Two female rabbis, Rachel Logan and Hilly Haburn, decided to extend their study-tour in Lithuania this year in order to attend several different Passover seders here.

As usual, Vilnius had multiple public seders this year, including the usual Lithuanian Jewish Community seder, the Chabad Lubavitch Center’s seder conducted by Rabbi Krinsky, and the independent seder sponsored and organized annually by Rabbi Feffer. This year, however, Amit Belaitė, the president of the Lithuanian Union of Jewish Students, took things to a new level, literally. Her seder was held high above Vilnius, in the restaurant midway up the Vilnius Television Tower in the Karoliniškės neighborhood of Vilnius.

Belaitė’s luftseder was conducted by the two female rabbis who had been invited to stay on in Vilnius for this purpose, at 6:00 P.M on Sunday, April 5, 2015. On the first night of Passover they had attended the LJC seder, the Rabbi Samuel Jacob Feffer seder and the Chabad Lubavich seder of Rabbi Sholom Krinsky.

The Lithuanian news and variety magazine Veidas in their February 20, 2015 issue published a long article about the dangers of anti-Semitism in Europe and the prospects for an attack on Jews in Lithuania. The author interviewed several Lithuanian Jews, including Lithuanian Jewish Community chair Faina Kukliansky and head of the Sholem Aleichem Jewish school Miša Jakobas.

“The situation in Europe today is not very promising, it’s not looking good, and I am afraid it might get worse than it is now. I am a child of the post-war era. There are many people who say this generation whose parents experienced and survived the terrors of the war has many problems because we are always afraid. And I am personally afraid of the times past returning. Current events remind me of Nazi Germany, where everything also began from simple things: one person insults another, store windows are broken, and slowly things head towards what happened,” Jakobas commented for the Lithuanian magazine.

Two young female rabbis with a group of female rabbinical students from the USA and Israel took part in the annual Passaover Seder held by the Lithuanian Jewish Community on April 3 this year. The young Reform rabbis-in-training, who say talking about their beliefs does not in any way contradict anything in the Torah, stand in favor of sexual equality and diversity in Judaism.

The rabbis and students plan to attend a special Seder being held at the Television Tower on April 5 in Vilnius as well, an event organized by Amit Belaite, the president of the Lithuanian Union of Jewish Students and an active public Jewish figure in Lithuania.

Members of the public are invited to attend this seder with the two female Reform rabbis. The location is the Paukčių takas cafe, which is most of the way up the Vilnius Television Tower located at Sausio 13-osios street No. 10. The seder costs 10 euros (and the cost of riding the elevator to the cafe is included) and will begin at 6:00 P.M. on Sunday, April 5,  2015. Dinner will include soup, the tradition Passover foods, a hot dessert, wine, coffee and tea. There will be surprises, singing, ageless traditions as well as new friends made and a wonderful small bash of a party. The food will be kosher.

Dear Friends,
You are kindly and cordially invited to meet film director from Australia
Rod Freedman
Who will be presenting his documentary “Uncle Chatzkel”
In Vilnius Jewish Public Library, Gedimino pr. 24,
on March 30, at 3 PM
(Please mind that screening of the same documentary with Lithuanian sound and communication providing interpretation services with Rod Freedman will be held on the same day at 6 PM)

Film director from Australia Rod Freedman presents his documentary “Uncle Chatzkel” in Vilnius Jewish Public Library.
On Monday, March 30, 2015, at 3 PM guests of the Vilnius Jewish Public Library will have a rare opportunity to meet a famous film director and producer from Australia Rod Freedman – an independent director, producer and executive producer whose documentaries have won many Australian and international awards and screened in dozens of film festivals. Rod is particularly interested in stories about people and their life’s journeys. Rod’s most recent film as producer is ONCE MY MOTHER, showing in the 2015 Vilnius International Film Festival in the ‘Lithuanians Abroad’ program. Rod’s grandparents were Jewish Lithuanian.

The deputy CEO of the World Jewish Congress, Maram Stern, was in Turkey this week to take part in the re-opening ceremony of the Great Synagogue of Edirne, which was restored for $2.5 million and is the first synagogue to open in Turkey in two generations. Guest of honor at the ceremony was Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç.

Turkey’s Jewish community head, İshak İbrahimzadeh, attended the morning service conducted by Davud Azuz, who had led the last service at the synagogue 46 years ago. An estimated 250 people attended the service in the temple, which has a capacity of 1,200. “I would like to thank those who contributed,” Azuz said, referring to the community effort to re-open the Great Synagogue.

In testimony before a key US Congressional committee on Tuesday, World Jewish Congress President Ronald S. Lauder warned that radical Islam was fueling the flames of a new anti-Semitism engulfing Europe, and criticized the United States for failing to lead the fight to extinguish the threat.

Appearing on behalf of WJC – representing more than 100 Jewish communities worldwide – before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, Lauder said: “In order to defeat this new flame of radical Islamic terror and survive, the United States must lead. The United States can and must speak loudly and clearly to condemn this evil for what it is – the radical Islamic hatred of Jews.”

The Grand Edirne Synagogue in Turkey that went through renovation from 2010 until the beginning of 2015 with funding from General Directorate for Foundations will open its doors again on March 26th after a special ceremony. Jewish community head, İshak İbrahimzadeh, who visited the synagogue before the opening ceremony, said the opening of the restored synagogue was a milestone that made him very happy.

Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç and Turkey’s chief rabbi, İshak Haleva, will attend the opening, along with many other Jewish community members from both Turkey and abroad. Faina Kukliansky Lithuanian Jewish (Litvaks) Community chairperson was invited byDeputy Prime Minister  of Turkey H.E. Bülent Arınç to take part in the ceremony marking the reopening of the historic Grand Synagogue of Edirne, a town known as Adrianople in ancient times; became the second capital of the Ottoman Empire in  the 14th century A.D. before Istanbul, and it preserved its importance as the most prominent imperial city in the Balkan domains for centuries to come. Jews lived for at least twenty centuries in Edirne, a city that once was the center of Jewish life in the Balkans Region. However, today there aren’t any Jews living in the city.

The Grand Synagogue in Edirne was built during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II by the architectural model of the famous Leopoldstädter Tempel in Vienna in Moorish style and opened to worship in 1907. It was known as the second largest synagogue in Europe at that time. However, it fell into disrepair in the following decades and finally abandoned in 1983.

by Dovid Katz

We have this week made available two more videos from late 1990s expeditions to record the language, memories and world view of the last Yiddish-speaking Litvaks in Belarus. These videos are of return trips in 1998 to friends made in previous years, this time accompanied by the famed Lithuanian documentary film maker and Holocaust educator Saulius Beržinis, founder of the Independent Holocaust Archive of Lithuania.

One video is of the famous Litvak Yiddish author, Hirsh Reles (1913—2004), a native of Tsháshnik (Časniki, northeastern Belarus). Speaking in his apartment in Minsk, he talks about his father, Leybe, of Kovno (Kaunas) who himself dreamt of becoming a writer and moved to Vilna for that purpose. When things didn’t work out, he relocated northeastward to Tsháshnik, where he worked as a teacher, and was the one and only misnáged (non-hosed, Litvak in the popular religious sense) in town. He was trusted to read the Torah in the synagogue (it’s the same for both) but not to lead in prayers, because there are differences between the Litvak and Hasidic rites (even today here in Vilnius…).