in Israeli Press

Despite a Jerusalem Post story that would suggest otherwise (“Anger flares over Lithuanian Sports Palace” Sam Sokol, 8/11/2015) there is today a remarkable consensus in Vilnius that the site of the former Snipiskes Cemetery and the graves beneath must be protected. On this matter, the government of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Jewish Community which I chair, and the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe (CPJCE) which is Europe’s foremost halachic authority on cemeteries all agree.

Attention is now focused on the abandoned former Soviet Sports Palace, which partially sits on the cemetery grounds and in its current condition is mostly a gathering place for graffiti artists and alcoholics. The government rightly wants to renovate the building and turn it into a center for conferences and cultural events. Because the building itself has been designated an architectural heritage site, no significant structural changes are possible, but the interior will be renovated. The surrounding area will be maintained as a memorial park with inscriptions that describe some of the famous people who were buried here.

2015-08-14

Report by Vilnius Jewish Religious Community on August 14, 2015

We would like to inform you that an extraordinary general meeting of the Vilnius Jewish Religious Community was held today, August 14, 2015. The Vilnius Jewish Religious Community resolved that since now the term of the contract with Chaim Burstein has passed, not to renew the contract and to appoint Shmuel Yatom to serve the function of rabbi in the interim while a new rabbi is found.

Shmuel Levin
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community

2015-08-14

Scots Jews: Identity, Belonging and the Future

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum and the Embassy of the United Kingdom to Lithuania

kindly invites you to the opening of the exhibition

„Scots Jews: Identity, Belonging and the Future“,

photographs by J u d a h P a s s o w.

The opening reception will take place on the 25th of August, 2015, at 5.30 p.m.,

at the Tolerance Center (Naugarduko Str.10/2, Vilnius).

A unique and contemporary photography exhibition on Scottish Jewish life from world-renowned documentary photographer Judah Passow, brought for the first time to Lithuania. The exhibition, from 2013, captures the complexity and diversity of Scottish Jews at the beginning of the 21^st century. The Scottish Jewish community dates back to at least the 1700s and has produced scientists and doctors, judges and Members of Parliament, artists and writers, farmers and foresters, kilt makers and whisky distillers! The story of this community and how it maintains its traditions, while fully embracing Scottish culture is a fascinating one.

Come and see for yourself this fascinating and powerful exhibition at the Tolerance Centre in Vilnius from 25 August until the 5th of October, 2015.

Producer of the Exhibition Michael Mail.

2015-08-13

About the anger on Šnipiškes cemetery and the Congress Centre project

Why is there so much anger and such a lack of truth emanating from an article by the well known and much respected Israeli newspaper Jerusalem Post regarding the former Jewish cemetery in the neighborhood of Šnipiškės (Shnipishyok, aka Piramont) in Vilnius, demolished by the Soviets in 1950 to make way for the Palace of Sports, which is now the subject of plans to renovate as a conference center? The Government of Lithuania is only planning to renovate existing buildings to serve as a conference center and for other cultural events while at the same time cleaning up and commemorating the territory of the former Jewish cemetery. This decision is being implemented in cooperation with members of the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe who are to be included as supervisors over all work there. The Government’s actions regarding the project are being coordinated fully with the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe.

2015-08-13

Israeli President Isaac Herzog Visits Lithuania

On the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania