Lithuanian Jewish Community

Little Day Camp “Anoye”

Want something new? Then bring the kids to the new creative and educational children’s day camp called Anoye!

Group 1 is for kids aged 3-5, group 2 for 6 to 8-year-olds.Location: The Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street No. 4 in Vilnius.

The mini-camp will take place from 10:00 A.M. to 3:00 P.M. from August 18 to 22, with a special event called Ensemble for parents and kids on August 24.

The children will be taught new things and skills playing with professional educators from the preschool education institution Vaikystės sodas“ ( http://www.vaikystes-sodas.lt/ ) using the Kimochi method.Not only will your kids learn about Jewish arts and crafts, they’ll become true craftspeople for the entire week, including candle-makers, potters, weavers and braiders.

Don’t miss this great opportunity to encounter new ways of learning! gistration is open until August 14.

If you’d like to take part in the camp, please fill out the electronic registration form at

http://form.jotformeu.com/form/42092291294354

For further information please contact Julija Lipšic by telephone at 8 659 52604 or Diana Cadovič at 8 652 10642.

Please note that space is limited and enrollment is on a first-come, first-serve basis.

We strongly believe the mini-camp will help the children learn new things and skills, become better acquainted with Jewish arts and crafts and will be a lot of fun as well as a creative and meaningful way to pass the time.

2014-08-13

Israelis race to find Ebola vaccine

Two Israeli doctors are studying Ebola and Marburg virus survivors to develop a human antibody therapy.

By Avigayil Kadesh

On August 8, the World Health Organization declared the West African Ebola epidemic, which has killed about 1,000 people, an international public-health emergency. It called upon member states and private donors to expend greater resources toward finding a cure for the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Currently there is no vaccine or cure.

Significant gains in this field are happening in Israel, where Dr. Leslie Lobel and Dr. Victoria Yavelsky have been working for years to track down all survivors of the Ebola and Marburg viruses in Uganda and take blood samples from them. Both of these Equatorial viruses cause hemorrhagic fever and kill close to 90 percent of victims.

2014-08-12

ISIS, Nazis and the ideology of hate

It would be eminently reasonable to suppose that the kind of evil embodied by the Nazis and their radical ideology of hate and exclusion should have disappeared from the face of the earth along with the total defeat of the Third Reich nearly seventy years ago. Such Ideologies, however, did not die out with the end of the Nazi regime. Today far too many groups still pursue exclusionist visions, propelled by ideologies of hate. They think, like the Nazis before them, that in the name of fanatical beliefs they have the right to decide who should live and who should die, and they act zealously on their murderous convictions. Perhaps most menacing among them today is the Islamic State, also known as IS, ISIL, ISIS, and DAESH.

More at timesofisrael.com

2014-08-12

Old City to Become Disabled-Friendly, After 3,000 Years

Jerusalem Development Authority announces 20 million shekel project to open the Old City, Western Wall for tourists with disabilities.

Accessibility ramps and other improvements are being added throughout Jerusalem’s Old City, allowing the disabled easier access to the Western Wall 3,000 years after Solomon built his Temple there, the Jerusalem Development Authority (JDA) announced Tuesday.

A special project of the Jerusalem Development Authority, the Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Office, the Jerusalem Municipality and Social Security, the project will see ramps built in the Jewish Quarter, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the City of David – places that were previously inaccessible to the handicapped. The project will cost, in total, roughly 20 million shekel ($5.75 million).

Improvements include installing sloping ramps over stairs to help wheelchairs maneuver comfortably, changing signs to accommodate visitors with vision problems, and other cues to help the handicapped find their way.

More at iraelnationalnews.com

2014-08-12

Clinton: anti-Semitism an important factor in criticism of Israel on Gaza

Former American Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is identifying anti-Semitism as an important motivation for the international criticism of Israel’s incursion in Gaza, according to a new interview.

“It is striking … that you have more than 170,000 people dead in Syria. … You have Russia massing battalions—Russia, that actually annexed and is occupying part of a UN member-state—and I fear that it will do even more to prevent the incremental success of the Ukrainian government to take back its own territory, other than Crimea. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Ukraine on both sides, not counting the [Malaysia Airlines] plane, and yet we do see this enormous international reaction against Israel, and Israel’s right to defend itself, and the way Israel has to defend itself,” RodhamClinton said in an August 10 interview with The Atlantic magazine. “This reaction is uncalled for and unfair.”

Clinton continued: “You can’t ever discount anti-Semitism, especially with what’s going on in Europe today. There are more demonstrations against Israel by an exponential amount than there are against Russia seizing part of Ukraine and shooting down a civilian airliner. So there’s something else at work here than what you see on TV.”

Read at www.worldjewishcongress.org

2014-08-12

After quiet night, Gaza rockets begin anew

Code Red sirens pierce the air as Operation Protective Edge enters 33rd day of fighting; latest salvo comes after 10-hour lull; IAF strikes targets in Gaza overnight.

Residents of southern Israel awoke early Saturday morning to the piercing sound of code red rocket alerts, as a barrage of rockets from Gaza targeted their neighborhoods.

Militants in the Strip renewed fire just before 7:00 a.m. as sirens blared throughout communities in the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council in the northwestern Negev, and in the Eshkol region, which borders Gaza.

A rocket landed in open territory in the Sha’ar Hanegev area, while four rockets exploded outside a community in the Eshkol Council. A second round of sirens were heard in the Eshkol area just before 9:00 a.m., as a rocket launched from the Strip hit a field just outside a community

The latest salvo comes after ten hours of quiet on the Gaza border. Over 50 rockets were fired on Friday towards Israel, as Hamas renewed its rocket fire at the end of a temporary,72-hour lull in fighting.

2014-08-09

Action «Stand with Israel» in Jewish Community of Estonia

We stand with I

On 7 August the Jewish Community of Estonia has organized an event called “Stand with Israel! Support Israel!” that gathered over one hundred participants in the courtyard of the Community Center at Karu 16 who came to voice their support of the people of Israel and to remember the fallen. The event was conducted by a well-known radio presenter Ilja Ban.

The Community Center’s courtyard was decorated with banners with words of support to the state of Israel. Each of the participants was holding a flag with the Star of David. Israel music was played.

Participants were able to take pictures against a specially made banner and the snapshot was immediately posted on the board titled “We stand with Israel!”

Everyone was able to add a wish to a photo: “Am Yisrael Chai!”, “The people of Israel lives!”, “Shalom!”, etc.

Among the speakers were Alla Jakobson, the chairwoman of the Jewish Community of Estonia, Igor Grjazin, a member of Riigikogu and a chairman of the parliamentary group for Estonian-Israeli relations, Gennadi Gramberg and Hanon Barabaner – memebrs of the Community board, Rabbi Shmuel Kot.

Jonah Adams, a US volunteer working in the Community, together with madrichs performed the prayer “ACHEINU. Our Brothers”.

In the end all the participants sang the Hatikvah together with the Jekaterina Erlich, the principal performer of the Community band “Machol” and then released to the sky balloons matching the colors of Israeli flag while once again chanting “Am Yisrael Chai!”

2014-08-08

Special Message from Prime Minister Netanyahu to Jewish communities leaders

2014-08-08

Condolences

BASHEVA RAN (1916-2014)

The Jewish Community of Lithuania extends sincere condolences to our friend Professor Faye Ran (New York City), who has visited our community on a number of occasions, on the death of her mother, Basheva Ran (born in Vilna in 1916 to Josef Konski and Sarah Ahs Konski; passed away in the US on 30 July 2014). Basheva Ran was the wife of the late Leyzer Ran, author of the three volume Jerusalem of Lithuania, one of the greatest works ever compiled about Jewish Vilna (it appeared in New York in 1974), and of many other works, most of them about the prewar cultural wealth of the city once known as Jerusalem of Lithuania.

2014-08-07

LJC is looking for partners

CALL FOR PARTNERS FOR A JEWISH BOOKS’ HERITAGE PROJECT!

The Lithuanian Jewish Community is looking for partners to implement a project, aimed at preserving and promoting the Lithuanian Jewish books’ heritage. The main goal of the project is to make a large collection of the Jewish books, present in Lithuania, more accessible to researchers as well as to the wider audience.

For more information you are very welcome to contact Zivile (zhivileh@hotmail.com).

Kind regards from Vilnius,

The Lithuanian Jewish Community

2014-08-05

Why Vilna was Called Jerusalem of Lithuania and Today’s Date in the Jewish Calendar…

VILNA, JERUSALEM OF LITHUANIA — VÍLNE, YERUSHOLÁYIM D’LÍTE (Yiddish) — VÍLNO, YERUSHOLÁYIM D’LÍTO (Ashkenazic Hebrew) — VÍLNA, YERUSHALÁYIM D’LÍTA (Israeli):

According to an old Vilna tradition, the Jewish-calendar date starting this evening (4 August 2014, lasting until after dark on the 5th), the ancient fast-day Tíshebov (Tisha b’Av, Ninth of Av) commemorating the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar’s armies (“Jews have a long memory”) is ALSO the 202nd anniversary of the day that Napoleon, in Vilna in the course of his attempted conquest of the Russian Empire, coined the name “Jerusalem of Lithuania” (in some versions: “Jerusalem of the North”).

When, during his summer 1812 sojourn here, on the fast-day Tíshebov, he saw the extraordinary magnitude of wailing in the Jewish quarter, over an event rather deep in antiquity, as if it had happened just yesterday, he spontaneously came out with the words.

[But to be a Litvak who tells and then spoils a good story with the actual facts — There is documentary evidence that the concept “Jerusalem of Lithuania” for Vilna had by then taken hold in strictly internal Jewish sources; it occurs in poetic recombinations of biblical passages referring to Jerusalem in the memoir that two sons of the Gaon of Vilna dedicated to their father who died in 1797. I attempted a translation into English; it appears on pp. 94-105 of “Lithuanian Jewish Culture,” Baltos lankos, Vilnius 2010). For example: “Blessed are you, O Vilna, City of Splendor” where the Hebrew text is an epithet for Jerusalem from Jeremiah 49: 25.]

— Dovid Katz

2014-08-04

Yankl-Yosl Bunk (Jakovas Bunka), 1923 – 2014

Yankl-Yosl Bunk (Jakovas Bunka), Famed Wood Sculptor, Last Jew of Plungyán (Plungė, Western Lithuania),

Dies at 91

Was World War II Red Army Veteran of the War Against Hitler

(13 July 1923 – 30 July 2014)

>> 2011 VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH YANKL-YOSL BUNK IN PLUNGYÁN

Bunk’s sculptures; his memoir of Jewish Plungyán; JewishGen Kehila links; Adam Ellick on Bunk; JTA; Bunk’s list of the Jews of Plungyán; “hypothetical” speech at the 2011 Plungyán commemoration.

More at defendinghistory.com

2014-08-04

Condolences

Condolences to Efraim, and all the Zuroff family, on the loss of his dear father, Abraham N. Zuroff, who passed away peacefully at the age of 92 in Jerusalem on Sunday August 3rd. Rabbi Dr. Abraham Zuroff is forever the legendary founding principal of BTA (Yeshiva University High School for Boys in Brooklyn, NY) building one of the very rare educational institutions that was able to synthesize deep authentic Jewish learning with modern cutting-edge and culturally successful American education. In that specific period of American Jewish history, it took the steadfast and uncompromising devotion of the American born Abraham Zuroff to demonstrate that the two could be combined in a way that would attract Jewish youth to the unique fusion of authentic Jewishness and authentic wordliness (rather than a watered down version of either).

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Zuroff was principal of the school for over thirty years (“a life sentence,” he would famously quip) and during that period became the supervisor of all of Yeshiva University’s high schools.

The funeral was held Monday morning at Eretz Hachaim Cemetery near Bet Shemesh.

For his thousands of students, his life was a central inspiration. It is poetically symbolic that he left our world on the eve of the Jewish mourning day Tishebov (Tisha B’Av) that starts this evening, and commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem remembered tenaciously by Jews not only as a day of permanent memory and sadness but at the same time a reminder of the need to rebuild and recreate with a lot of hard work and stubborn steadfastness in the pursuit of quality.

Abraham Zuroff’s original research includes the book “The Responsa of Maimonides” (NY 1966, 804 pp.) on the replies to queries of the 12th century rabbi-physician-philosopher whose life and work demonstrate that same special synthesis of the authentic Jewish and the authentic scientific-worldly-modern.

2014-08-04

PM Netanyahu’s Statement at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv

“Hamas wants the residents of Gaza to suffer and be hurt and thinks that the world will blame Israel for their suffering. There are many people in the world who understand exactly what Hamas is, the same organization that, together with Qatar, assured US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon regarding a ceasefire. It misled both of them.”

(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tonight (Saturday, 2 August 2014), made the following statement at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv:

2014-08-04

Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it’s Hamas’s turn.

Elie Wiesel: author, Nobel Peace Laureate and Holocaust survivor

More than three thousand years ago, Abraham had two children. One son had been sent into the wilderness and was in danger of dying. God saved him with water from a spring.

The other son was bound, his throat about to be cut by his own father. But God stayed the knife. Both sons – Ishmael and Isaac – received promises that they would father great nations.

With these narratives, monotheism and western civilization begin. And the Canaanite practices of child sacrifice to Moloch are forever left behind by the descendants of Abraham.

Except they are not.

2014-08-04

Raoul Wallenberg

Eduardo Eurnekian and Nina Lagergren

Raoul Wallenberg was born into an aristocratic Swedish banking family on 4 August 1912, and his father died when Raoul was three months old. Raised by his mother and grandfather, he studied architecture, then joined his family s banking business, and gained experience in a branch of the Holland Bank in Haifa, Palestine, where he first came in contact with Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Returning to Sweden, where he continued his banking and business career, in 1944, he learned that the Swedish government was looking for an appropriate candidate to work in its embassy in Budapest, Hungary, as a cover for the US-based War Refugee Board. The purpose was to save the remnants of Hungarian Jewry, which at the time was being systematically decimated by the Germans, who had occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, and their Hungarian collaborators.

On 9 July 2014, Swedish-born diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal during a ceremony in the U.S. Congress. The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF) was the driving force behind the initiative to present the prestigious award to the Swedish hero. We hope that this well-merited recognition by the US Congress will raise the awareness to Wallenberg s legacy and personal fate, and will serve as a catalyst to resolve the mystery of his disappearance in the hands of the Soviets.

The Wallenberg Foundation bestowed upon Mrs. Nina Lagergren a silver medal specially coined by renowned silversmith Carlos Pallarols. Moreover, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation received public recognition by Congressman and Senators for his relentless efforts in promoting the deeds of Wallenberg as well as of other thousands of Holocaust Saviors.

In 2012, Centennial year of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, President Barack Obama, himself born on 4 August, addressed a video message exclusively dedicated to the “Hero without a Grave” for the first time ever in US history. Wallenberg is one of the few Honorary Citizens of the United States.

Regarding the fate of Wallenberg we consider that he is alive until proven otherwise. The central archives of Russia s Federal Security Service (FSB) should allow unfettered access to documentation that could shed light into the fate of Wallenberg. The fact that almost 70 years after Wallenberg s abduction and disappearance the Russians are still reluctant to offer access to vital information is absolutely baffling.

For many years now, the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation has stood by Professor Guy von Dardel, a real champion of the cause, as well as by other relatives of Wallenberg in their just quest to secure reliable answers to this tragic affair. Their noble perseverance is a source of inspiration for us.

To this end the Wallenberg Foundation, a global-reach NGO devoted to research, preserve and divulge the legacy of Raoul Wallenberg and of many other saviors, has instituted a500,000 dollars reward to any person or entity coming forward with reliable information concerning the whereabouts of Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder.

Eduardo Eurnekian
Chairman
The International Raoul Wallenberg Fundation
www.raoulwallenberg.net

2014-08-03

Happy Birthday!

The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes Malka Levin a happy 90th birthday and continuing strength.

Though the wheel of life keeps turning and turning,

The heart remains as it was,

Generous and endlessly good.

May the warmth of your children warm you.

Mazel tov!

Everyone in the community knows the birthday girl’s son, Simas Levinas, the head of the LJC’s Social Center, the Religious Community and the Goodwill Fund. Simas tells us about his mother on the occasion of her 90th birthday.

2014-08-03

Kedem, Manchester

Using our experience of dealing with the BDS movement on the streets of Brighton, UKLFI has been arranging and co-ordinating advice and assistance in support of Kedem, a small shop in Manchester which sells Israeli products in these troubled times.

A police-mandated section 14 order banning protests last week was only a temporary fix for a much more serious problem.

As the Jewish Chronicle reports today, the Kedem store has been the scene of daily protests by sometimes hundreds of anti-Israel campaigners, who block the entrance, harass shop staff and shoppers, and make it extremely difficult for the store to conduct its business. These protesters, encouraged and emboldened by the BDS movement’s victories over Ahava and Sodastream, have taken this kind of campaigning to a new level and are showing a degree of aggression and viciousness not previously encountered.

2014-08-03

Israel warns Europe that Israel will protect Jews living overseas if governments fail to protect them

Israel has warned European leaders that if they fail to protect Jews living in their countries Israel will, the Tazpit News Agency reported.

By: Aryeh Savir

The Danish, Swedish and Dutch ambassadors to Israel, as well as officials from the embassies of Britain, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Austria and Germany, took part in an urgent meeting with the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee on the situation of Jewish communities in Europe.

MK Yisrael Hasson of Kadima, a former deputy director of the Shin Bet internal security service, told the ambassadors: “NATO bombed 5,000 civilians in Kosovo, just because it was insulted, and 27,000 Iraqi civilians were bombed during the U.S. invasion because they posed a danger to the U.S. There is not a country in the world that can talk to us about morality.”

Hasson told the foreign envoys that “if the European countries fail to protect the Jews within their territory, the State of Israel will. Jewish blood is not cheap blood.”

He further warned that “if you do not stand by our side, the day when Islamic terror will reach your homes, your beds and your kindergartens will come soon.”

2014-08-03

Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee Meets with European Ambassadors on the situation of Jewish communities in Europe

MK to European envoys: ”Day when Islamic terror will reach your homes is near”

Publicized: July 28, 2014

The Danish, Swedish and Dutch ambassadors to Israel, as well as officials from the embassies of Britain, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Austria and Germany took part on Monday in an urgent meeting of the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee on the situation of Jewish communities in Europe.

MK Israel Hasson (Kadima), a former deputy director of the Shin Bet internal security service, told the ambassadors: ”NATO bombed 5,000 civilians in Kosovo just because it was insulted; 27,000 Iraqi civilians were bombed during the American invasion because they posed a danger to the US; there is not a country in the world that can talk to us about morality.”

MK Hasson told the foreign envoys that ”if the European countries fail to protect the Jews within their territory, the State of Israel will. Jewish blood is not cheap blood.”

2014-08-02

Israeli President Isaac Herzog Visits Lithuania

On the War in Israel and the Situation in Lithuania