A plaque commemorating Righteous Gentiles Sofija Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė, her daughter Danutė Čiurlionytė-Zubovienė and her daughter’s husband Vladimir Zubov was unveiled at Žemaičių street no. 10 in Kaunas last month. The Lithuanian state radio and television Jewish affairs program Menora documented the event.
Television program in Lithuanian here.
Eighty-four years ago Jews from Palanga were murdered en masse in the Kunigiškiai Forest. Palanga Jewish Community chairman Vilius Gutmanas visited the mass murder site with Palanga city Culture Department staff Robertas Trautmanas and Janina Balužė Octpber 10.
One of the first casualties of the Nazi invasion of Palanga on June 22, 1941, was a summer camp there of Jewish children from all over Lithuania. Many of the children escaped, some were killed and others taken prisoner. On June 26 women, chilren and the elderly were imprisoned in one of the synagogues in Palanga. The latter were taken to a makeshift ghetto in Valteriškė village a few days later. The Jews there were murdered October 11 and 12, 1941. It is believed around 200 Jews from Palanga were murdered there and then.
Dear members,
We invite members of the Dubi and Ilan Clubs and their parents to come celebrate Sukkot together in the courtyard of the Lithuanian Jewish Community with kiddush blessings inside the booth, aka sukka, erected there. Cantor Daniel Zakhry from Sao Paulo will ;ead the ceremony.
Time: 1:00 P.M., Saturday, October 11
Place: LJC, Vilnius
Pending approval by Israel’s Security Cabinet, a new ceasefire deal should see the release on Monday of the remaining 20 or so hostages and the dead bodies of hostages who died while in Hamas captivity in Gaza, according to US president Donald Trump.
Natalja Cheifec continues her internet lecture and discussion club with a lesson on Sukkot this Thursday.
Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles is one of the happier holidays on the Jewish calendar amd a great opportunity to spend time with family, visit others, share food and enjoy life. Natalja will talk about the origin and traditions of Sukkot. She’ll discuss the meaning of “dwelling” in the sukka or makeshift booth during the week of Sukkot and the four species.
To receive zoom credentials and participate, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, October 9
Place: internet
Sujjot (Ashkenazic Sukkos) begins at 5:13 P.M. at sunset today, Monday, October 6, and ends at sunset 7, 8 or 9 days later, depending on your location and disposition.
The festival of Sukkot–literally meaning booths, tents, tabernacles–is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days in the Diaspora, starting on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. It is one of the three festivals during which Jewish men were required to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in Temple times.
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletic Club is holding their annual Maccabiada this October 19 and you’re invited.
Competitions include 3-on-3 basketball with 5 teams competing, volleyball with 6 teams, table tennis in men’s and women’s matches and men’s and women’s badminton. Participation is free. Makabi requests you register before October 15. To gesiter and for more information, call +370 687 83005.
Program:
11:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Badminton and basketball
11:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Table tennis
1:00 P.M. to 2:30 P.M. Volleyball
3:30 P.M. to 5:00 P.M. Lunch at the Crowne Plaza Hotel restaurant
Time: 11:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., Sunday, Ovtober 19
Place: Taurus Sports School, Žygio street no. 46, Vilnius
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is shocked by the events in Manchester and expresses our deepest condolences to the families of the victims and to the entire British Jewish community.
“This brital attack again reminds us of the danger which is posed by the ever-deepening hate and anti-Semitism which is taking root in society/ Eighty years ago European Jews experienced how that ends” more than 96% of Lithuanian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Evil often begins from lesser things which might seem insignificant at the time–apatjy, averted glamces–so we must be especially vigilant right now to insure history doesn’t repeat itself,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said.
We pray for the victims and wish strength and resolution to everyone battling hate.
The Sabbath begins at 6:59 P.M. on Friday, September 26, and concludes at 7:58 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 6:41 P.M. and completed before sunset at 6:59 P.M. Yom Kippur begins at 6:36 P.M. on Wednesday, October 1, and ends at 7:45 P.M. Thursday, October 2. Sukkot begins at 6:24 P.M. on Monday, October 6.
We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the two people killed and to the four wounded and still in hospital, killed and wounded at the hand of an Islamic terrorist on Yom Kippur. in Manchester, England. Our deepest condolences to the entire congregation and the Manchester Jewish community. May their memory be a blessing.
Dear friends,
The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes you peace, strength and an inscription in the Book of Life this Yom Kippur. Gmar chatima tova.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Bnei Maskilim progressive Judaism association invite you to come mark Yom Kippur together at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. Cantor Daniel Zekhry from the rabbinical studies program of the Abraham Geiger College will lead the services. Everyone is welcome but registration is required by sending an email to viljamas@lzb.lt.
Schedule:
October 1
6:30 P.M. Kol Nidre
October 2
10:00 A.M. Torah reading
5:00 P.M. Yizkor
5:15 P.M. Neila
6:30 P.M. Shofar
This Wednesday the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius begins observing Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Prayer services:
October 1
6:30 P.M. Kol Nidre
7:00 P.M. Maariv
October 2
10:00 A.M. Shacharit
12:00 noon Yizkor
12:30 P.M. Musaf
5:45 P.M. Mincha
6:30 P.M. Neila
7:45 P.M. Maariv
While the café is undergoing reconstruction and will change its name to its address, Pylimo 4, when it reopens, the kitchen is still operating and many have enjoyed its special Sabbath menu. Now the café is offering challa to order for pickup on Fridays. The regular price is 7 euros per loaf, and if you want to donate to the operation, then 10 euros. Your donation will insure an earlier opening of the venue. Orders should be placed by 8:00 P.M. on Thursday each week. Payment and pickups can be done at the café from 4:00 P.M. till 7:00 P.M. on Fridays. To place your order, send an email to gut.shabbos.vilnius@gmail.com. A gut shabes!
For the fifth time now the International Nehama Lifshitz Song Contest will bring together highly talented young performers from around Lithuania and the world. The contest named after the songstress from Lithuania called the Jewish nightingale encourages young perfomers to popularize Jewish song, to discover diverse musical compositions and to spread artistic cooperation internationally.
The competition is open to people from the age of 10 to 35 with performances over four evenings of classical Jewish melodies, works in Hebrew and Yiddish imparting centuries of stories, emotions and culture. This year the organizers are doing something new, with vocal mastery lessons provided by professor Claudia Visca of the Vienna Music and Performance Arts University and voice teacher Sofia Mazar from the Jerusalem Music and Dance Academy.
The public is invited to attend the performances. The Yiddish song contest takes place starting at 3:00 P.M. on October 26 at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. The Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater will host the remaining evenings as well as voice lessons from October 27 to 30. Audience members will be treated to a concert by the finalists as the jury decides on a winner. All performances will be free and open to the public. Stay tuned for more information.
As part of the on-going Joseph Achron music festival, the piano duet of Justas Sherveniko ir Johan Randvere will perform a musical homage to the composers Mikalojus Čiurlionis and Maurice Ravel on the 150th anniversary of their births at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius starting at 4:00 P.M. on Sundaym October 5. The program includes works by Čiurlionis, Ravel, Schubert and Mendelssohn.
For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.
A plaque commemorating Samuel Kukliansky, attorney and professor of law, was unveiled on the outside of the house in which he lived until the Holocaust in the village of Veisiejai in the Lazdijau region of Lithuania last week.
His daughter and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman and attorney Faina Kukliansky attended the unveiling ceremony with other members of the family, as well as the person who initiated the plaque, Zenonas Sabaliauskas, and a large contingent of local residents.
“Veisiejai is a special place for me. My grandfather Saulius Kuakliansky, a chemist and pharmacaist, lived here. Here stands the home to which my grandmother, doctor Zisle Kukliansky,, never returned. That made today, when a plaque is being unveiled commemorating my father, law professor and attorney Samuel Kukliansky, one of excitement as well as mixed feelings. I want to thank my children and grandchildren for being there for me on this day of difficult memories and experiences, and for holding dear our family history and dor, I hope, passing it on to their children. I am very grateful also to alderman Zenonas Sabaliauskas for the beautiful idea of commemorating the footsteps left by the Kukliansky family in Veisiejai, and I am grateful to the many people who gathered here for this. Seeing them, the hope returns that those dark times perhaps will not return again,” Faina Kukliansky said.
Following the ceremony, attendees travelled to the Kuktiškės Jewish cemetery about 20 kilometers outside Veisiejai to visit the mass grave there. In November of 1941 Germans and Lithuanians murdered 1,535 Jews there.
Members and staff of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, representatives from the Lithuanian parliament and government and foreign diplomats observed the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish of Victims of Genocide at Ponar on Thursday, September 25. German Bundeswehr rabbi Elisch Mendel Portnoy joined Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom in saying prayers for the dead.
LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky read the contents of an open letter she co-autyhored with Jewish Lithuanian MP Emanuelis Zingeris addressed to president Gitanas Nausėda cautioning against the latter’s decision to allow a member of an anti-Semitic party to occupy the post of Lithuanian minister of culture.
KJC chairwoman Kukliansky quoted a facebook post she received that day calling for the murder of Jews.
“If we don’t stop it, this will happen. So I ask all of you gathered here not just to honor those who were murdered and lie buried here–we are standing on blood-soaked soil–but also to think about the future of our country, and what we must do to insure this never happens again,” Kukliansky said.
As on every first Sunday in October, people will gather to commemorate those who were incarcerated in the ghetto and murdered during the Holocaust in the Švenčionys region in southwest Lithuania. The gathering takes place at the city park where the ghetto once operated, and at the mass grave in Platumai village in the Švenčionėliai aldermansjip at what is generally called the polygon. You are invited to attend at 11:00 A.M. on Sunday, October 5.
Program:
11:00 A.M. – 11:30 A.M. Commemoration of victims at the Menorah statue in the city park;
12:30 P.M. Commemoration at the monument to the victims at the mass murder site in Platumai village.
Moshe Shapiro, chairman
Švenčionys Regional Jewish Community
The Sabbath begins at 7:07 P.M. on Friday, September 26, and concludes at 7:58 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 6:49 P.M. and completed before sunset at 7:07 P.M. Thursday, September 25, is Tzom Gedaliah, the day of fasting. Yom Kippur begins at 6:36 P.M. on Wednesday, October 1, and ends at 7:45 P.M. Thursday, October 2.
