As the Lithuanian Jewish Community counts down the days to the New Year 5784, the Bagel Shop Café has come up with some new menu items. One of them is rugelakh, the amazing pastry traditionally served during Shavuot and Rosh Hashanah. The name comes from the Yiddish root “rugel” meaning little twist or tie.
Last week we bade farewell to outgoing US ambassador to Lithuania Robert Gilchrist. We thanked him for three and a half years of sincere friendship, genuine care, infectious energy and reliable partnership, as well as for his real interest in Litvak history and traditions, constant attention to culture and resolute support of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in all initiatives. We also saluted his lack of patience with all forms of anti-Semitism and discrimination. Immediately upon arrival, ambassador Gilchrist got involved with Holocaust commemoration and never passed up an invitation to attend a Holocaust event, even when COVID-19 was a threat. We thank him for his great contribution to sustaining the Jewish communities in Europe and for the attention he gave to regional Jewish communities as well. We wish him the best of luck and success in all his new postings and appointments. Until we meet again!
Aleksandras Rutenbergas has passed away. He was an active member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s board of directors and dedicated his life to preserving the Litvak legacy. Our deepest condolences to his son, family members and many friends. Those wishing to say farewell may attend the wake at the Nutrūkusi styga funeral home at Ąžuolyno street no. 10 in Vilnius from 4:30 P.M. to 9:00 P.M. Thursday, July 27. The burial will take place at 4:00 P.M. on July 28 at the Jewish cemetery on Sudervės road in Vilnius.
The small square–actually more of a triangle–on Basanavičiaus street in Vilnius with a sculpture of Litvak writer in French and diplomat Romain Gary as a boy was the sight of a fairly large protest Wednesday last week.
Several hundred people came to protest plans by the adjacent cafė to cut down some larger trees around the sculpture.
The cafė owner claimed the trees weren’t rooted in soil and had simply grown over pavement, and posed an obstacle to renovating the terrace there.
Protestors called for tree specialists to make a determination about root-depth. Last Friday the Vilnius city municipality rescinded permission to remove the nine trees until experts have had a chance to look at the situation.
BNS, July 23, 2023
Two new artistic installations now grace the Old Town in Anykščiai, Lithuania, north of Vilnius intended to commemorate the former Jewish population.
The Anykščiai municipality reports a sculptural relief by professor Romualdas Inčirauskas and Zita Inčirauskienė called “Memorial Marker for the Former Synagogues” was installed at the site of the former synagogue at Šaltupio street. It reportedly includes portion of a map of the town from 1925 with the sites of six former synagogues marked.
The same artists installed a bench in front of the building located at Baranauskas Square no. 7. There are seven human figure sculptures on top of the bench back to symbolize the days of the week with the Sabbath represented as a rabbi.
Photo: Panevėžys Esperanto club members with their club flag in 1930.
The Revo Esperanto Club in Panevėžys recently celebrated its 100th birthday and Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman delivered a greeting there from Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, wishing members success in their meeting. Kofman also delivered an address, quoting from a book that the first Esperanto enthusiasts in Panevėžys were Jewish and talking about Jewish contributions to the Esperanto movement.
Revo Esperanto Club director Vida Kulikauskienė presented a short history of the club and said Esperanto might have begun there with Lithuanian Esperanto pioneer Aleksandras Dambrauskas, also known as Adomas Jakštas. Of course the artificial language was invented by Lazer Zamenhoff writing under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto. Zamenhoff lived at various times in Lithuania and Poland but published the initial book in Poland. It quickly became popular in Lithuania and especially among Lithuanian Jews. At a certain point Soviet authorities banned the Esperanto clubs in the Soviet Union as possible avenues for foreign espionage, but eventually lifted the ban.
The third annual iteration of the Shalom, Akmenė event in the European Days of Jewish Culture series was held at the Akmenė Palace of Culture over the weekend, educating locals on Jewish culture, life and heritage.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Bagel Shop Café brought baskets of fresh bagels and Litvak snacks to the event. The Jewish market as well. Participants talked about Jewish cuisine and especially bagels, and shared the history and best recipes for this world-renowned food item.
The theme for the upcoming 2023 European Days of Jewish Culture is memory. The European Days of Jewish Culture will conclude this year on September 3 with an event in Vilnius.
Some snapshots from the most recent Shalom, Akmenė event can be found here.
July 15 was the 79th anniversary of the extermination of the Šiauliai or Shavl ghetto where around 6,000 Jews were then imprisoned from a total population of 14,000 Jews on the eve of war, including refugees from Poland, this remainder having already been murdered by that time.
Members of the Šiauliai Regional Jewish Community gathered at the monument marking the location of a former gate to the ghetto, which consisted of two sections, as had the ghetto in Vilnius. The victims were remembered with flowers, candles and stones.
Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda presented the Lithuanian medal “For Merit” to Lara Lempertienė, director of the Judaica Research Center of the Lithuanian National Library, on July 6, Lithuania’s State Day, Coronation of Mindaugas Day. She received the award in recognition of her work at the Center going beyond textual research and including exhibits, publications, presentations at international conferences and presenting the Litvak cultural legacy in Lithuania and abroad. The Lithuanian Jewish Community congratulates Lara on yet another Lithuanian state award and wish her continued success.
Williams Tcath, the president of the Gendel/Hendel family association, and a group of fellow travellers visited the Panevėžys Jewish Community this June. His grandfather Salomon Hendel was a merchant of pre-made clothing and died in 1916. His descendants have banded together to form an association of families who left Panevėžys after 1919 with 416 members.
Mr. Tcath looked through the archives and photo albums of the Panevėžys Jewish Community, and left an inscription in the guest book.
The point of their trip to Panevėžys was to collect information and photographs concerning the families belonging to their association and to make known the contributions made by these families to life in Panevėžys at that time. Members of the delegation had numerous documents which they gave to the Panevėžys Jewish Community. They only had one day in Panevėžys and then travelled on to Vilnius.
Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg-Silverstein visited the western Lithuanian town of Jurbarkas, or Yurburg in Yiddish, on July 3, according to the Jurbarkas Regional Administration webpage jurbarkas.lt.
The ambassador began her visit at the V. Grybas Museum where Jurbarkas regional mayor Skirmantas Mockevičius and museum director Rasa Grybaitė received her.
At the Jurbarkas Regional Library the ambassador met with regional administration director Rūta Vančienė, culture and sports department director Aušra Baliukynaitė, senior department specialist Akvilė Sadauskienė and library director Rasida Kalinauskienė. They discussed opportunities for cooperative work.
Greetings on Lithuania’s Coronation of Mindaugas Day, or State Day, July 6.
For centuries Jews and Lithuanians with others have created and built Lithuania, and have worked hard for the country’s welfare and success.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community and chairwoman Faina Kukliansky send our greetings to everyone on this holiday and wish you peace, happiness and concord.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites those aged 18 and over to an evening of entertainment based on the idea of a return to the roaring 20s, or at least the style and elegance displayed in public in the period between the two world wars. The musical repertoire will reflect the period. For more information, contact mishel.katrina@gmail.com or dovydas.sotland@gmail.com. You may register here:
https://forms.gle/ur5qqFjQHKXxDdX68
When: 7:00 P.M., July 5.
Where: LJC, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius.
Dress: interwar period, flapper girl or otherwise.
Lithuanian state radio and television reports on efforts by Juozapas Blažiūnas, the director of the Lithuanian Literature and Art Archive, for making a working trip to South Africa following expeditions to Australia and New Zealand as well as Argentina and Uruguay to seek a legacy of lost documents, netting the archive over 800 kilograms of paper.
In an article entitled “Kraštas, kuriame ‘pinigai semiami saujomis,’ arba, ką PAR [sic] veikė 2015 žemaičių” [The Country Where ‘Money Is Taken by the Fist-Fulls,’ or, What Were 2,015 Žemaitijans Doing in the Republic [sic] of South Africa?], chief archivist Juozapas Blažiūnas writes:
“Why did we travel there? About 90% of the 80,000 Jews living in South Africa are of Lithuanian origin (the so-called Litvaks), and this is the largest Litvak community in the world. And it wasn’t just Jews, Lithuanians also travelled to the distant country seeking success, for example, according to the newspaper Lietuva, from 1892 to 1895 some 2,015 Žemaitijans [an ethnic subgroup in Lithuania] travelled to South Africa just through the port of Bremen [Germany] alone.”
The public library in Jonava, Lithuania, has been renamed the Grigoriy Kanovitch library. The late Litvak writer came from Jonava originally.
At the naming ceremony the writer’s son, Sergejus Kanovičius, also a writer, quoted from an interview made with his father several years ago:
Q.: If you could be anywhere in an instant, which location do you hold most dear?
A.: I’d go back to my childhood. To Jonava, on the banks of the Vilija [Neris River].
Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky both attended the ceremony at the town hall as well. Both women thanked the city council and the library for the name-change. The library awards a Gigoriiy Kanovitch literary prize annually.
“A few days ago my father would have celebrated his 94th birthday and tomorrow would be exactly 82 years since he and his family were forced to leave Jonava, as he believed, for life. I am extraordinarily grateful that after so many years you have brought his memory back to Jonava, to his childhood on the banks of the Vilija,” his son said.
Last weekend one of the few extant wooden synagogues in Europe opened its doors to visitors following renovation work. Last December Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky signed an agreement with the Anykščiai Cultural Center: in exchange for renovation, the center will enjoy the use of the building for its activities.
Chairwoman Kukliansky commented: “There was a significant Jewish community in Kurkliai before World War II which was lost following the tragic events of the Holocaust. The reconstructed building will soon fall into ruin again if it isn’t used. We are therefore very glad the Anykščiai Cultural Center and the whole regional community stood shoulder to shoulder to outfit the building for a new life. This is yet another wonderful example of cooperation between the Lithuanian Jewish Community and municipal and regional governments as well as cultural centers.”
The synagogue building will include an exhibit about the Kurkliai Jewish community and Jewish life in the village located about midway between Anykščiai and Ukmergė just north of Vilnius.
Following vandalism in January of 2022 to the commemorative plaque marking a former synagogue in Panevėžys, a new plaque has been placed on the building located at Valančiaus street no. 4.
That certainly wasn’t the only recent act of vandalism against Jewish sites in the area, including at Jewish cemeteries, at Memory Square and the “Sad Jewish Mother” monument to Holocaust victims where vandals poured paint. That’s been cleaned up as well and there are now video cameras monitoring the square.
The stone stele commemorating 100 years of activity by the Joint or Jewish Distribution Committee in Panevėžys and Lithuania was also vandalized.
Over the last decade anti-Semitic vandalism also occurred at the mass murder site in the Žalioji Forest and at the monument in the Kurganava Forest. Around 5500 Jews were murdered at the former and around 8000 Jews at the latter site.
Joana Viga Čiplytė, an historian who has written extensively about the history of the Panevėžys Jewish community, has been awarded the Gabrielė Petkevičaitės-Bitė medal “Tarnaukite Lietuvai” [To Serve Lithuania] in recognition of her work. Her first book was called “Mažosios Jeruzalės – Panevėžio žydų istorija. Holokaustas” [The History of Little Jerusalem, the Panevėžys Jewish Community: The Holocaust].
At the award ceremony Čiplytė said she was grateful to her family and to Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman for their support.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky made a trip to the city of Ukmergė, known in Yiddish as Vilkomir, to address several issues there.
Her first order of business was to make contact with Ukmergė Jewish Community chairman Artūras Taicas and the new mayor, Darius Varnas.
“I came with the desire of increasing cooperation. We would like to take part in city holidays and to invite Ukmergė to take part in international projects which our Community is coordinating in Lithuania. This would give the city an opportunity to be more visible in Europe, to present and take pride in its material heritage,” Kukliansky said.
The primary issue for the visit was to encourage local leaders to revisit the issue of public commemoration in the form of a statue of Lithuanian Nazi Juozas Krikštaponis. Kukliansky said she hoped the newly-elected mayor would take a different position on the controversy, but after meeting with Varnas commented the problem had not been solved.
by Canaan Lidor, Times of Israel, June 6, 2023
The decade-long controversy surrounding the Snipiškės (Shnipishok) Jewish cemetery in Lithuania’s capital appears to have reached a resolution: instead of building a convention center atop the burial ground, the Vilnius municipality will turn it into a monument for Lithuanian Jews.
The decision announced Thursday by Lithuanian National Art Museum director and former Lithuanian minister of culture Arūnas Gelūnas puts to rest concerns about disturbing the remains of Jews believed by some to be buried under a Soviet-era building authorities wanted to tear down and replace. The plan set off a highly publicized legal fight between some Jewish community members and authorities and Jewish groups.
“It’s a hugely welcome outcome to a dispute that has been going on for too many years,” Michael Mail, chief executive of the Foundation for Jewish Heritage non-profit working to preserve such sites in Europe and the Middle East, told Times of Israel Monday.