Litvaks

Three Hundredth Birthday of the Vilna Gaon

Three Hundredth Birthday of the Vilna Gaon

The Lithuanian parliament has proclaimed 2020 the Year of the Vilna Gaon, the 18th century scholar and cultural figure Eliyahu ben Solomon Zalman, and the Year of Litvak History. This anniversary has also been listed on UNESCO’s list of anniversaries for 2020 and 2021. On April 23 we mark the 300th birthday of the Vilna Gaon.

Scholars consider the Gaon the greated Talmudic scholar in Eastern European Jewish history. He is also the father of the rabbinical movement’s struggle against Hasidism and is considered the primary figure in rabbinical learning among Eastern European Jews. The Gaon and his followers, mitnagdim or misnagdim (literally “opponents,” i.e., of Hasidism) are sometimes called prophets of learning.

The Vilna Gaon had a deep interest in different branches of the exact sciences and his texts on geometry, astronomy and geography are often ascribed to the Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment which arose in the 1770s in Central and Western Europe. Alan Nadler, professor emeritus of religious studies and formerly the director of a Jewish studies program in the USA, says the Gaon’s interest in secular subjects stimulated the expansion of many academic fields and the Gaon became a symbol of educated Judaism.

Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman, the Vilna Gaon

Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman, the Vilna Gaon

Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman

(Gaon of Vilna; 1720–1797), Torah scholar, kabbalist, and communal leader. The Gaon of Vilna (known also by the acronym Gra, for Gaon Rabbi Eliyahu) was a spiritual giant, a role model and source of inspiration for generations, and the central cultural figure of Lithuanian Jewry. Eliyahu ben Shelomoh Zalman was born into a rabbinical and scholarly family, and following a short period of study in a heder, studied Torah with his father. At age 7, he was sent to study with Mosheh Margoliot, rabbi of Keydan (Lith., Kėdainiai). Soon thereafter, he began to study on his own, and at 18, left Vilna to go into “exile”—a period of wandering through Jewish communities of Poland and Germany.

Upon Eliyahu’s return to Vilna, he shut himself in his house and devoted his energy to Torah study. He continued in this path throughout his life, supported by the local Jewish community. When Eliyahu was 35 years old, Yonatan Eybeschütz, who was suspected of Sabbatian leanings, turned to him, seeking support and referring to him as “one who is unique, saintly, holy, and pure, the light of Israel, possessing all-embracing knowledge, sharp and well-versed, with 10 measures of esoteric knowledge . . . whose praise is recognized in all of Poland . . .” (Eybeschütz, Luḥot ha-‘edut [1756], p. 71). It seems, then, that the Gaon of Vilna had already achieved legendary status during his lifetime.

Jewish Vilnius 1990

Jewish Vilnius 1990

German TV, also shown on Israel Channel 2, captures the early days of the revival of the Jewish Community in Lithuania in 1990. First Jewish organizations. Grigory Kanovich’s “Jewish Daisy”: to stay or to leave.

Condolences

Condolences

The Lithuanian Jewish Community extends our deepest condolences to the friends and family of noted writer and producer Felix Dektor who passed away at the age of 89 in Jerusalem. He was born December 21, 1930, in Minsk to a family of Litvaks. He lived there until being evacuated to the Ukraine and then Siberia during the Holocaust.

Graduated from the History and Philology Faculty of Vilnius University in 1955, Dektor continued studies at the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow including in Lev Ozerov’s literary translation seminar. Dektor translated a number of Lithuanian writers into Russian, including books by Justinas Marcinkevičius, Juozas Požėra, Alfonsas Bieliauskis and Mykolas Sluckis. His best-known translations were perhaps the novels of Icchokas Meras on Jewish death and valor during the Holocaust (Ничья длится мгновенье (Вечный шах) and На чём держится мир).

Dektor was removed from the Writers’ Union of the Soviet Union in 1975 in response to his publication and distribution of the Jewish cultural and educational magazine Tarbut.

Jewish Holiday of Freedom Celebrated without Foods Recalling Slavery

Jewish Holiday of Freedom Celebrated without Foods Recalling Slavery

Judita Gliauberzonaitė, 42, chairwoman of the Vilnius Lithuanian Jerusalem Jewish community, recalls how her grandmother Cilė Žiburkienė every spring before Passover would cleanse the entire house so that, God forbid, not even a grain of flour would remain, which would mean leavened bread remained in the house, a sign recalling the enslavement of the Jews in the land of Egypt.

Jews around the world who count their history in millennia begin celebrating their Passover holiday on the 15th day in the month of Nisan (March or April), lasting for seven days in Israel and eight elsewhere in the world. Secular Jews who keep to tradition usually celebrate the first and last days of Passover, gathering as families for dinner.

Judita Gliauberzonaitė says more religious Jews attend synagogue every day of Passover.

Passover often coincides with Catholic Easter. This year it began on April 8 and continues till April 15.

Panevėžys Jewish Community Sends Passover Greetings

Panevėžys Jewish Community Sends Passover Greetings

Despite the complicated time in the world, the dates assigned by the Torah to the holidays don’t change and they are part of the history and story of the Jewish people. Passover is one of the main Jewish holy days. Over the days of Passover Jews remember their historic liberation from slavery.

During these difficult days I wish you patience, the love of those around you and endurance. Maintain hygienic requirements and adhere to the safety measures as we fight the corona virus.

Gennady Kofman, chairman
Panevėžys Jewish Community

Lithuanian News Outlet on Boris Johnson’s Litvak Roots

Lithuanian News Outlet on Boris Johnson’s Litvak Roots

Photo: AFP/Scanpix

Boris Johnson’s family ties with Lithuania
the Lithuania Tribune, DELFI
July 25, 2016

Britain’s new foreign secretary Boris Johnson has ancestral ties with Lithuania. The controversial politician’s great grandfather was a Litvak born in Žemaičių Kalvarija, the famous American palaeographer Elias Avery Lowe (Loew).

Elias was born in Žemaičių Kalvarija in Lithuania in 1879. His family migrated from the Russian Empire to New York when he was 12.

Elias studied at Cornell University, became a US citizen in 1900. In 1902 he went to study in Germany, where in 1908 he defended his doctoral thesis written under the guidance of famous palaeographer Ludwig Traube.

Panic and Contempt

Panic and Contempt

by Arkadijus Vinokuras

When the heads of state lack any experience managing crises, panic envelops society. When leaders try to compensate for their lack of ability through dictatorial means, they demonstrate contempt for society. It’s pointless to blame Lithuanian health minister Aurelijus Veryga for changing his directives several times daily. He was appointed by those who have no experience themselves, and who are therefore unable to manage the crisis effectively. It seems they don’t really understand human lives are at stake. And freedom.

On panic. Seeking somehow to demonstrate the abilities he doesn’t have, health minister Veryga even donned military costume. He seems to have wandered into the tragicomic league of Don Quixote by attempting to fight the virus this way. Where you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry. If he had served in the military even at the level of lieutenant, he would know how orders are issued by a military commander. They would be based–and this is the crucial matter–on emergency management scenarios drawn up by the military leadership. But from the very first days of the spread of the virus in Lithuania it was completely clear the Lithuanian Peasants/Green Union Government is not following any emergency management plan.

The minister who has turned himself into a laughing stock with his military uniform should at least understand in a general way that an order by a military commander first indicates the prevailing situation in the theater of war. It indicates the time frame. It also enumerates enemy forces and our own forces, e.g., what we have and what we don’t have. Only then comes the definition of missions.

Genocide Center Wins Case Demanding Retraction of Jonas Noreika Finding

Genocide Center Wins Case Demanding Retraction of Jonas Noreika Finding

The Lithuanian Telegraphic Agency ELTA reports the Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court dismissed a suit lodged by US-resident Litvak Grant Gochin against the Center for the Study of the Genocide and Resistance of Residents of Lithuania.

ELTA reports said the panel of judges rejected Grant Gochin’s demand the Genocide Center retract an historical finding they issued earlier on the person of Jonas Noerika during a hearing on April 1.

The court’s finding isn’t subject to appeal. The court also obliged Gochin to pay additional court costs to the Genocide Center.

Gochin was appealing a finding issued by the Vilnius District Administrative Court on March 27, 2019, in favor of the Genocide Center.

Full text in Lithuanian here.

Thank You for Helping LJC Seniors

Thank You for Helping LJC Seniors

Lithuanian Jewish Community administrative secretary Liuba Šerienė would like to send a big thank-you to Social Department director Michailas Segalas and staff members Ema Jakobienė, Ninel Skudovičiūtė, Rokas Dobrovolskis and Neringa Stankevičienė and colleagues, and to Michailas Tarasovas, Aušra, Snieguolė, Danutė Lena, Žana and Sonia for their great work helping our Social Department clients and senior citizens. Thank you so very much.

We Can’t Give Up Hope Now

We Can’t Give Up Hope Now

Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky. Photo: Blanka Weber

by Blanka Weber

The country’s Jewish community is watching the time of pandemic with alarm

Faina Kukliansky is currently managing her life and that of her members from her home office in Vilnius. “This is a time that demands everything from us,” the 65-year-old chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community says.

This is a time when preparations for Passover would be underway normally. The Bagel Shop next to the Community building on Pylimo street is now only open for a few hours and only accepts cards for payment. Cash is forbidden. There are strict rules here, too. Matzo will be distributed to Community members here and should be delivered in the next few days.

Bob Dylan Breaks Silence with New Song

Bob Dylan Breaks Silence with New Song

American Litvak singer, songwriter and performer from Minnesota Bob Dylan, aka Robert Zimmerman, has broken his silence since he received, rejected and then apparently accepted the Nobel prize for literature with a new long-playing song about the conspiracy to assassinate American president John Kennedy. The official version of the song Murder Most Foul posted on youtube under the user Bob Dylan runs for 16 minutes and 56 seconds and contains a stream of American pop cultural references similar to the song American Pie by Don McLean, referencing the three hobos alleged to have been involved in the assassination on Daley Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963, JFK’s alleged use of LSD and the idea the counterculture of the 1960s was infiltrated and directed by the intelligence community. Dylan is 78.

Commemorating the Victims of the Children’s Aktion in Kaunas

Commemorating the Victims of the Children’s Aktion in Kaunas

The Kaunas Jewish Community reports the annual commemoration of the mass murder of the children of the Kaunas ghetto was canceled this year because of the virus epidemic. Usually scheduled during the last days of March, this year we are invited to remember the victims at home, by lighting a candle, writing a name on a stone and reflecting.

The following is a list of some of the children who died in the Kaunas ghetto, drawn up on the 70th anniversary of the Children’s aktion by the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum. The names are presented in modern Lithuanian orthography.

No, Mr. Kasčiūnas, Jews Did Not Create the Corona Virus

No, Mr. Kasčiūnas, Jews Did Not Create the Corona Virus

by Arkadijus Vinokuras

I’m having a dark laugh, Homeland Union/Lithuanian Christian Democrats member of parliament Laurynas Kasčiūnas did not, thank God, accuse Jews for the corona virus. But he did accuse the Lithuanian Jewish Community of financially supporting “that liar” Rūta Vanagaitė’s book “How Did It Happen.”

You might ask what my fake headline has in common with MP Kasčiūnas’s accusation against the LJC. Well both ideas are false and allow for manipulating the truth.

See, the main figure in the book isn’t Rūta Vanagaitė, but Dr. Christoph Dieckmann, one of the best known European historians and an expert on the Holocaust in Lithuania. Or is it this fact which frightens Kasčiūnas? It’s one thing to criticize a “dilettante of history” (as Rūta Vanagaitė’s critics claim) and quite another to criticize a member of the International Commission for Assessing the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania, convened and supported by the president of Lithuania.

ORT Celebrates Birthday

ORT Celebrates Birthday

by Ruth Reches, acting principal, Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium

On March 18 the ORT, an extremely important global Jewish cultural organization, celebrated its birthday. Happy birthday!

ORT is the acronym for Общество ремесленного и земледельческого трудаm, the association of crafts, trades and agriculture founded 140 years ago in 1880. ORT’s goal was to provide Jews work skills and information. In its first decades schools started by the ORT organization graduated tens of thousands of Jews who went on to work as tailors, farmers, mechanics, glass-blowers, furniture makers and similar.

The Naked Truth: The Text “Hallelujah to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” Judged Worthy of Doctorate in Independent Lithuania

The Naked Truth: The Text “Hallelujah to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union” Judged Worthy of Doctorate in Independent Lithuania

by professor Pinchos Fridberg, PhD habil.

Standard Foreword

The text of this article exists in three languages, Lithuanian, English and Russian. None of them has managed to get published in the better-known pages of the democratic Lithuanian press.

If an interested reader asks, “Why not?” I would tell him:

I guess it’s forbidden to publish “the Naked Truth!”

Of course he probably needs an “airbag,” i.e., the word “allegedly” should be added!

Probably if I wrote “the ALLEGED Naked Truth” there would be problem in publishing it.

On February 20 I sent the Lithuanian version of my article to the Lithuanian president, and I called and asked he be made aware of it. They promised me my request would be passed on to the Chancellery and an advisor to the president.

The story described is not the first, a similar thing happened with my article “The Jew Whom Ramanauskas-Vanagas Rescued, WHo Probably Wasn’t a Jew” (in Russian here).

Roman Abramovich to Plant 25,000 Trees in Israel in Memory of Litvaks

Roman Abramovich to Plant 25,000 Trees in Israel in Memory of Litvaks

The Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael) held a ceremony to set aside a memorial site and begin planting a forest in memory of the Lithuanian Jewish community, the Russian-language website www.vesty.co.il reported on March 11. The plan is to plant 25,000 trees as part of a KKL environmental protection project for afforestation in southern Israel. Famous Russian-Israeli businessman and philanthropist Roman Abramovich is providing major financing for the project.

Abramovich’s great-grandparents were Litvaks from the Kovna guberniya in the Russian Empire. In spring of 1941–a year after Lithuania was made part of the Soviet Union–the affluent Abramovich family was exiled to Siberia.

Roman’s grandfather was born in Eržvilkas and his grandmother Toiba Berkover was born in Jurbarkas. His grandfather Nakhman died in a camp in Krasnoyarsk in 1942 and his grandmother raised their three sons on her own, Aaron Arkady being Roman’s father.

Lithuanian Government Lists Famous Litvaks

Lithuanian Government Lists Famous Litvaks

The web page of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania now features in Lithuanian and English texts about the Vilna Gaon, famous Litvaks and visual materials for celebrating 2020 as the Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History.

§§§

Most Prominent Jewish Personalities in Lithuania

Lithuania has been home to many Jews, who were born in this country, lived and created here leaving an indelible mark in the scholarly and cultural heritage of Lithuania as well as of the world.

Writers

Icchokas Meras (1934-2014). The author of books on the Holocaust (Geltonas lopas (The Yellow Patch), Ant ko laikosi pasaulis (What the World Rests on), Lygiosios trunka akimirką (A Stalemate), and a film script writer for well-known Lithuanian films Kai aš mažas buvau (When I Was a Child), Birželis, vasaros pradžia (June, the Beginning of Summer) and Maža išpažintis (Small Confession).

Chaim Grade (1910-1982). Vilna-born writer, a member of Yung Vilne (Young Vilnius), a group of avant-garde writers and artists. Chaim Grade is considered to be one of the leading Yiddish writers in post-Holocaust period. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.