The Sabbath begins at 6:02 P.M. on Friday, October 23, and concludes at 6:55 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit and prayers recited at 5:44 P.M. and completed before sunset at 6:02 P.M.
A delegation of 80 rabbis from the Dirshu organization recently visited Lithuania. They visited the graves of the Vilna Gaon and Rabbi Baruch ber Leibowitz, then visited the grave-site of Chafetz Chaim. The kosher kitchen of the Lithuanian Jewish Community played a role in their visit in receiving the rabbis and catering to their needs. Members of the delegation were thankful for their sincere concern over their kosher needs. The LJC also organized a Sabbath celebration. Three rabbis from the same organization were the victims of an anti-Semitic attack in Vilnius last summer.
The Lithuanian Makabi Sports and Athletics Club invites sporting enthusiasts and friends of the club to our annual mini-Makabiada on October 25. The event opens at 10:00 A.M. at the Vilnius City Tauras Athletics school at Žygio street no. 46, Vilnius. Participants can play in 3-on-3 basketball, volleyball, table tennis and badminton.
All participants will be invited to lunch after the final matches and awards ceremony. Those wishing to attend should register by October 23 by clicking here. For more information call Daniel at +370 687 83 005.
Time: 10:00 A.M., Sunday, October 25
Place: Vilnius City Tauras Athletics School at Žygio street no. 46, Vilnius
Eighty-five years ago the persecution and extermination of Lithuanian Jews began. The Nazis and Lithuanian Nazis called their mass murder operations aktionen. The Grosse Aktion, or Great Operation, was the largest single mass murder of Jews in Lithuania, where around 10,000 inmates from the Kaunas ghetto were murdered at the Ninth Fort in just over 24 hours.
The Kaunas Jewish Community and the Ninth Fort Museum invite you to mark the tragedy this year with a commemoration at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas followed by a concert at the fort called Muzik fun zikoyrn, or Music from Memory, featuring the trio Trise, saxophonist Petras Vyšniauskas, pianist Aleksandra Žvirblytė and percussionist Arkadijus Gotesmanas, performing works by Jospeh Achron, Max Helfman, Anatoly Shenderov and others as well as Jewish melodies.
The Ninth Fort Museum will screen a short documentary (by Karolina Vilkelienė, 2026) about the Grosse Aktion during the commemoration there. The commemoration at the Ninth Fort will conclude with a candle-lighting and stone-laying ceremony on the actual killing field.
The event is free and open to the public.
Time: 6:30 P.M., Wednesday, October 28
Place: Ninth Fort Museum, Žemaičių highway no. 73, Kaunas
Members of the Šiauliai Jewish Community and guests from Germany took a trip to Kupiškis, a town with a deep and rich Jewish legacy. There they visited the Kupiškis museum and learned about the town’s cultural and historical heritage. Then they took a guided tour of Kupiškis’s central square where once three synagogues operated. Two of the synagogue buildings remain standing. They learned about Kupiškis before the Holocaust, Jewish life, traditions and history there, and that Lithuanians and Jews lived next to one another in peace before the Holocaust.
by Ben Bloch, October 20, 2026
Report set to reveal vast scale of anti-Semitism in English schools
A landmark report is set to detail the vast scale of anti-Semitism in English schools and colleges, Sky News can reveal.
The review, conducted by former schools inspector Sir David Bell, will on Wednesday set out 27 recommendations to create change, which the government is poised to accept in full.
It will call for teacher training and resources to tackle anti-Semitism in schools, strengthened guidance on political impartiality, and giving students the tools to recognize and confront online anti-Jewish hatred and conspiracy theories.
Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Sir David said he was “very struck” by the evidence of rising anti-Semitism in schools, but also the extent to which it actually goes underreported.
They say every cloud has a silver lining. Last summer in Vilnius, an antisemitic incident occurred in which an aggressive man spat on three rabbis from Israel who had done nothing to provoke him. Unexpectedly, that incident became the start of a new acquaintance and cooperation.
The unpleasant event brought the international Orthodox Jewish organization Dirshu closer to the Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community, which came to the aid of the attacked rabbis.
Photo: Richard Dobson/News Corp Australia
Commissioner Virginia Bell has defended her push to delay the release of her final report of the anti-Semitism inquiry, saying she did not want to cause a “distraction” for the Jewish community on a “solemn” day of remembrance.
On Wednesday [August 26], the final day of the Antisemitism and Social Cohesion Royal Commission’s public hearings, Bell said the findings would be released on December 18. Commissioner Bell said she is required to present her final report to the Governor General and the governors of all states no later than December 14, but will request a “short extension.”
“December 14 is the anniversary of the massacre. It will be a solemn occasion marked by memorials,” she said. “I’m aware of concern within the Jewish community that delivery of the report on the anniversary would be a distraction. I fully understand that concern and to avoid that distraction, I have asked for a short extension of the term with a view to the submission of my final report on Friday, December 18.”
Natalja Cheifec’s internet discussion club continues Thursday evening at 6:00 P.M. To receive zoom credentials and participate, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, October 22
Place: internet
Photo: Joanne Fedler by Vilmantas Raupelis/LRT
Lithuanian state radio and television on their website LRT.lt featured Sydney-based writer Joanne Fedler’s visit to Žagarė, Lithuania, in spite of her family’s injunction never to set foot in Lithuania.
Fedler is the author of 17 books and teaches creative writing. She operates a small publishing house called Joanne Fedler Media. She was born and raised in South Africa to a family of Litvak immigrants before coming to Australia in 2001.
In fall of 2025 she was at a month-long writing workshop in Finland and decided the family hearth, Žagarė, was too close not to visit. She told LRT a dream of her grandfather as a young man was the sign for her which sealed the deal. She decided she would honor her family by travelling to Lithuania rather than avoiding it.
An Austrian Airlines Airbus A320-200 flying from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) to Vienna International Airport (VIE) was forced to divert to Vasil Levski Sofia Airport (SOF) in Bulgaria Sunday night due to a bomb threat. The Bulgarian Air Force dispatched MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets to escort the airliner to Sofia Airport.
On the ground in Bulgaria authorities carried out a search of the aircraft as well as its passengers and crew. No bomb was found. The flight was able to continue to Vienna as planned after a lengthy delay.
Austrian Airlines flight OS82 is a regularly scheduled service from Tel Aviv to Vienna. According to Flightradar24, it currently operates twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays. Sunday’s flight was a 13-year-old Airbus A320-200 bearing the registration OE-LZE. The flight took off late at 7:04 P.M. instead of the planned 6:40 P.M. take-off.
by Geoff Vasil
One of the only things independent Lithuania didn’t reject from the Soviet Union was the name of the country as the Republic of Lithuania. Of course the pre-war Lithuania was also a republic, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was as well. All in name at least.
In truth, though, a republic is supposed to serve its people. Specifically, a republic is supposed to serve and protect the minority. This was the major concern of the founders of the United States of America: they wanted democracy, but limited democracy, not mob rule. They wanted to protect minority opinion, minority religions, ethnic minorities and so on. This is why the idea of a state religion was poisonous to them. As was a state-controlled media, the press, and no one until recently even wanted America to have an official language.
A very happy milestone birthday to our favorite master violinist Boris Traub. May your strings never strike a jarring note, may your days be filled with happiness among the friends and family you love, and may you always be in good health! Mazl tov. Bis 120!
by Zev Stub, October 14, 2026
Dublin’s Herbert Park Hotel nixed reservations for 70 guests after learning the conference they were holding would focus on combating anti-Semitism
The hotel canceled a reservation for 70 rooms for delegates attending an international conference on combating anti-Semitism after learning the purpose of their visit, according to a senior representative of Ireland’s Jewish community.
Chairman of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland Maurice Cohen spoke of the incident at a reception at the Irish Foreign Ministry Tuesday night marking the opening of a meeting of the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA), a group supported by the World Jewish Congress and the European Commission.
The Sabbath begins at 6:18 P.M. on Friday, October 16, and concludes at 7:10 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit and prayers recited at 6:00 P.M. and completed before sunset at 6:18 P.M.
The table tennis team from Tauras Sports School took first place in the team table tennis championship for young people born in 2013 and later. Etin Matanas scored the crucial victory. Earlier this year he became the Lithuanian champion in singles competition in his age group. Congratulations to Etin, Alanas Mižigurskis, Konradas Druskis and Tauras Adamonis for their team spirit and great scores. Congratulations as well to trainer Rafaelis Gimelsteinas.
On Sunday descendants of Jews from Žagarė who live now in Šiauliai, Vilnius and other Lithuanian towns and cities gathered in front of the statue to Rabbi Israel Salanter aka Yisrael ben Ze’ev Wolf Lipkin along with Shimon Pesach from the Israeli embassy and Rabbi Kalev Krelin.
This is an annual event. On the first Sunday in October they come together to remember the Jewish history of Žagarė, to honor the Jews who lived here and to preserve their memory. Participants also visited the mass murder sites in Naryškinas Park and at the old Jewish cemetery.
The meeting then moved on to a local café where the discussion continued.
Natalja Cheifec continues her internet lecture and discussion series with a presentation of Jewish views on gossip and cursing, based on Chafetz Chaim’s book The Will to Live. What are the consequences of foul language? What is slander and gossip? How can staying silent lead to a longer life, and when is it absolutely forbidden to keep silent? Tune in and find out. To receive zoom credentials, click here.
Time: 6:00 P.M., Thursday, October 15
Place: internet
Photo: YIVO reading room at 1048 Fifth Avenue, ca. 1958. (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
by Andrew Silow-Carroll October 11, 2026
Kalman Weiser’s new history follows the institute from Vilna to New York where it had to preserve a vanished world and cultivate a future.
When YIVO was founded in Vilna in 1925 its mission was to study a living people.
The Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut was meant to be a national university for Jews scattered across Eastern Europe and increasingly the world. Its scholars studied Yiddish language and literature, but also Jewish sociology, psychology, history and contemporary life. YIVO was interested in how Jews actually lived and in helping them navigate modernity.
When the Nazis destroyed much of that world, YIVO’s surviving caretakers were forced to ponder how and why to keep their efforts going in a new world haunted by unimaginable loss.
Their efforts are explored in Kalman Weiser’s new history “Yiddish Scholarship Comes to America: The YIVO Institute at 100.” After World War II a relocated and heartsick YIVO had to become a guardian of a nearly vanished culture, a rescuer of its texts and artifacts and an institution which could somehow make that culture meaningful to Jews who were rapidly shedding Yiddish and embracing a distinctly American, English-speaking identity–all simultaneously.
Photo: Christians visiting a West Bank settlement during the International Christian Embassy’s annual conference. Courtesy International Christian Embassy
ICEJ visitors turned purchases into a show of solidarity as Ireland and the Netherlands enforce new restrictions, and Norway weighs a broader trade ban.
by Gabriel Colodro, Media Line, October 13, 2026
“This piece of legislation written by the Irish parliament shall not stand,” said Paul Coulter, national director of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem (ICEJ) in Ireland, as he held up a copy of Ireland’s new law restricting imports from Israeli settlements. Then he tore the document up in front of the camera.
The gesture came during an ICEJ visit to Israeli communities in the West Bank, also known as Judea and Samaria, where Christian visitors traveled through Samaria, Gush Etzion and Efrat and were encouraged to shop at local businesses. The tour organized during ICEJ’s annual Feast of Tabernacles gathering in Jerusalem was intended as a direct response to a growing set of European measures restricting trade in products from Israeli settlements. Some of those measures are already in force; others are still just proposed legislation.
