AJC Delegation Tours Žiežmarai Wooden Synagogue


LJC chairwoman Fainia Kukliansky and Kaišiadorys mayor Tomkus, Žiežmarai, April, 2017

The ruined wooden synagogue in Žiežmarai, Lithuania, is being reborn for a new life. During the Holocaust it was used as a concentration point for imprisoning Jews awaiting execution. A large number of Jewish houses still stand near the synagogue, whose owners were murdered. The wooden synagogue is still an important heritage site, even if there is no one left to pray there. The Lithuanian Jewish Community contacted the mayor and council of Kaišiadorys about reconstructing the synagogue. Initially that request was denied, the council objected, and it took much effort to convince the local government the old synagogue really is a heritage site which besides holding interest to Jews around the world would also attract tourism and could be put to public use by the local population.

The Kaišiadorys city council approved the idea of adapting the building for public use in 2015 and applied for EU structural funds for renovation. A technical plan for renovating the Žiežmarai synagogue using funds from the Lithuanian state budget and the Goodwill Foundation was prepared and necessary studies conducted. After renovation the synagogue will serve as a monument to the murdered Jewish communities in Kaišiadorys and surrounding areas, and will be maintained to serve cultural functions for the local population.


An AJC delegation visiting Lithuania toured the synagogue site.

According to the Architecture and Urban Studies Center of Kaunas Technical University, the first synagogue in Žiežmariai might have appeared in 1690 following the granting of a charter of rights to the Jewish community there. This synagogue is mentioned in 1738. A 1782 description of the local church district and town says the synagogue was built under the grant of rights by Jan Casimir (noting it had to have been obtained before 1668) and that were two Jewish cemeteries. In 1868 Žiežmariai had a population of 1,190, of whom 604 were Jews, the majority. In 1897 there were 2,795 residents in Žiežmariai, of whom 1,628 were Jews. It is mentioned that all three synagogues in Žiežmariai suffered from the fire in 1918.

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Lithuanian Prime Minister Meets AJC Reps

On Thursday, March 30, the Lithuanian Government and the Lithuanian Prime Minister’s Office hosted a meeting with representatives from the American Jewish Committee in Vilnius following the opening of an AJC regional office in Warsaw, Poland.

The AJC delegation spen three days in Lithuania and celebrated Sabbath at the Lithuanian Jewish Community. The LJC and AJC enjoy friendly ties and have an agreement on joint work.

The new Warsaw bureau will serve Poland, the Baltic States, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Photographs of the AJC delegation at the Lithuanian Government and Prime Minister’s Office here.

A Different Sort of Passover

At 7:00 P.M. on Tuesday, April 11, 2017, we will meet at the cozy Beata’s Kitchen (Beatos virtuvė) on Gedimino prospect in the heart of Vilnius. This year for Passover not only will we enjoy a delicious meal, but we’ll make it ourselves. Our guide on this culinary journey will be writer, cook and wife of former Lithuanian ambassador to Israel Nida Degutienė.

Degutienė moved to Israel and lived there 5 years, studying at Herzliya University and learning about Israeli culture and cuisine in her free time.

Her book Taste of Israel has won awards in the category of Jewish cooking. Her recipes on her internet page www.nidosreceptai.lt and the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/nidos.receptai/ are also quite popular.

Accompanying us will be Rabbi Shimshon Isaacson who will help us learn more about the traditions and religious significance of this holiday.

Please register by internet:
http://apklausa.lt/f/pesach-seder-su-nida-degutiene-f8q5wh3/answers/new.fullpage

Europe Greatest Diplomatic Challenge for Israel

Israeli political veteran, deputy minister to Benjamin Netanyahu on diplomatic issues and former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren is considered by some to be one of the ten most influential—some even say one of the five most influential—Jews in the world. The Lithuanian magaine Veidas presented his views on the greatest challenges, threats and victories facing Israel.

by Rima Janužytė

You are rather critical of Europe. What are your greatest complaints against the continent, or more precisely, against its politicians?

Israel is undergoing a foreign-policy revolution. I view everything through the lens of history. Not just because I’m an historian, but also because I have seen so much with my own eyes. I was very young when the peace treaty with Egypt was signed. Back then we didn’t have diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and had almost no relations with Africa. No relations with China, India. We didn’t have a strategic relationship and weren’t friends with the USA. We had specific relations with the Soviet bloc, including Lithuania. Since then everything has changed completely. Now there are close relations with China, and our prime minister just visited China with the largest business delegation ever. India is now a close partner. With Russia it’s complicated, but I’ll come back to that.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

AJC Supports Idea of Jewish History Museum in Vilnius


Vilnius March 31, BNS—The American Jewish Committee supports the idea of establishing a Jewish history museum in Vilnius, representative Sam Kliger says.

Speaking at a press conference Friday, the committee director of Russian affairs said his organization believes it is an important initiative which could become real with the Lithuanian Government’s help. He recalled his delegation’s visit to a museum in Warsaw a few days prior and called it impressive. A Jewish museum would be a good start or a good continuation of Lithuanian-Jewish relations, he told reporters. He also said Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon expressed support for the idea during a meeting Friday.

Chairwoman of the AJC board of directors Harrieta P. Schleifer said the museum should cover more than the Holocaust and include Lithuania’s rich Litvak legacy. It should include history from the beginning through the present to the future, not just the Holocaust, she said.

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Vilnius Seniors Visit Panevėžys

A group of members of the Vilnius Jewish Community’s Seniors Club, directed by Žana Skudovičienė, visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman spoke about the history and life of the Panevėžys Jewish Community in a pleasant setting, sipping tea around a table with fresh bagels brought from the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius. Several of the Vilnius members’ parents had lived and worked in Panevėžys and were greatly interested in the Panevėžys Jewish Community’s Museum of History. Mutual interest led some of the seniors to tell about the life and fate of their parents in greater detail.

Guests visited the site of the Panevėžys Jewish cemetery and heard about its tragic destruction in 1966, and how headstones were used as decoration for the wall of the Juozas Miltinis Theater.

Žana Skudovičienė in the name of all club members expresses their gratitude for the warm reception.

Chess Tournament

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Chess and Checkers Club invite you to a chess tournament at 12:00 noon on Saturday, April 22 at the Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius. Tournament director FIDE master Boris Rositsan, contact for further information and to register at info@metbor.lt or call +3706 5543556

Most Brutal Lithuanian Holocaust Mass Murder Operation Remembered

To never forget, to always remember and to seek to make sure it never happens again–these are our duties. We often repeat these words in commemoration Holocaust victims. We repeated them again in the afternoon on Friday, March 24, in Kaunas when we remembered the victims of the most horrific mass murder operation in the Kauinas ghetto, the Children’s Aktion.

Horrific also because, as Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon said at the commemoration, it is incomprehensible how a human being can turn into a murderer of innocent children, of babies who don’t even understand what is going on in the world around them. Horrific and painful because it impossible to imagine what the parents felt when they returned home to the ghetto after forced labor and found their only joy, their children, were missing. Administrative director of the Kaunas municipality Nijolė Putrienė cried speaking about the unrealized dreams of the murdered children, about the murder of their futures and about Lithuanian citizens who could have made a difference. Survivor of the Children’s Operation Ela Glinskienė spoke of her memories. Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas led the event and long-time Kaunas Jewish Community friend, the daughter of a rescuer of Jews, actress Kristina Kazakevičiūtė and flautist Artūras Makštutis provided music and poetry.

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Kosher Kitchens Goes In at Choral Synagogue

Vilniaus Sinagogoje įrengta košerinė virtuvė

The Vilnius Jewish Community is happy to announce a new kosher kitchen was set up at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. The minimal but tasteful kitchen interior fits in with the existing space, uses the same combination of colors, has wooden components and didn’t disturb the existing wooden floor. The renovation was designed by Viktorija Sideraitė who is a contractor to the company Real Taste under the direction of Saulius Blaževičius.

The kitchen space at the synagogue has been awaiting renovation for a very long time. Here’s a “before” picture:

Pictures of the new kosher kitchen space can be seen here.

Vilnius Synagogue Map Launched

“When we speak of Jewish cultural heritage, we don’t mean a foreign people who lived apart from everything and one day decided to move. We’re talking about what was in Lithuania, about the Lithuanian nation’s heritage, not just of the Jews,” Israeli ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon said Friday at the launch of map of the synagogues of Vilnius held at the ambassadorial residence. One of the goals of the map project was to show just how interconnected Jewish and Lithuanian history is.

Of 135 Synagogues, Only One Remains

The map contains a total of 135 sites of synagogues which operated before the Holocaust. Most of the synagogues were located in the Vilnius Old Town, around the Jewish area of the city centering on the Great Synagogue and spreading along Vokiečių, Gaono and Stiklių streets. There were more than 30 synagogues located in that compact area, but none of them remain. The synagogues were razed and other buildings built in their place, or the sites were used as public spaces.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Condolences

Donald Jay Rickles passed away at his home in Beverly Hills, California, April 6 from kidney failure at the age of 90. He is survived by his wife Barbara Rickles (formerly Sklar), his daughter Mindy Rickles and two grandchildren Ethan and Harrison Mann. His wife was at his side as he died. Their son Larry, born in 1970, passed away in 2011.

He was born to Jewish parents in Queens, New York, on May 8, 1926. His father Max Rickles emigrated in 1903 with his Litvak parents from Kaunas (then Kovno in the Russian Empire) and his mother Etta Feldman was born in New York City to Austrian immigrant parents. Rickles grew up in Jackson Heights, New York.

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Vilna Gaon Museum on New Jewish Museum Proposal

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum has issued a statement via press release about a recent proposal by Lithuanian officials to set up a Holocaust-free new Jewish museum in the Palace of Sports or next to it on land which contains the centuries-old historic Jewish graveyard of Vilnius.

Let’s Create a Strategic Strategy for Jewish Heritage, Not Disneyland

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum was disappointed by information appearing in the press last week about plans by government institutions to establish another Jewish museum in the Lithuanian capital instead of assuring support for existing projects.

The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, whose sections are housed in authentic buildings closely connected with the Jewish history of Vilnius, has recently been undergoing an intense and productive period. We host international events at the highest level, for example, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance conference held on March 22 and 23, and the number of visitors is constantly growing. New permanent exhibitions are being created for installation in our historic buildings, including the opening this fall of a new Samuel Bak Museum, showcasing the Litvak painter’s life and works, and in the near future we also intend to open the Museum of Lithuanian Jewish Culture, aka the Litvak Center and a dedicated Lithuanian Holocaust and Vilnius ghetto memorial museum, which has attracted the attention of international museum organizations including ICOM.

The latter museum is to be housed in the historical building on Žemaitijos street (former Strashun street) which was listed as a cultural treasure last month. This is the building which housed the Mefitsei Haskalah library before World War II and the Vilnius ghetto library during the war. which organized cultural events inside the ghetto and served as a secret meeting place for members of the ghetto resistance organization. In 1945 Holocaust survivors established the short-lived Jewish Museum in the building, quickly shut down by the Soviet government. The Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum intends to reutilize the building for Holocaust education. After the museum has these additional sections, a unique route will be created for the visitor to explore Jewish Vilna.

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Come Observe Passover at the Choral Synagogue

Dear Community members,

We invite you to come to a kosher Passover Seder at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius at 9:00 P.M. on April 10.

The cost is 7 euros.

Please pick up an invitation at the synagogue on workdays from 9 A.M. to 1:00 P.M.

For those who wish to pray, please come to the evening prayer on April 10 which will begin at 8:00 P.M.

Family Seder

Bring your whole family to the Lithuanian Jewish Community Passover Seder starting at 5:00 P.M. on April 15 at the Radisson Blue Hotel Lietuva, Konstitucijos street no. 20, Vilnius. Tickets are 12 euros. For more information and to buy tickets from April 4 to April 12, contact Žana Skudovičienė at telephone 867881514 or Julija Lipšic at 865952604.

Nietzsche and Pesach: How the Exodus Ruined Everything

by Andrés Spokoiny

Frederick Nietzsche believed that the Egyptians were blond.

My apologies; I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning:

Despite what people sometimes claim, Frederick Nietzsche wasn’t an anti-Semite. To the contrary, he was strongly against the anti-Semitism that raged in Germany in his lifetime. He even said in his private correspondence that anti-Semites, his racist sister included, “should be shot”. (And you thought your family had issues…)

Yet, Nietzsche had a problem with Pesach. A big problem.

For the bespectacled professor, Jews, with their “revolt of the slaves”, had “subverted the natural order” and instituted a “morality of slaves” that is opposed to the “morality of the masters”, the latter being the natural and desired state of the world. That ushered in the “collective degeneration of man” that Nietzsche saw in his own time. The French Revolution, the American Revolution, and democracy as a whole were for Nietzsche direct results of the revolution of morality that the Jewish slaves started.

Full piece here.

Vilnius Mayor, Lithuanian PM Decree: And There Shall Be Built a Jewish History Museum Next to the Palace of Sports

Vilnius, March 30, BNS–Lithuanian prime minister Saulius Skvernelis said there are deliberations on changing the project for the reconstruction of the Palace of Sports to include a equip a building to host a Jewish history museum and for conferences. There was consideration on holding concerts and other cultural events in the project initiated by the former Government.

Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius proposed setting up a Litvak History Museum next to the Palace of Sports which the Government is planning to renovate. “I think the Government has done the right thing in halting the untransparent bid begun earlier. But there should be a conference center there without any doubt. We just discussed that it would be more sensible if next to the conference center or partially integrated with the conference center there were a museum of Litvak history. It is probably this could be accomplished wonderfully and would become an attraction. We agreed to develop the idea further. I’m glad my opinion and the prime minister’s coincide on this,” the mayor of Vilnius told BNS after meeting with Lithuanian prime minister Saulius Skvernelis Thursday.

“It should be able to be used for conferences. Now there is a concept, a conference and concert hall, so it should be conferences and a museum,” the prime minister told reporters at parliament.

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Recovering Memory: Vilnius University Memory Diploma Graduation Ceremony

Event at 3:00 P.M. on April 3, 2017

Vilnius University will host a Memory Diploma Graduation Ceremony in the small auditorium at Universiteto street no. 3, Vilnius. The ceremony is intended to honor students, staff and members of the university community who were marginalized, thrown out, not allowed to finish their education or academic work and otherwise repressed because of the actions of the totalitarian regimes or local collaborators.

The university was compelled to rethink its relation with the past after receiving a letter from Israeli professor of medicine Moshe Lapidoth in the summer of 2016, requesting a symbolic commemoration of his uncle Khlaune Meishtovski who was a student at the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty of Vilnius University before the war. After eight successful semesters studying chemistry and physics, he was expelled July 1, 1941 because he was a Jew.

In 2016 the university formed a commission to do a historical study and decide selection criteria for people who were unfairly deprived of an education there. A symbolic Memory Diploma was established to remember these people. It is hoped the graduation ceremony will become a university tradition.

After preliminary study, the university determined about 650 Jews and 80 Poles were forced out as well as a professor whose wife was Jewish during the beginning of the Nazi occupation. Several hundred Lithuanians were also deprived of university study and employment.

There will be a live-stream on facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/events/898366480305748/

On the Meeting of the Board of the Vilnius Jewish Community

Dear members of the board of the Vilnius Jewish Community,

I would like to inform you that a demand was received on March 23 signed by Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC) board members Aleksandr Arončik, Simon Ceitlinas, Arkadij Goldin, Aleksandras Lukas Jurevičius, Dovydas Kocas, Margarita Koževatova, Simonas Portnoj, Simon Gurevičius and Rachmil Garber to convene a meeting of the VJC executive board on March 30, 2017, to discuss the issues of convening an extraordinary VJC conference and of adopting new VJC members as well as confirming existing memberships.

I would like to thank the above-mentioned LJC board members for their initiative and also to state that this demand is not legally correct according to the regulations of the VJC and the laws of the Republic of Lithuania (the reasons are indicated in a letter to VJC board members which will be sent to all VJC board members by registered mail).

We would like to inform you that the plan is to convoke the board of the VJC at 6:00 P.M. on April 28, 2017, and to ask that VJC board members mark the date on their schedules. Information about elections will be posted on the official Community website, www.lzb.lt, and we also invite anyone with questions about the elections to contact us.

Sincerely,

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Vilnius Jewish Community