Dear Eta,
We congratulate you on your energy and vitality. The Lithuanian Jewish Community wishes you good health and warmth every year. You turned 100 last year and received greetings from the city in the name of all residents of Vilnius. This year you have enchanted us all and inspired everyone with your smile, sincerity, clear memory and unfading sense of humor. You are an example to all of us.
Mazl tov! Bis 120!
April 23 is the traditional date of the birthday of the Vilna Gaon, the most outstanding scholar of sacred Jewish texts in the modern era. Last year Lithuania was supposed to celebrate his 300th birthday with fanfare, but public events were canceled due to fears for public health.
YIVO’s Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe says the Gaon, also known by the acronym GRA, was a spiritual giant, an example to future generations, a source of inspiration and the central figure in Litvak culture.
Hirsh Glik authored the words to the Jewish partisan hymn Zog Nit Keynmol. He was born on April 24, ca. 1921 according to the US Holocaust Museum, in Vilnius and belonged to the Yungvald circle of Yiddish poets. Later imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto, he and fellow ghetto inmate and Vilnius native Rokha Margolis, both youth members of the FPO Jewish partisans group operating there, set his words to music and presented the song to the FPO leadership. He is thought to have been killed in 1944.
The March issue of the magazine “Kaunas pilnas kultūros” [Kaunas Full of Culture] featured the history of the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club.
Gercas Žakas, chairman of the Kaunas Jewish Community, wrote on his facebook profile:
“I believe a number of Kaunas residents have discovered and come to love the publication ‘Kaunas pilnas kultūros’ which is published monthly in a small format but with rich content (incidentally, it’s free! While they say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, if you get this magazine with your lunch at a café, it’s worth the cost of your meal 
).
“Sports was the theme for March, and I had the honor of being interviewed as well. We spoke about youth, soccer, the Jewish community, the history of the Makabi Athletics Club and about its resurrection in Lithuania. I am grateful to Kotryna Lingienė for the initiative, to Monika Balčiauskaitė for the sincere discussion and to Arvydas Čiukšys for his photographs and warm communication. I was echanted by these enthusiastic young people who are keen on their country’s history and seek to show the multiculturalism which enriches it.”
The BBC television interview program HARDtalk interviewed granddaughter of Lithuanian Nazi Jonas Noreika on April 16, 2021, and has been airing the episode this week.
The description for the episode called “Silvia Foti: When truth trumps family loyalty. Silvia Foti on grappling with family responsible for the Holocaust” reads:
“Silvia Foti’s grandfather was a Lithuanian man hailed as heroic patriot who paid with his life resisting the Soviets. But according to her, Jonas Noreika was no hero–he had the blood of thousands of Jews on his hands. She’s chosen to speak out, angering many in Lithuania. What happens when truth trumps family loyalty?”
Interviewer Stephen Sackur pressed Silvia Foti for documentary proof her grandfather was responsible for the murder of around 1,800 in Plungė–the entire Jewish population–in 1941. Foti went further and said she had reliable documents and sources showing Noreika was responsible for mass murders of Jews in Plungė, Telšiai and Šiauliai. Sackur was interested in Foti’s journey from that of a proud Lithuanian-American to the point where she had to confront Holocaust crimes within her immediate family. Foti countered the problem was much more widespread than her family, that the perpetrators and their descendants were still covering up the Holocaust in present-day Lithuania, and cited the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania as one party involved in the nation-wide cover-up. She said her and Grant Gochin’s legal battles to have the plaque commemorating Noreika on the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences building in Vilnius was really a battle for the soul of Lithuania. Sackur asked whether Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center was correct in calling Lithuania the locomotive in the train of Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe. Foti admitted she didn’t know the situation in Eastern Europe in general, but that this was possible.
An audio recording of the interview is available here and here.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community in cooperation with the Vilnius city municipality will light up three bridges in the Lithuanian capital on the evening of April 14 to celebrate the 73rd Israeli independence day.
From Wednesday evening to sundown on Thursday blue and white lights will illuminate the White, Green and King Mindaugas Bridges. These colors were chosen for the flag of the state of Israel by Dovid Volfson who was born in the small town of Darbėnai in Lithuania in the mid-19th century.
“Around the world Vilnius is known as the Jerusalem of the North because of the important Jewish cultural and historical figures who were born, grew up and studied here. A number of them actively contributed to the creation of fortification of the independent state of Israel, forging extremely strong and deep ties between Vilnius and Israel and its people,” LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said.
Photo: Restored Jewish cemetery in Šeduva, Lithuania.
Mazl tov to Maceva, the Litvak Cemetery Catalogue, which is celebrating a milestone: ten years of activity documenting, cleaning, digitizing, and restoring Jewish cemeteries in Lithuania.
“Beit Olam, cemeteries are the house of living. It is the place were our memory comes to life,” the non-profit organization, established in 2011, said in an anniversary statement on its facebook page.
For three decades now the Kaunas Jewish Community has been commemorating in the last days of March the horrific operation for the mass murder of children in the Kaunas ghetto on March 27, 1944.
Over one day around 1,700 children and elderly were captured, taken out of the ghetto and murdered. The list of children murdered in the Kaunas ghetto is incomplete, it only contains a few names. The list was drawn up for the 70th anniversary of the Children’s Aktion with information from the Vilna Gaon Jewish History Museum and private individuals.
“We saw a bus. This noisy music was emanating from it which was supposed to mask the screams of the children, the mothers begging and pleading and the barking of the dogs. Drunk and angry Ukrainians (Ukrainian police of vlasovniki) waving axes and crow-bars hunted down the children and elderly people in their hiding places. All the atrocities ended with sundown.
“Returning from forced labor, the parents found the ghetto torn apart. The neighbor sister put a bag of clothes on a shelf and hid her three-year-old daughter inside. A German soldier looking for children jabbed the bag with a bayonet, but didn’t find anything. The cutting raised a cloud of dust and the soldier hurried out of the room. When the mother untied the bag she found her girl curled up with a deep wound in her back. The mother broke into tears but the little one, it seems her name was Gita, said: ‘Don’t cry, mommy, it doesn’t hurt.'” (testimony of J. Corefas’s father, from the book “Išgelbėti bulvių maišuose” [Saved in Potato Sacks].
We remember and we honor the victims of this terrific mass murder operation called the Children’s Aktion, and gathered to do so in a small group in line with quarantine rules in Kaunas.
Dear Simas, we greet you heartily on your birthday and wish you good health. May your home never lack peace, tranquility, happiness and coziness, and may you always have at your side a person on whose shoulder you can support yourself in a difficult moment. Happy birthday.
Mykolas Preis died at the age of 104 in Israel March 31. He was twice the Lithuanian champion of the 100-meter dash in the interwar period. He was buried at the Har haMenukhot cemetery in Jerusalem next to his wife Olia. Preis’s family emigrated to Israel in 1973. The Lithuanian Jewish Community remembers Mykolas Preis as an outstanding doctor and athlete. Our deepest condolences to his family.
Preis was the last interwar Lithuanian track champion. He took first place two years in a row, in 1939 and 1940, running the 100-meter dash in 11.5 seconds both times.
Preis was the senior medical doctor at the Sports Medicine Center located on Rožių alley in Vilnius in 1948. His contemporaries spoke of him as a great organizer as well as athlete. According to the Makabi records he came to prominence as a runner in 1938. Preis shared his memories of childhood and adolescence in the book “Lietuvos sporto klubo ,Makabi 1916–2016” [Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club, 1916-2016] and spoke about his many friends and the influence of his caring and warm teacher Rozalija Sondeckienė when he attended the Šiauliai Boys’ Gymnasium.
President of Israel Reuven Rivlin has sent a letter to the Lithuanian Jewish Community thanking the LJC for presenting him a Lithuanian commemorative coin celebrating the 300th anniversary of the birth of the Vilna Gaon.
“I was especially moved by this gesture as the President of the State of Israel and as a proud descendant of the Vilna Gaon,” president Rivlin wrote in his letter.
He continued: “The gift, indeed, reflects the strong and everlasting ties between us, Jews in the State of Israel and Jewish communities in the diaspora, and reflects the historic ties between Israel and Lithuania.”
President Rivlin ended his letter by calling himself a proud Litvak and sending warm greetings from Jerusalem to all members of the Community.
Photo: Pinchos Fridberg, the only Jew left in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius who was born there before the Nazis invaded in 1941. By Brendan Hoffman for the New York Times.
by professor Pinchos Fridberg, an alter vilner id [an old Jew born and raised in Vilnius]
“Rebe, will there ever come a time when the words Vilne and Yidish will be inseparable again?”
“Saydn nor mit Meshiakh’n ineinem.” [Not unless it comes with the Messiah.]
Introduction
The article “Как это делалось ин Вилнэ…” [This Is How It Was Done in Vilne] became the main feature for issue no. 505 of the international magazine “Мы Здесь” [We Are Here] in 2015. More than 7,000 people read it, and I began receiving letters from people whom I didn’t know.
The largest Russian-language weekly newspaper in Lithuania “Обзор” [Review] reprinted this article on its website on March 8, 2021.
The article concerns the history of Jewish Vilnius.
I think it might be interesting to non-Russian-language readers as well. *
“This is How It Was Done in Vilne…”
As I was putting my archive in order, I came across a small program for a concert to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Jewish volunteer collectives. This program is more than half a calendrical century old. I think the reader might be interested to see “how it was done in Vilne.” The program contains over 30 photographs. I will present a few of them. I believe it has long been time for them to be revived on the wider internet.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is inviting the public to take a virtual tour of the only synagogue operating in Vilnius according to all Jewish laws, the Choral Synagogue. The virtual guided tour will demonstrate the synagogue itself and also offers tourists the chance to learn about Jewish cultural and culinary traditions and the High Holy Days.
The virtual tour covers the synagogue’s interior, the mikva, the kosher kitchen and the only surviving matzo-making machine in Lithuania, as well as Jewish religion, philosophy, traditional holidays, lifestyles and Jewish sacred songs. Virtual lessons are available in the kosher kitchen for those wanting to learn about the Jewish culinary tradition. Over six millennia strict traditions have developed for religious and secular holidays for making certain foods for specific holidays, for example, only round loaves of challa are baked and fish heads prepared for the Rosh Hashanah table, doughnuts and potato pancakes are fried for Hanukkah and hamantaschen, pastries filled with poppy seeds, are made for Purim.
Around 10,000 tourists visit the Choral Synagogue annually, many of them the Litvak descendants of Holocaust survivors living in diaspora around the world, and also local residents, students, and social partners in the field of culture and tourism in Lithuania and abroad. Visiting the synagogue is being restricted because of the corona virus, so a virtual tour has been set up for Lithuanians and for Litvaks living abroad who are able to visit at least virtually the synagogue of their parents’ youth or adolescence.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said the virtual introduction to Jewish culture and tradition strengthens the multicultural expression of the city community and popularizes Jewish cultural heritage.
The Lithuanian Cultural Council is financing the project called “Choral Synagogue of Vilnius: Prayer, Kitchen, Mikva.”
Gennady Kofman, chairman, Panevėžys Jewish Community:
Happy Passover, one of the most important holidays on the Jewish religious calendar.
Passover holiday greetings to all. We wish you a happy time talking with your families.
This is the evening of sacrifice which took place before God led the Israelites out of Egypt. During Passover we eat unleavened bread, matzo. The first, second and last evening are marked with a large dinner with strict traditions: the head of family reads a passage from the Book of Exodus, prayers and a collection of liturgical hymns. A hand-washing ceremony is performed before eating. Before the end of the holiday meal a beautiful cup with grape juice is placed and the door is left open, and this is called “Elijah’s cup.”
Passover, the most important Jewish holiday which lasts for eight days, begins on March 27 this year. The date for celebrating Passover is set by the lunar calendar: the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The name of the holy day comes from “pesakh,” meaning passed over, recalling the story of the Angel of Death which passed over the Israelites before Moses led the slaves out of Egypt.
“The symbolic meaning of this holiday is that it wasn’t separate Jewish families which came out of Egypt, but a single, united Jewish people. The Jewish people throw off the yoke of slavery and leave in order to reach the Promised Land, and there create their nation,” Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky explained.
Passover Traditions over the Millennia
Keeper of Jewish cultural and religious traditions Natalija Cheifec said although the exodus from Egypt occurred more than 3,300 years ago, Passover traditions have remained almost unchanged over the many centuries. The main feature of the eight-day holiday is the seder dinner when the Hagada is read out, prayers are made and people sit at the seder table and eat from the seder plate, or ke’are.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community has been using the Zoom platform to hold virtual Sabbath celebrations with Jewish communities around the world, including lessons on Jewish subjects and meetings with Liberal or Progressive Judaism congregations.
On March 19 the LJC held a joint virtual Sabbath with Rabbis Alexandra Rait and Igor Zinkov at the London Liberal Synagogue.
Rabbi Alexandra’s ancestors came from Plungė, Lithuania. Her great-grandfather N. Levit was also a rabbi. Her grandfather left Lithuania for New York, but ended up in Dublin instead. It seems the ship’s captain lied to the young man about their final destination.
Rabbi Alexandra Rait said her family visited Lithuania several years ago and toured Vilnius, Kaunas and Plungė. She recalled ushering in the Sabbath in an abandoned synagogue in Plungė where her ancestor had led prayer services. “There was no electricity and we read the prayers by candle light. There was loud thunder, and it rained. … We also visited the mass murder site in Plungė. My cousin was working with the Tolerance Center in Plungė.” She recalled how her family financed a commemorative marker at that mass murder site. “We also met the last Jew from that shtetl, the famous woodcarver and sculptor Jakovas Bunka, and his son Eugenijus,” Rabbi Rait said during the virtual Sabbath last week.
Rabbi Igor Zinkov was born in Chelyabinsk to a family of secular Jews with roots in Odessa and Kiev.
Cultural Infrastructure Center
The Cultural Infrastructure Center of Lithuania is completing renovation work on the synagogue in Alytus. Emergency preservation work followed by renovation led to a fuller restoration and the building is now housing a section of the Alytus Museum.
The old synagogue on Kauno street in Alytus, Lithuania, appeared in total ruin just five years ago, with boarded-up windows and bricks falling from the walls. Experts saw even worse things at work.
“The condition of the outer wall was poor… In spots several bricks were missing, and in some places even larger sections of bricks had fallen out. The mortar on the lower portion was visibly damaged by moisture or salt which it will still take several years to drive out of the building walls. The façades on the southern side of the building were especially damaged. We found the interior also deeply damaged, with the floor dug up and windows and doors removed,” Cultural Infrastructure Center acting deputy director Viktoras Vilkišius said.
Strong Jewish Community Formerly Lived in Alytus
The first wooden synagogue was built in the western section of Alytus in 1856 apparently at the same site the currently restored synagogue occupies. It was a small building heated with a stove and housed a school and the rabbi’s living quarters.
Viljamas Žitkauskas held an internet Sabbath discussion called “Differences and Shared Features of Branches of Judaism: Orthodox, Conservative, Modern, Progressive” last Friday as part of the continuing series of internet Sabbath meetings and discussion. He spoke about the unprecedented decision by the Supreme Court of Israel March 1 following 15 years of hearings recognizing conversion to Judaism in conservative and reform communities, and that every convert has the right to move to Israel.
Žitkauskas thought this decision and the recent joint Sabbaths the Lithuanian Jewish Community has held with Reform synagogues in Johannesburg and Minsk would be a good starting point to talk about the different schools of thought and differences among the currents in Judaism.
He began by defining the terms “Jew,” “Jewish people,” and “our sons, the pride of Israel.”
Community members from Vilnius, Panevėžys and other Lithuanian towns and cities participated in the Zoom conference. Participants learned about the origins of Judaism, what the words Torah and Tanakh mean, what the religious significance of being a Litvak is, that misnagdim means orthodox, how misnagdim differ from chassidim, how reform Judaism arose and more.
The lecture/discussion concluded with the havdalah ceremony, distinguishing the Sabbath from the working days of the week.
lrytas.lt
The Lithuanian Jewish Community held a virtual lecture on contributions made by Lithuania’s Jews in the battles for national independence. Journalist and history researcher Vilnius Kavaliauskas presented to the wider audience little-known historical facts about Jewish volunteer soldiers who fought for the independence of the young Lithuanian state one hundred years ago.
“This is an undeservedly forgotten story which we want to tell everyone today. In 1918 Jews consciously chose to be citizens of the independent Republic of Lithuania then being born, were active participants in public life and introduced many important innovations.
“All of that is being forgotten now. Our goal is to remember their stories and their names, and I personally hope this will lead to an end of talking about Jews as foreigners, as ‘others.’ We were and are the joint creators of Lithuanian history,” said LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, who initiated the discussion.
Journalist and author Vilius Kavaliauskas, who has taken a keen interested in the period of the battles for independence and has shared the information and discoveries he’s uncovered, agreed: “Researching the lists of the Lithuanian volunteers who were awarded for contributions to the Lithuanian state during the first republic, I find many Jewish surnames. Some also have a date of birth and a date of death, while others lived on and continued to contribute to creating a better Lithuania later on. The Jewish histories are especially interesting in that they were and our suppliers, medics and organizers for our military, which goes to show the volunteer Lithuanian military was well-organized, highly-qualified people served in it. This is extremely important to take into account; Lithuania has always appreciated competence and knowledge.”