The Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC, more commonly known simply as the Joint, is a participant in Lithuanian Jewish Community activities and youth programs, and selected three students for a trip to the United States.

Edvinas Puslys is a member of the LJC’s Ilan Club and native of Vilnius whose mother is Jewish. He is 16 and is in the 10th grade at the Sholem Aleichem Jewish Gymnasium. He was grateful for the opportunity the Joint provided him to travel in Poland last summer and visit Jewish locations in Warsaw and Cracow, and Auschwitz. In January he travelled to America to take part in the second part of the program, and saw firsthand there how Jewish families and others live in America. He said Jewish life and making friends were much easier there, and that American Jews are much more open, communicative and friendly.

“I remember how they wanted to be friends. There is a special emphasis there on community values, on aid to poorer Americans, not just members of the Jewish community. We went together to take part in a charity campaign, where the community donates food. Everything seemed more sincere and warmer, it was like courses being served at a restaurant, first course, second course. The Jewish community helps take care of the city’s homeless. They distribute the necessities, things such as socks, to the homeless. During the trip we visited a kindergarten and played with the children, and we also visited the elderly from the Jewish community,” Edvinas Puslys recalled.

 Dominyka Jurevičiūtė is also a student at the Sholem Aleiechem and is now in the 11th grade. She’s been active in the community since her early childhood and with her sister attended the smaller group at the Dubi Club. Her sister has been dancing with the Fayerlakh song and dance ensemble for 14 years now. Dominyka is following in her sister’s footsteps and says: “The Jewish community is my second home,” adding she is now training as a camp counselor, or madrich, for the community’s summer camp program.

 Dominyka said: “We gather here in the community building every Friday and Sunday, it’s a normal part of our lives. The roots of my father’s family are in Lithuania and my great-grandfather died in the Holocaust, but mom comes from Poland. We’ve been preparing to be [camp] directors for two years now. I frequently remember my trip to the U.S. The main thing for me was the English language. Even though we studied this language in school and in all our [extracurricular] groups, when you travel to a country where this is the native language, you increase your knowledge immediately. That’s a possibility for the future, because I had to communicate every day with English speakers. When I came back to school I felt I had a better command right away. I lived in a Jewish family in America and paid attention to all the Jewish attributes and traditions—candelabra, breaking the challa bread during Sabbath, how people get along. In Lithuania all the Jewish traditions are very visible, since people celebrate in their families and everyone gets together for Sabbath, but in America there is not the tradition of the family getting together on Saturdays. They do not tend to celebrate Sabbath in their families, since most of them are secular. They know the traditions, but don’t always follow them. We also went to synagogue, there were activities going on there, and we read prayers and sang there together. It felt good because we knew most of the songs. People who didn’t know could use the texts passed out to everyone. The synagogue was filled with people, everyone with their family.”

Elizabetė Šapiro is 16, is a student at the Russian-language V. Kachalov Gymnasium in Vilnius and is an active member of the Jewish community. She travelled to America under a different Joint program and was in Atlanta, Georgia for two weeks.

“I lived in a family and there were many excursions organized for us, we were in the community, at the synagogue, the Atlanta aquarium, the Coca-Cola Museum,” Elizabetė recalled. She said keeping Jewish traditions was much simpler in America. “I found it very interesting how the family with whom I lived celebrated Sabbath. It was completely different from how it’s done in Vilnius, the whole family came, everyone was friendly. I lived there with a girl from Latvia. In the second week there I stayed at a hotel where all the Europeans and Americans gathered, three thousand people in total. They taught us how to conduct programs, how to act, how to present ourselves, and stressed the need to make eye contact and to create an atmosphere of interest. It was incredible. We are still corresponding and waiting for the next international camp. I am so thankful to the Joint for their support for these international programs,” Elizabetė Šapiro said.