The Kaunas State Philharmonic invites you to a unique concert dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the restoration of the Kaunas Jewish Community, “…from Mendelssohn to Latėnas…,” at 6:00 PM on October 22 at the Kaunas State Philharmonic.
Performances by the Klaipėda Chamber Orchestra (directed by Mindaugas Bačkus), Gabrielė Ašmontaitė (on harp), soloists Vilhelmas Čepinskis (violin), Stein Skjervold (baritone) and Mindaugas Bačkus (cello).
The concert is free.
The third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community is now hosting an exhibit of documents to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the Vilnius ghetto. All of the documents relate to Vilnius and the people of the city, including Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski, Dr. Tsemakh Shabad, banker Israel Bunimovich, the businessman Isak Shuman and others. The documents are from around the world with the majority from Germany, the USA and Israel.
One interesting document appears in the first display case at the new exhibit. It carries the inscription in Russia “Proyekt ustava dukhovnogo obschestva Vilniuskoy sinagogi” and the date 1888. It was acquired in Israel and comes from the collection of Leizer Ran, a well-known collector of Judaica.
There are many photographs from various angles of the Great Synagogue and the Choral Synagogue.
Document collector Michailis Duškesas says he began collecting pre-Holocaust Lithuanian Jewish documents about 15 years ago, and began collecting stamps since about 1980. He has an extensive stamp collection from around the world featuring the game of ping pong. He says he’s constantly enlarging his Judaica collection and now has a great number of documents concerning Lithuanian cities and towns where Jews lived. His documents have been exhibited before at the Lithuanian parliament, the National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum and the Lithuanian Historical Presidential Palace in Kaunas. He says they have also been used in documentary films about Jewish life in Lithuania before the Holocaust.
The Destinies series of events invites you to come mark the 90th birthdays of the late Simonas Alperavičius and the maestro Saulius Sondeckis.
Program:
Discussions and recollections
Piano trip Musica Camerata Baltica
Screening of film “Aš kažkaip laimingas” (“I’m Happy Somehow,” 2014) by Berznitski and Gintarė Zakarauskaitė
Special television program “Svyatoslaw Belza Interviews Saulius Sondeckis”
6:00 P.M., October 18, Jascha Heifetz Hall, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius
Initiated and moderated by Maša Grodnikienė
We will visit the graves of Saulius Sondeckis and Simonas Alperavičius, Z”L, in the morning on October 11.
Everyone is invited to come learn some Hebrew or improve the Hebrew skills they already have. On Sundays the long-awaited lessons for children will be held as well. To register contact teacher Ruth Reches by email at ruthreches@gmail.com
Sunday
9:30-11:00 A.M. Hebrew for adults, level 2 (continued, conference hall at the LJC)
1:00-2:30 P.M. Hebrew for adult beginners (conference hall)
2:45-4:15 P.M. Hebrew for adults, level 1 (continued, conference hall)
Sunday school for kids
10:00-11:00 A.M. English lessons by English teacher Viačeslav Mlynkovskij (Ilan Club)
11:15-12:00 noon Hebrew (conference hall)
12:00-12:45 P.M. Traditions (conference hall)
Exhausting legal arguments for over a year now regarding standards for representation within the Lithuanian Jewish Community have now ended, but the destructive efforts continue by the Vilnius, Klaipėda, Ukmergė and Šiauliai Regional Jewish Communities to prove that equality before the law and the rule of law are not the principles which should guide the LJC, which includes 27 organizations as members.
Disputes arose at the LJC conference held back in May of 2017 over the representation of members, disputes which, despite the LJC’s efforts to find consensus, grew into open conflict. The newly-elected leadership of the Vilnius Jewish Community wanted proportional representation at the conference, so that every associated member would have a number of votes proportional to their number of physical members, thus giving their organization a monopoly on decision-making at the LJC conference.
This sort of representation is out of line with the Lithuanian law on associations, whose article 8, part 4 says each association member has one vote at a general meeting of the association; this insures the equal rights of members of the association and their equal participation in decision-making. This is the law, the rule providing for equal voting rights among members, which the Board of Directors of the LJC followed before convening the LJC reporting and election conference.
On November 22, 2017, the Vilnius district court found LJC statute point 7.1 on proportional representation of regional communities at LJC conferences null and void for failing to adhere to Lithuanian law. LJC associate members the Vilnius Jewish Community, Klaipėda Jewish Community, Ukmergė Jewish Community and Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community sought to appeal this decision and renew hearings, but on June 12, 2018, this appeal was rejected by court decree.
The Vilnius Jewish Community, Klaipėda Jewish Community, Ukmergė Jewish Community and Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community have entered a cassation case with the Lithuanian Supreme Court to review the finding by the Vilnius district court on June 12, 2018. The Lithuanian Supreme Court, the only venue which hears cassation complaints, ruling on the application of law rather than the facts of the case, issued a finding on September 19, 2018, declining to accept the cassation complaint for a hearing, and thus again confirming the necessity of applying the rule for equality among members of an association. This finding by the court is final and cannot be appealed.
The LJC encourages members, the public and interested parties to ignore information of a mendacious nature appearing in the media and social media about the allegedly illegitimately elected leadership of the LJC and we are making every effort to insure maximum transparency in our actions. At the same time, we regret the disagreements which have taken root, which divide the community and which are dissonant with the fundamental values of our people. Despite ongoing disagreements, the LJC is open to a further search for compromise with members questioning the legitimacy of the leadership of the association.
The Nechama Lifshitz Ensemble from Israel presents a creative evening to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust called “Heroism in the Face of Destruction. Testimonies,” directed by Regina Driker. The evening is dedicated to the heroes of the Vilnius ghetto. Passages from books, photographic documentation and songs of the ghetto in Yiddish (with Lithuanian translations). Performers: Gintaras Mikalauskas (actor, Lithuania), Gali Ben-Ari (vocalist, Israel), Roza Klein-Gofanovich (vocalist, Israel), Maksim Levinski (vocalist, Israel), Ada Pashaev (vocalist, Israel), Jana Yankovski (vocalist, Israel), Gregoriy Stolovich (multi-media), Regina Driker (pianist, director, playwright).
Time: 6:30 P.M., October 4, 2018
Location: Theater Hall, Vilnius University, Universiteto street no. 3, Vilnius.
Duration: ~one hour and thirty minutes
You and your family are invited to celebrate Sukkot together in the tent beginning at 6:30 P.M. on September 23 at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. The prayer service will be followed by a holiday dinner at Bokšto street no. 19 in Vilnius at 7:30 P.M. Additionally, holiday lunch will be served in the sukka at 12:30 P.M. on both September 24 and 25.
WJC and Lithuanian Jewish community mark 75 years since liquidation of Vilnius Ghetto: “We must continue to strengthen Jewish life in Lithuania”
WJC President Lauder praises Pope’s participation in commemoration: “Pope Francis is a true friend of the Jewish people”
NEW YORK–The World Jewish Congress and its affiliated community in Lithuania marked the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius Ghetto, alongside Pope Francis and other notable personalities.
“Seventy-five years ago, the Germans and local Lithuanian accessories nearly obliterated one of the most vibrant Jewish communities in Europe, a hub of cultural and intellectual Jewish life for thousands of years,” WJC President Ronald S. Lauder said. “But they did not succeed entirely. From the ashes of the Holocaust, the broken community is slowly rebuilding itself and working to ensure the future of Jewish life in Lithuania.”
A Lithuanian internet petition is circulating for the immediate removal of a plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika from the side of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences building in central Vilnius.
The petitioners on the webpage say:
“After new facts have surfaced regarding Jonas Noreika’s, aka General Vėtra’s role in establishing the Šiauliai ghetto, organizing the ‘isolation’ of Jewish Lithuanian citizens, the appropriation of their property, their imprisonment and other collaboration with Holocaust perpetrators during World War II, we call for the immediate removal of the plaque commemorating Jonas Noreika from the building of the Vrublevskiai Libary of the Lithuanian Academy of Science.”
Lauded earlier as a freedom fighter during the Nazi and Soviet occupations and even awarded posthumously and by presidential decree one of the highest distinctions of the Lithuanian state, Noreika’s role in the commission of Holocaust crimes has come under increasing scrutiny recently and has even attracted international media attention.
According to the website, the petition was initiated by B. Ušinskaitė on September 20, 2018, and is addressed to the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, the mayor of Vilnius, the Vilnius municipality, the Government of the Republic of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry.
Petition website here.
September 21
10:00 A.M. Ceremony at the President’s Office to award rescuers of Jews the Order of the Life Saver’s Cross (by invitation only)
3:00 P.M. Ceremony for the erection of a stele marking the future site of a monument to Righteous Gentiles in the green space behind the Church of the Assumption and the Missionaries’ Monastery located at Subačiaus street no 28 in Vilnius and accessible from Maironio street (near the former Rosa Square)
September 22
6:00 P.M. Premiere of the play Ghetto, National Drama Theater, Laisvės prospect no. 71, Kaunas
September 23
10:00 A.M. Reading of the names at the Choral Synagogue, Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius
12:00 noon Reading of passages from Yitzhak Rudashevski’s ghetto diary, Rūdininkų square, Rūdininkų street, Vilnius
2:30 P.M. Commemoration at the Ponar mass murder site, Ponar Memorial Complex, Agrastų street, Vilnius. Bus departs LJC at 1:00 P.M.
Exact time to be announced: Pope Francis commemorates Holocaust victims in the former ghetto in Vilnius Old Town
6:00 P.M. World premiere of “Under the Star of David” by the Giedrius Kuprevičius chamber symphony, Vaidila Theater, Jakšto street no. 9, Vilnius
Program of events for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius
Sunday, September 16
2:30-4:30 P.M. Preparations for Yom Kippur: lessons, kapparot (kappores) ritual
Tuesday, September 18
6:00 P.M. meal before fast
7:00 Kol Nidre
7:10 P.M. beginning of fast
Wednesday, September 19
9:30 A.M. Shacharit morning prayer
12:30 P.M. Izkor prayer
6:15 P.M. Mincha prayer
7:15 P.M. Niila prayer
8:19 P.M. end of fast, meal
6:00 P.M., September 23, 2018
Vaidila Theater, Jakšto street no 9, Vilnius
World premier of Giedrius Kuprevičius’s chamber symphony, a twelve-part chamber symphony for tenor, clarinet in B, two violins, 2 cellos and piano.
The new season of Vaidila Classics will open September 23 with a modern classical concert called Under the Star of David to commemorate the Holocaust. This is an impressive and moving 12-part chamber symphony composed by maestro Giedrius Kuprevičius. Adding charm to the piece is the inclusion of an ancient Hebrew melody deciphered by Haik Vantoura and poetry written especially for this piece by the poet Violeta Palčinskaitė. The maestro and the performers–Lietuvos Jeruzalė, the American Virtuosi and the tenor Rafailas Karpis–want to commemorate every Holocaust victim with their music.
A concert to commemorate Holocaust victims will be performed on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Vilnius ghetto. Tenor Rafail Karpis, pianist Darius Mažintas and poet Sergejus Kanovičius present Embrace the Past Tense.
Can Yiddish and Lithuanian meet under one roof?
Do you know it’s a lullaby if it’s in a language you don’t understand?
Is dialogue possible between spoken Lithuanian and sung Yiddish?
Can love, longing and regret meet in memory?
6:00 P.M., September 26
Applied Art and Design Hall,
Arsenalo street no. 3A, Vilnius
Admission free
For more information write info@lzb.lt or call +370 672 40942
Event sponsors: Lithuanian Jewish Community, Government of the Republic of Lithuania
To mark the Day of Remembrance of Lithuanian Jewish Victims of Genocide, the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum will provide free entry to visitors to the Holocaust exhibit at Pamėnkalnio street no. 12 in Vilnius. Free guides tours will also be held at 12 noon on September 17, 4:00 P.M. on September 18, 12 noon on September 20 and 3:00 P.M. on September 21. Registration is required for the free guided tours by sending an e-mail to jewishmuseum@jmuseum.lt
The International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania and the Vilna Gaon Museum also invite schools, tolerance centers, all Lithuanian institutions and the general public to attend a commemoration at Ponar at 12:30 P.M. on September 21. For more information write ingrida.vilkiene@lrv.lt or call (8~706) 63 818.
The Polish foreign minister is to open the exhibit “Żegota: The Council to Aid Jews” in the Lithuanian parliament’s Building III at 4:00 P.M. on September 13. The embassy of the Republic of Poland and the Polish Institute in Vilnius in cooperation with the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Lithuanian parliament are to present the extraordinary exhibit about the Polish Council to Aid Jews as part of commemorations of the 75th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto and to celebrate the Year of Irena Senderlowa. The exhibit was made by Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance. It was first shown at the Ninth Fort in Kaunas earlier this year.
Those planning to attend the opening ceremony include Polish foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz, Lithuanian MP Arūnas Gelūnas, LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Polish ambassador to Lithuania Urszula Doroszewska and Polish Institute director and advisor to the ambassador Marcin Łapczyński.
Please report your intention to attend by sending an email to danguole.stonyte@lrs.lt
Valid identification is required for entry to the parliament building.
NAMES. The person is not a number
Marking the Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews on September 23, the names of Holocaust victims will be read out at different locations around Lithuania. More than 90% of the Jews who lived in our country were murdered during World War II. The Names civic initiative invites everyone to remember the people of Lithuanian brutally murdered by reading their names out loud.
Readings of the names in public in Lithuanian cities and towns has been going on for eight years now. Participants say this form of Holocaust remembrance really helps them to feel at the personal level the scope of the tragedy.
“When you read in your own voice the names, surnames and professions of these people who lived here, you can no longer pretend they didn’t exist, you can no longer pretend that that person never lived, and the statistics become more than numbers. In this way the courage appears to look at history more openly,” Milda Jakulytė-Vasil says.
As the high holy days draw near, I am glad to be able to share with you important Lithuanian Jewish Community news. The Lithuanian Jewish Community faces many challenges every day, but this year we’ve grown, we’ve grown stronger and we are receiving ever more public and political support. Interest in Jewish culture is not fading, either, as shown by European Days of Jewish Culture events in Lithuania, a program which grows richer by the year. I greatly appreciate that 1,500 Litvaks abroad have officially joined the LJC from the Litvak Association in Israel chaired by Arie Ben-Ari Grozdensky. Jewish unity is the largest goal for the LJC which is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the national revival this year.
Thanks to the active work of the regional Jewish communities and Jewish organizations, Jewish values remain strong in Lithuania. A young generation of Jews is growing up and we need to pass on our history and our future to them. For a long time now we have been developing the idea of reviving the tradition of Litvak scouting and this year we finally managed to make it a reality working with French and Polish Jewish scouting organizations. Vilnius ghetto prisoner and Jewish partisan Fania Brancovskaja was part of Jewish scouting in Lithuania before the war and shared her experience in scouting at our recent camping event. Although the Jewish community in Lithuania isn’t large, we have proven we are able to continue the old traditions and to start new ones.
We met the Litvak prime minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, and his wife Sara at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius, celebrating its 115th anniversary this year. This was an historical occasion to remind Europe and the world the Jewish nation is an indivisible part of European culture, and Europe should be grateful to the State of Israel for so many European lives which have been saved thanks to the work of Israeli intelligence in stopping attacks. Two small democracies, Israel and Lithuania, find striking parallels in their histories. We will recall them this December in celebrating 100 years of the union of Lithuanian Zionist organizations, which also supported Lithuanian aspirations for statehood.
In September we mark a great tragedy which has come to be a symbol of the Holocaust in Lithuania. We mark the painful 75th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto. It’s very significant that we are dedicating ever more informal means to commemorate history, but there are still areas where more needs to be done in discussing the role the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Provisional Government of Lithuania played in the Holocaust, and more needs to be done in the state’s school curriculum as well.
We esteem highly as well the great work our partners–the joint Lithuanian-Israel archaeology group–have done in work on the Great Synagogue of Vilnius. The LJC is responsible for drafting a study on ways to commemorate the Great Synagogue. As the spiritual successors to the Vilna Gaon, we feel a great responsibility to insure the respect due this special Jewish sacred site and the appropriate presentation of what’s left of this heritage site to the public.
I want to thank sincerely all those who have been and are with the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Thank you for your energy and support. I wish you a sweet and happy 5779!
The children’s clubs of the Lithuanian Jewish Community will hold a ceremony September 16 to open the new fall season.
Children and parents are invited to attend the Dubi -Mishpakha Club for children aged one-and-a-half to four at 10:30 A.M. on September 16 in the Dubi Club on the first floor.
The ceremony for the Dubi Club, for children aged 4 to 6, and the Ilan CLub, for children aged 7 to 12, will be held at 2:00 P.M. on the third floor.
The program includes games, a lottery, Rosh Hashanah treats and more and will be directed by our great team of counselors.
For more information contact Sofja at +370 672 57540 or sofja@lzb.lt