Learning, History, Culture

Choral Synagogue Preparing for Passover, Everyone Welcome

The Choral Synagogue in Vilnius is preparing for a Passover seder. This Passover will include young people, who have in past years held separate seders. The photographs above and below show the general section and a special section for young people. Tickets for the seder are still available and may be purchased at the door. The service begins at 7:00 P.M. tonight, Friday, March 30, and the seder begins at 7:30. Rabbi Krinsky and Rebbetzin Dina are preparing the seder.

Pesakh kasher v’sameakh!

Smuel Levinas, chairman
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community

Discovering Jewish Roots in Panevėžys

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For the second time a group of 18-and-under young people from Odessa, Kiev, Minsk, Gomel, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kherson and Krasnoyarsk–85 people in all–have visited Panevėžys as part of a project called Return to Roots. The goal of the journey was to learn about the culture, heritage and history of Litvaks in Panevėžys and Lithuania. Visiting surviving cemeteries, the synagogue and the school, the students witnessed Jewish heritage with their own eyes. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told the story of the destruction of a Jewish cemetery in 1966 to exploit the headstones as construction material. He said the local Jewish community had gone to great efforts to have the stones returned to the cemetery where the “Sad Jewish Mother” monument now stands. The students showed keen interest in the history of the Jews in the city and World War II. The delegation visited the former Ponevezh yeshiva established by the famous rabbi, Josef Kahaneman. After touring the city the students visited the town of Subačius and the Jewish cemetery there, where rainfall prevented any clean-up work. Alderman Vidmantas Paliulis came to meet the students there. Paliulis has exerted enormous efforts to clean up and maintain the Subačius Jewish cemetery, nicknamed “Paris.” He explained it was called that because of the name of the small neighboring village Paryžius.

The students were then received warmly and fed at the Panevėžys Jewish Community.

Jewish Theater in Inter-War Lithuania

An event to launch the new book “Žydų teatras tarpukario Lietuvoje” [Jewish Theater in Inter-War Lithuania] by Dr. Ina Pukelytė will be held at 6:00 P.M. on the second floor of the Grand Dukes Hall in Kaunas on Wednesday, April 4.

All theater and book lovers are invited to attend to learn more about Jewish activities in Lithuania and other countries in the period between the two world wars, the place Lithuanian Jewish theater holds abroad and about the evolution of Lithuanian theater after the war.

Head of Vytautas Magnus University’s Theater Studies Cathedral Dr. Edgaras Klivis is to moderate the event.

Public Launch of Rudashevski Vilnius Ghetto Diary at LJC

The Lithuanian Jewish Community hosted a second, more public launch of the new Lithuanian translation of the Yitzhak Rudashevski Vilnius ghetto diary Tuesday, following last month’s and exclusive initial presentation at the Vilnius Book Fair.

Rudashevski was 14 when he and his parents were imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto. He celebrated his 15th birthday there. The family hid during the ghetto liquidation, were discovered and then murdered, presumably at Ponar outside Vilnius. Over the last two decades Rudashevski’s diary has emerged as one of a handful of testimonies by children. It was initially published in extracts in the original Yiddish in Israel, and then in English in 1973. An older and newer French translation ha4xandra Zapruder’s books about children in the Holocaust and in a documentary on the same topic aired on MTV.

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Congratulations to Arkadijus Gotesmanas, Winner of the Birštonas Jazz Festival Grand Prize

The grand prize at the Birštonas Jazz Festival has been presented to improvisational percussionist Arkadijus Gotesmanas. The jazz festival in the Lithuanian town attracted over 3,000 audience members over three days. Performers noted an increasing interest in Lithuanian jazz by younger musicians.

Gotesmanas was awarded the grand prix statuette for a drum performance of an improvisation by the artist Marijus Petrauskas. In addition, he received tickets for two to stay at the Eglė health resort in Birštonas, which is known for its health spas.

The Lithuanian Jewish Community congratulates Arkadijus Gotesmanas on this, his most recent recognition.

Kaunas Jewish Community Honors Most Active Members

The Kaunas Jewish Community has been honoring its most active members for over two decades now. This year KJC chairman Gercas Žakas invited such members to an evening party to thank them for their sincerity, presence, communication and individual contributions of the most varied sort, including contributing homemade pastry for the Hesed Club, cakes cooked with love for various occasions, furthering traditions and the Yiddish language, honoring Holocaust victims, broadening individual horizons through excursions and cultural events, sharing memories and experience, participating at sporting events and extending a helping hand to other members of the community.

Live musical performances contributed to the fun with performances by the collective including Mihail Javič on saxophone, Arvydas Joffė on percussion, Rolandas Babraitis on keyboard and the young vocalist Viktorija. We all know small gifts can cement friendships and everyone who attended received valuable books.

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Sabbath Celebration with MP Gabrielius Landsbergis

The Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated Sabbath last Friday with Gabrielius Landsbergis, a member of parliament, leader of the Conservative/Christian Democratic Party and great-grandson of Righteous Gentile Ona Landsbergienė.

Lansdbergis completed a degree in history from Vilnius University in 2003. In 2005 he was graduated from the International Relations and Political Science Institute of Vilnius University with a master’s in international relations and diplomacy. He worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania and the Chancellery of the President of Lithuania. In 2007 he joined the staff of the Lithuanian embassy in Belgium. Landsbergis returned to Lithuania in 2011 and worked in the Chancellery of the Government of Lithuania. He was elected a member of the European Parliament in 2014 as a member of the Homeland Union/Lithuanian Christian Democrats faction. Landsbergis was elected chairman of the Homeland Union/Lithuanian Christian Democrats (Conservative Party) in April of 2015.

During the cozy meeting at the LJC, the young politician spoke of his family and early years, his work at the Lithuanian embassy in Belgium and his thoughts about the domestic political situation.

Landsbergis said Lithuanian schools aren’t dedicating enough attention to Lithuanian Jewish history and the Jewish contribution to the development of the nation.

“I don’t think many people know the major portion of the law of the land, the Lithuanian constitution, was written in Yiddish. Attorneys, Jewish legal experts, worked on this document. There are so many facts testifying to the Jewish contribution to the development of Lithuania. This is little discussed, unfortunately. I am interested and read as much as possible about Lithuanian Jewish history. I tell my children about it as well. We can only create an open European society through education,” MP Landsbergis said.

LJC executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas moderated the discussion with Gabrielius Landsbergis.

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Rudashevski Vilnius Ghetto Diary Presentation March 27

The literary monument of a fifteen-year-old chronicler of the Jewish ghetto to the suffering of the Holocaust, Yiddish culture, the will to survive and hope. For those who haven’t yet had a chance to learn about the Vilnius ghetto diary of Yitzhak Rudashevski, we invite you to come to the Lithuanian Jewish Community at 6:00 P.M. on March 27, 2018, for a public books launch. Participants: LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, translator Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, designer Sigutė Chlebinskaitė, Holocaust historian Neringa Latvytė-Gustatienė. Dr. Lara Lempert will serve as moderator.

Zionist Political Aspirations

Sionistų politiniai lūkesčiai
Photo: Students and reporters from Lithuania at the 17th World Zionist Congress, Berlin, 1931

The LJC webpage is publishing a series of articles by Dr. Eglė Bendikaitė called “Zionist Priorities in the Struggle for Lite (1916-1918)” dedicated to marking the 100th anniversary of union of Zionist organizations in Lithuania. The first part was published here February 15 here.

The World Zionist Organization was established at the August, 1897, meeting of the First World Zionist Congress in Basel. Lithuanian Zionism disappeared as a subject of inquiry along with the Lithuanian Jewish community slaughtered in the Holocaust. Following Lithuanian independence more scholarly attention is being paid to the movement.

The word Zionism comes from Mount Zion, where the original Temple was built in Jerusalem. Early in Jewish history it came to serve as a synonym for Jerusalem and the Land of Israel. As a symbol of the desire to return to the Promised Land, it was an element of Jewish prayers for centuries. It was only towards the end of the 19th century it acquired a political meaning and began to stand for a social movement whose goal was to create a political home for the Jewish people in their historical homeland, in other words, to reestablish a Jewish state.

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“Returns” Music Festival

The Lithuanian Musicians Support Fund in cooperation with the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Goodwill Foundation present the 20th annual international music festival Returns at 6:00 P.M., March 29, 2018, on the third floor of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.

Musica Camerata Baltica, with Leonidas Melnikas on piano, Boris Traub on violin and Valentinas Kaplūnas on cello, will perform along with cantor Shmuel Yatom.

Admission is free.

For more information call 8 655 25898 or 261 3171, or see www.lmrf.lt

Makabi Swimming Competition in Kaunas

LSK “Makabi” plaukimo varžybos Kaune

The best swimming pool in Lithuania, the one at the sports and recreational facility Girstutis in Kaunas, hosted a swimming competition by the Makabi athletics club on March 18 with swimmers from Vilnius, Kaunas, Panevėžys and–for the first time–Šalčininkai, as well as Israeli foreign exchange students studying in Kaunas. Some swimmers from Vilnius were unable to attend because they were competing in the Lithuanian swimming championships at the same time. Male and female swimmers in five age-groups competed in 25-meter freestyle and 50-meter breast-stroke categories.

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Condolences

Edmundas Ruvinas Zeligmanas passed away March 22. He was born February 25, 1931. He was a member of the Vilnius Jewish Community and the Union of Concentration Camp and Ghetto Prisoners. Our deepest condolences to his widow Janina, his daughter and all his many friends and family.

Zeligmanas was the sole survivor of the mass murder of the Jews of Šilalė. He was 10 when war broke out in Lithuania. He came from a religious family; his father was a cantor and studied at the Telzh yeshiva. Zeligmanas attended a religious school at the synagogue as a child. After losing his entire family in the Holocaust, he went on to study physics, taught physics, worked as an engineer at a counting machine factory and taught electronics at the Construction Technicum. He lived to have great-grandchildren. A frequent face at the synagogue in Vilnius while his health allowed, he was a regular member of the minyan there. May he rest in peace.

Invitation

A ceremony to unveil a memorial plaque commemorating German Jews sent to the Ninth Fort in Lithuania and murdered on November 25, 1941, will be held at 11:30 A.M. on April 13, 2018, at the Ninth Fort Memorial Complex, Žemaičių highway no. 75, Kaunas. You are invited.

Legendary Jewish-German Silent Film Set to Music at Lithuanian National Philharmonic

A restored copy of Ewald André Dupont’s 1923 film “Das alte Gesetz” (The Ancient Law) is to be shown at the Lithuanian National Philharmonic in Vilnius at 7:00 P.M. on March 28, 2018, accompanied by the modern music of Philippe Schoeller, performed by the Orchester Jakobsplatz München orchestra conducted by Daniel Grossman.

The film was a sensation at the 68th Berlin Film Festival when it was set to French composer Philippe Schoeller’s music. The restored film premiered at the Friedrichsstadt-Palast theater in Berlin on February 16, 2018.

The film is on tour around Eastern Europe with the first stop after Berlin in Vilnius. It will be screened in Budapest, Warsaw, Vienna, Munich and then San Francisco after that.

The Ancient Law is considered an important historical German and Jewish cinematic production recreating the introverted world of the Eastern European shtetl contrasted with Vienna of the 1860s and speaks to Jewish assimilation in Europe in the 1800s.

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Jewish Kindergarten Being Established in Vilnius

One of the goals the Lithuanian Jewish Community has set for itself is the establishment of a modern Jewish kindergarten meeting the highest international standards in the Žvėrynas neighborhood of Vilnius next to the existing Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium.

LJC Shalom preschool director Ruth Reches, a clinical psychologist working on her doctorate and a Hebrew teacher, is helping plan the future Jewish kindergarten. She said the need for this type of preschool has been long-standing but a number of obstacles have hindered its creation, not least the lack of financing.

“The parents of children of other ethnicities have the opportunity to choose a Lithuanian, Russian or Polish kindergarten. There is no kindergarten meeting the needs of people of Jewish ethnicity. There is no kindergarten where children from an early age have the opportunity to learn Jewish traditions and culture, to celebrate Jewish holidays. At the SHolem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium children are able to grow up in a Jewish environment, to celebrate Jewish values, but it would make sense to begin teaching them earlier, at preschool age,” she said.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

Dr. Esperanto Exhibit Opens in Panevėžys

A ceremony to open an exhibit about Ludovik Zamenhof, the medical doctor who invented the language Esparanto, was attended by a number of people including Polish Institute deputy director and Polish embassy chief advisor Pavel Krupka, and bishop emeritus Jonas Kauneckas. Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman also attended the ceremony. The exhibit will run till April 15.

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Senator Durbin Visits Exhibit “One Century out of Seven: Lithuania, Lite, Lita”

The mobile exhibit “One Century of Seven: Lithuania, Lite, Lita” created by the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the Lithuanian Jewish Community has gone on display at the Chicago Culture Center. The ceremony held jointly by YIVO and the Lithuanian consulate in Chicago honored senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) for his efforts including the return of Torah scrolls and YIVO archives. Durbin is the most influential Lithuanian-American in American politics. His mother Anna Kutkin aka Ona Kutkaitė hailed from Jurbarkas.

The exhibit illustrates the history of the Jews of Lithuania from their arrival in the Lithuanian Grand Duchy in the 13th century until today. Creators of the exhibit Pranas Morkus and the designer Victoria Sideraitė-Alon were able to show exceptional details in Jewish relations with local inhabitants of other ethnicities and to showcase important Litvaks.

Many Litvaks live in America and many visited the exhibit.

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