The Bagel Shop Café received an extraordinary guest today, Jeffrey Yoskowitz, an expert on Ashkenazi cuisine, author of the Gifilteria , author of the gefilte fish pop-up concept and the force behind #gefiltemanifesto. He is visiting Vilnius with a friend and is searching for the secrets of Litvak cooking. Both visitors spent a good hour writing down Faina Kukliansky’s family recipes in Yiddish and tasted Riva Portnaja’s Litvak carp.
The challa-making event at the Lithuanian Jewish Community on October 26 was a fun-filled evening with klezmer music and treats from the Bagel Shop Café. Four generations of women participated, some with their children and grand-children, others with friends, kneading and braiding the dough which was then baked and taken home.
The event was in solidarity with the annual Shabbos Project, now in its fourth year.
More photos here.
World-famous pianist Leon Livshin from the USA will perform selections from Brahms, Schnittke and Renaud Déjardin at the Stasys Vainiūnas House of the Lithuanian Musicians Support Fund, located at Goštauto street no. 2-41 in Vilnius, at 5:30 on Tuesday, October 31, 2017. For more information call 8 699 90035.
Livshin was born in Vilnius. He was graduated from the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater. He has performed at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Merkin and Steinway halls, the Cologne Philharmonic, Zurich town square, Moscow and Harvard College in the USA, among others.
Panevėžys Is the First to Thank Jewish Rescuers
www.sekundė.lt
The first plaque commemorating those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust has been unveiled in Panevėžys, Lithuania. It honors nun, activist, nurse and teacher Marija Rusteikaitė of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Love of God and her fellow nuns. The stone plaque was unveiled at a ceremony at the intersection of J. Tilvyčio and Krekenavos streets in the Lithuanian city, close to where the Sisters of the Love of God monastery and hospital were located, according to historical documents.
“It was namely this spot, a few dozen meters away, which is the most important historical site of the monastery for us, because this is where Marija Rusteikaitė brought together the nuns, the first sisters of the Love of God, between 1925 and 1936. As soon as she completed the university of medicine in St. Petersburg, the mother superior from Žemaitija joined the St. Vincent de Paul society in order to help the poor people of the city of Panevėžys and surrounding areas. Before that she taught mathematics and geography at the Kražiai pre-gymnasium and Polish at another location,” sister Leonora Kasiulytė, who has long taken an interest in the historical figure, said of the founder of her monastery.
Special envoy for Holocaust issues in the European and Eurasian Bureau of the United States Department of State Thomas Yazdgerdi has visited the Lithuanian Jewish Community and met with chairwoman Faina Kukliansky.
They discussed progress and problems in Holocaust commemoration and the goals the LJC has set for itself and the Lithuanian state in entering a new stage of commemorating Holocaust victims, education and restitution.
The special envoy also heard about work the LJC is doing in human rights in general, including actively participating in a coalition of human rights organizations and a project for drafting and publishing recommendations at the Lithuanian and European level for fighting anti-Semitism and Romophobia.
The Lithuanian National Martynas Mažvydas Library will host a day celebrating Lithuanian illustrator and animator Ilja Bereznickas October 27 including the screening of an animated film, the opening of a new exhibition of works and a presentation of the man’s new book.
At 12 noon the animated feature “Happiness Is Not in a Goat” and previously unseen works by Bereznickas will be shown in library’s screening room on the fifth floor.
At 1:00 P.M. the author’s 2017 book “Animation: From Idea to Screen” will be presented and an exhibit of drawings will open in the library’s art space on the fifth floor.
At 2:00 P.M. a retrospective of Bereznickas’s work from the 2010 DVD Baubas and Co. will be presented in the screening room on the fifth floor.
Come celebrate Sabbath at the Choral Synagogue on October 27. Services begin at 5:30, followed by a special Sabbath dinner in solidarity with the world-wide Shabbos Project.
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community
Dear members,
A ceremony to unveil a stele honoring Marija Rusteikaitė, rescuer of Jews, teacher, nurse, public figure and founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Love of God, will be held at 1:00 P.M. on Friday, October 27.
The ceremony will be held at the intersection of Tilvyčio and Krekenavos streets in Panevėžys. Bus transportation from Vilnius will be provided from the Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius at 10:45 A.M. There are ten seats left at the time of this writing. Those wishing to take the bus should send an email to info@lzb.lt
Those riding by bus will be delivered back in Vilnius in time for the special Sabbath at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius.
For the fourth time in as many years, Jews around the world will meet in their communities for an evening of making challa and greeting the Sabbath. The point of the international Shabbos Project is to unite Jews at least once a year wherever they may be around the world and to celebrate Sabbath together. This time, October 26 to 28, over a million Jews in 96 countries and 1,357 are expected to take part.
Last year 6,000 volunteers in 95 countries and 1,152 cities organized challa-making events during a single Sabbath, events which included over 8,000 women and participants speaking more than 10 different languages in Buenos Aires, and five city blocks in Los Angeles were closed to traffic for setting up cooking tables in the streets. In Melbourne 10,000 people attended the havdala concert and the event generated 61,884,223 images posted on the internet.
The Shabbos Project has been called the Jewish spring, a global social phenomenon and an incredible experience.
We’re inviting everyone to the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 6:00 P.M. on October 26 for an evening of challa-making and baking. The program includes kneading and baking, a contest for the best braided loaf, a presentation of women’s obligations on Sabbath and song and dance with the Rakja Klezmer Orekstar. So far over 100 Community members and friends have signed up, spanning four generations. Riva Portnaja, the senior chef at the Bagel Shop Café, will be showing her one-year-old great-granddaughter how challa is made at the event.
Everyone is welcome. We begin activating the yeast at 6:00 P.M. on October 26 at the Bagel Shop Café inside the Lithuanian Jewish Community at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius.
For more information, contact Dovilė Rūkaitė at projects@lzb.lt
A Jewish calendar published by the Lithuanian Jewish Community last year took first place in an annual Lithuanian calendar contest October 20.
The 28th annual Laurynas Ivinskis Prize ceremony was held in Kuršėnai, Lithuania with live Lithuanian folk music and a performance by the Fayerlakh ensemble.
The theme of the LJC calendar for 5777 was Lithuanian rescuers of Jews. It featured interwar president Kazys Grinius and wife Kristina on the cover, both Righteous Gentiles. Each month featured more than one story of rescue.
Laurynas Ivinskis (1810-1881) was a 19th century calendar maker whose agricultural calendars were also more text than calendar, and were for a period of time forbidden by Russian authorities because they were written in Lithuanian using the Latin rather than Cyrillic alphabet. His almanachs included stories and parables in pre-standard Lithuanian.
Khasia Shpanerflig (Chasia Španerflig) has died at the age of 97. She was a long-standing member of the Community and formerly a student at the Tarbut Gymnasium as well as a Jewish partisan under the Vytautas the Great Trakai brigade. As long as health permitted she devoted herself to the activities of the Union of Ghetto and Concentration Camp Prisoners, the Lithuanian Jewish Community and Holocaust education.
Our condolences to her son Volodia and daughter Sofiya and all her family and friends.
by Mečys Laurinkus, www.lrytas.lt
Toppling (taking down temporarily for restoration) the “idols” on the Green Bridge [in Vilnius] under natural field conditions with no special measures taken, I overheard the complaint: the topplers themselves name streets and hang memorial plaques to the “heroes” who took part in the shooting of Jews. The public is interested in history, reads, listens to discussions and judges the actions of the government. You cannot forbid this.
Virginijus Savukynas in his television show “Istorijos detektyvai” [History’s Detective Stories] returned to this often emotionally explosive topic. Kazys Škirpa, in whose honor a street is named in Vilnius, a noteworthy founder of the Lithuanian state and the organizer of the June, 1941, uprising against the Russians, while under house arrest in Berlin issued a statement about Jews which was totally contrary to his biography and likely his own views, one which was comparable to the spirit of the Gestapo. I will restate my thoughts again a bit later. Jonas Noreika, aka Generolas Vėtra, who had fought against the Nazis and the Bolsheviks and was shot by the latter, appointed head of the Šiauliai district administration by the Provisional Government of Lithuania in 1941, blessed with his signature the establishment of a ghetto for Jews in Žagarė, Lithuania.
General Vėtra (actually just a captain) has been honored with a commemorative plaque. Not somewhere marginal. On the building of the library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences. In an even more visible location there still stands the statue to Petras Cvirka, who brought back the sun of Stalin not at all because of any political manoeuvering to help Lithuania in the grindstones of time, but out of conviction that “Mother Russia” would take us in and protect us. Of course she did take us in, but only to a very cold place, where poets such as Kazys Jakubėnas, upon whom Cvirka informed to Soviet security, were sent.
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club held a target-shooting contest at the GSKA gun club in Vilnius October 8 in three participation categories: men, women and young people. Contestants shot a pistol 25 times (including five practice shots) at concentric targets 20 meters away.
The Fish family won in all categories. The brothers Fish, Adomas and Nojus, took first and second place in the youth competition with 139 and 116 points, respectively. Their mother Kristina with 109 points beat out Laimina Gurvičienė with 55 points and Marina Balderman with 40 to take the women’s. Julius Fish won men’s with 132, followed closely by Algirdas Malcas with 122 and Boris Kirzner with 116 points.
All contestants won participation medals and the actual winners got handsome trophies. The event was organized by Artiomas Perepelica and refereed and supervised by Anatoly Kapustin and Aleksej Slyčkov.
Congratulations to all the contestants and organizers for a fine showing!
by Monika Petrulienė, LRT TV News Service, LRT.lt
Jewish headstones used during the Soviet era for construction in Vilnius are being returned to the Jewish cemetery on Olandų street. Fragments of grave markers were removed from buildings and stairwells in the capital. A memorial will be made from the remains of headstones at the cemetery.
More than 1,000 metric tons of grave stones are being transported to the old Jewish cemetery on Olandų street. Less than half have been brought there so far. They are to be examined by experts to determine to which cemetery they will be returned ultimately. The Jewish cemetery on Olandų street covers almost 12 hectares and is roughly equal to the Rasos cemetery in Vilnius in size and number of burials.
“The first decision made was that the stones should be arrayed somewhere in what we might call an open working area, so that project authors, architects and landscape artists can learn about and get a feel for them, and so that they can be used directly from that area for certain compositions,” Martynas Užpelkis, heritage protection specialist for the Lithuanian Jewish Community, said.
Heritage protection experts say the majority of the Jewish grave markers were used in building stairs on Tauro hill in Vilnius. Many were also used in constructing electrical transformer substations and support walls in the city. Historians have examined about 2,500 pieces so far. The majority of inscriptions have been in Hebrew, but there are also inscriptions in Yiddish, Polish and Russian. The plan is for most of the stone fragments to stay at Olandų street, with the remainder going to the old Jewish cemetery in the Šnipiškės neighborhood.
Photo: Tomas Lukšys/BFL, © 2017 Baltijos fotografijos linija
The Lithuanian Government decided Wednesday to push back the deadline for reconstruction of the Palace of Sports in Vilnius for use as conference center and cultural events venue from 2018 to 2021. The move follows law enforcement getting bogged down in investigations of earlier public procurement for the project.
A statement by the Government said under the new scheme the Vilnius Congress Center project would be implemented within three years. The sitting of the cabinet of ministers approved a proposal from the Finance Ministry on the issue.
Lithuanian prime minister Saulius Skvernelis said the lack of a modern conference center in Vilnius would hinder greatly the expansion of conference tourism in Lithuania.
The Shabbos Project has been called a Jewish spring, a global social phenomenon and an incredible experience.
Last year 6,000 volunteers in 95 countries and 1,152 cities organized challa-making events during a single Sabbath, events which included over 8,000 women and participants speaking more than 10 different languages in Buenos Aires, and five city blocks in Los Angeles were closed to traffic for setting up cooking tables in the streets. In Melbourne 10,000 people attended the havdala concert and the event generated 61,884,223 images posted on the internet.
We’re inviting everyone to the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 6:00 P.M. on October 26 for an evening of challa-making and baking. Challa is the traditional bread served at Sabbath dinner. Please register here.
“The project was conceived in 2014 when Zubin Mehta conducted the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra in Vilnius. The person who runs the orchestra, Gintautas Kevisas, informed ambassador Laimonas that he was planning a visit to South East Asia with the Lithuanian Symphony Orchestra, and was wondering whether they could give a couple of concerts in Mumbai. The ambassador approached Khushroo Suntook and the two days, the 10th and 11th, were finalized,” says a spokesperson about the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, wich performed to great acclaim at the NCPA this week, and which we had the pleasure of attending on Wednesday evening.
“Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of CIPLA, whose mother was Lithuanian and who was born in Lithuania, came forward to make it happen.”
As was to be expected, the presence of this international group of acclaimed musicians was highly applauded, and the packed auditorium was witness to many shouts of “Encore” and “bravo,” especially when the dapper resident conductor and violinist of the Symphony Orchestra of India, Marat Bisengaliev, participated as a solo violinist. What’s more, we noted: it wasn’t just the usual suspects of well-heeled Parsis savoring the fare.
Lithuania’s ambassador to India Laimonas Talat-Kelpsa with Linas Antanas Linkevicius, minister of foreign affairs in Lithuania, along with the consul generals of Spain, Hungary, Argentina and Holland and minister of external affairs M. J. Akbar were in the audience.
(From the Friday, October 13, 2017, print edition of Mid-Day newspaper, Mumbai, India)
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky at the invitation of the Lithuanian embassy to India attended a concert by the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra in Mumbai October 10 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the restoration of Lithuanian independence.
Indian pharmaceutical magnate with Litvak roots Yusuf K. Hamied, a close family friend of the Kuklianskys and his wife Frida sponsored the concert through their foundation.
Photo: (from left) Indian minister of state for foreign affairs Mobashar Jawed “M. J.” Akbar, Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevičius, LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Cipla Ltd. pharmaceuticals and biotech company director Yusuf K. Hamied.
photo: S. Žiūra
This week the Vilnius municipality is sending all known fragments of Jewish gravestones from different Soviet-era sites around the city to the old Jewish cemetery on Olandų street. The headstone fragments mainly came from the historic Olandų and Šnipiškės Jewish cemeteries and were used as construction material during Soviet times. More than 1,000 metric tons of grave marker stone were sent to the Olandų cemetery. All fragments will undergo examination to determine their final destination, either the Olandų or the Šnipiškės cemetery.
Vilnius mayor Remigijus Šimašius said: “Modern Vilnius must assess, remember and honor appropriately the history of the city and its residents. The return of a huge number of headstones to their historic and sacred sites demonstrates the respect Vilnius residents have for the Jewish community and the commemoration of the dead. Stones from the disassembled transformer station and other sites in the city where the Soviets used Jewish headstones for construction have already been returned to the Olandų cemetery. Our goal is for all gravestones to be returned to the location where they belong.”
About 1,000 metric tons of Jewish cemetery marker stones have been collected and stored at the Vilniaus žaluma company so far.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
by Kenneth X. Robbins and John Mcleod
In 1992, the editor of the Times of India telephoned one of Mumbai’s most prominent businessmen–Yusuf K Hamied. The editor asked Yusuf “as a Muslim leader” his opinion on communal riots that were taking place in the city. “Why aren’t you asking me as an Indian Jew? Because my name is Hamied? My mother was Jewish,” Yusuf replied. His maternal grandparents perished in the Holocaust.
Yusuf, chairman of one of India’s largest pharmaceutical firms, is the son of an aristocratic Muslim scientist from India and a Jewish Communist from what is now Lithuania. Defined by his parents’ extraordinary marriage, he unites his father’s scientific skills, business acumen, and Indian patriotism with his mother’s compassion for the less fortunate. He charges the Western pharmaceutical industry with “holding three billion people in the Third World to ransom by using their monopoly status to charge higher prices.” And he has devoted himself to making life-saving inexpensive generic medications for the inhabitants of poorer countries.