Learning – Page 3 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Women’s Club Meeting Friday

Dear reader,

The Women’s Club will be expecting you again this Friday, and this meeting will be especially fun and delicious as we make quiches and pastries.

This time of year is special, the High Holy Days, and we cannot avoid the holiday spirit. THis Friday we celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, Sukkot, when we sit down at the table together with our families and also treat those who come by. So, dear homemakers, we will learn to make the Israeli dish pashtida, sometimes called a kugel, which resembles a quiche, and layered apple pastries.

A good time is guaranteed.

Please register before noon on Thursday by sending an email to zanas@sc.lzb.lt or by calling (+370) 678 81514. Space is limited.

Time: 6:30 P.M., Friday, October 18
Place: Bagel Shop Café, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

2024-10-15

Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and remission from sin, the most important holiday on the Jewish calendar, will be observed Saturday. No matter how religious or not, no Jew risks travelling, bathing or eating during Yom Kippur. The holiday must be observed correctly, so the Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Bnei Maskilim progressive Judaism community invite you to observe the holy day together with us and Rabbi Hanoch Fields from the United States.

Program of events at the LJC in Vilnius:

October 11

6:30 P.M. Kol nidrei

October 12

10:00 A.M. Torah reading
5:00 P.M. Yizkor
5:15 P.M. Neila
6:30 P.M. Blowing of the shofar
7:00 P.M. End of fast, shared feast

Registration required. To register, contact viljamas@lzb.lt

2024-10-102024-10-10

Somber Tone as Seniors Citizens Celebrate Rosh Hashanah on Eve of October 7

Senior citizens and elderly members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community gathered for a different kind of Rosh Hashanah celebration at the LJC in Vilnius on the weekend.

With the anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 invasion and mass murder of Israelis last year, there was less of the usual music and fun and more prayers in Yiddish and Hebrew performed by Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom. The cantor’s wife Natalja Cheifec spoke about the history and traditions of Rosh Hashanah and the role of the woman in the Jewish family.

2024-10-09

Panevėžys Celebrates the New Year

The Panevėžys Jewish Community celebrated Rosh Hashanah last week with music and food, including apples and honey. The prayer was performed before blowing the shofar. Yekaterna Radionova performed Jewish melodies on violin and members of the Community wished one another well in the coming year.

2024-10-09

Natalja Cheifec’s Lecture Series Continues with Discussion of High Holy Days

Natalja Cheifec’s #EDUKACIJOS discussion club invites you to join the zoom call at 5:30 P.M. this Thursday, October 10. She’ll discuss Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, and what these holidays mean to Jews, traditions for observance and what to avoid to protect yourself from misfortune.

Zoom credentials available here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfRZKhoOgl_UbN-IxT4SO7m4uerwQONUveXaWQvFMKDghE-1A/viewform

Everyone is welcome.

2024-10-09

Kaunas Ushers in the New Year

The Kaunas Jewish Community celebrated Rosh Hashanah with gusto and flair, and with a large number of Community members, friends and musicians.

Participants ate and chatted, and listened to Jewish melodies, which led to dancing. There was a quiz to test knowledge of the holiday, well-wishes for the coming year and prayers for more peace, love and human warmth in the world.

2024-10-07

Makabi Sporting Extravaganza

On September 29 the Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club held their annual sports celebration for young and old alike to try their hand at a number of different kinds of sport, from chess and frisbee to volleyball and basketball. This year’s celebration included a workshop on krav maga, the Israeli martial art. The competition and workshop concluded with lunch and a discussion of the Makabi club’s future.

2024-10-072024-10-07

Knife-Wielding Masked Teenagers Take Over Palace of Sports in Old Jewish Cemetery

Photo: Police at Palace of Sports by Paulius Skučas

A group of 50 masked, knife-wielding teenage boys has turned the crumbling Palace of Sports complex built on top of the old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius into their gang clubhouse and have threatened pedestrians in the area, including children, with their weapons, as well as attacking a lone security guard in charge of the site, according to Paulius Skučas, an LNK television reporter who posted on Instagram as well as did a Lithuanian state radio interview about the situation.

Skučas posted photos of the incident on Instagram with textual explanations:

This is how the Palace of Sports looked after the massive attack by teenagers this evening. Police and security stood guard for several hours. It seems the gang of teenagers are so uncontrollable and undetainable that all the residents of the surround neighborhoods and buildings have become hostages.

2024-10-042024-10-04

Šiauliai Jewish Community Remembers the Murdered Jews of Žagarė

Šiauliai Jewish Community members are planning to leave the Šiauliai Jewish Community building at 10:00 A.M. on Sunday, October 6, to reach the town square in Žagarė where a ceremony to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust will be held. Everyone is invited to attend.

2024-09-30

Vilkaviškis Unveils Statue to Litvak Ballerina Sonia Gaskell

The western Lithuanian town of Vilkaviškis is to unvei a public sculpture Friday commemorating native Sonia Gaskell, a world-class ballerina who went on to teach ballet in Paris and the Hague, according to Lithuanian state television LRT. Gaskell was born in Vilkaviškis on April 14, 1904, and died in Paris on July 9, 1974.

The statue by sculptor Lukas Šiupšinskas is located in a square in front of the Vilkaviškis Children’s and Youth Center near where Gaskell is believed to have been born. She was originally named Sarah. Vilkaviškis reportedly also has a small museum dedicated to the details of her rather amazing life which includes making aliyah to Palestine and returning to Europe before the Holocaust. Vilkaviškis, aka Vikovishk, had a Jewish population which hovered at about 50% compared to the Christian population, sometimes reaching 60% and falling back to 45% just before the Holocaust. William Shatner’s maternal grandmother was born in Vilkaviškis, as were Aharon April, Jonas Basanavičius, Vincas Kudirka, Miriam Markel-Mosessohn and Galina Shurepova.

Earlier LRT reporting in Lithuanian on Sonia Gaskell here.

2024-09-272024-09-27

Correction

Yesterday Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky attended a press conference at the Lithuanian parliament and made comments which have become the object of speculation by the media and by social media posters.

The joint press conference with the LIC chairwoman, Lithuanian MP and chairman of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee Emanuelis Zingeris, MP Žygimantas Pavilionis and MP Liudvika Pocienė was called to discuss rising anti-Semitism in Lithuania.

Asked by reporters for comment, LJC chairwoman Kukliansky said words to the effect Lithuania’s foreign partners were concerned by reports a political party known for its anti-Semitic remarks led by a man the Constitutional Court of Lithuania found guilty of spreading ethnic discord could come to power.

Pressed for further comment, chairwoman Kukliansky said, to paraphrase in translation: “I heard there is a very stern letter by a German ambassador regarding this.”

She was referencing a statement by Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda speaking to Lithuanian state television’s LRT Forumas broadcast who said (in unofficial translation): “These statements, which may seem as if are innocent little jokes and short songs, have travelled very far indeed. And they have travelled to those partners of ours whose support to us is so crucially important. I mean Germany.”

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and our chairwoman would like to correct the record and quell possible speculation by stating that chairwoman Kukliansky wasn’t referring to Germany’s ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmermann, nor to any other specific German diplomatic or political official. She only attempted to relay what she had heard the president say on state television, if getting some of the details perhaps slightly wrong.

Chairwoman Kukliansky and the Lithuanian Jewish Community apologize for any misunderstanding regarding this matter.

We would also like to say that during this period of intensifying anti-Semitic attacks we are very grateful to a number of foreign embassies which have provided us constant great and staunch support, including the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. In gratitude for that support, LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky has sent written thank-you letters expressing our collective appreciation for their consistent and strong support to ambassador to Lithuania Cornelius Zimmerman, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier and chancellor Olaf Scholz.

2024-09-262024-09-26

Remembering the Holocaust Victims in Švenčionys

Traditionally there is a commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust in Švenčionys held the first Sunday in October. We remember the Jews tortured and murdered, and those imprisoned in the ghetto set up in the town square and later murdered at nearby Platumai village. You are invited to attend the commemoration this year on October 6.

Program:

11:00 A.M. – 11:30 A.M. Remembering the victims in a gathering at the Menorah statue in the central park

12:30 P.M. Paying respects to the victims at the mass murder site in Platumai village approximately 13 kilometers to the west of Švenčionys

2024-09-26

Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews Marked in Kupiškis

Photos by Miglė Zakarauskaitės and Aušra Jonušytė

Local residents and politicians commemorated Lithuania’s Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews September 23 at a monument to Holocaust victims at the Jewish cemetery there and visited an older Jewish cemetery in the once-thriving shtetl, laying stones gathered from streets in the town.

The same day the public library housed in the restored synagogue held a lesson on Jewish life in Kupiškis for students in grades 1 through 4.

2024-09-262024-09-26

Šiauliai Jewish Community Meets to Discuss Rosh Hashanah

Last Tuesday the Šiauliai Jewish Community held a meeting of members and friends with Rabbi Kalev Krelin to discuss material and spiritual preparations for the upcoming holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration.

2024-09-26

Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews Marked at Ponar

The Lithuanian Jewish Community, Lithuanian politicians and foreign ambassadors marked the Day of Genocide of Lithuanian Jews September 23 at the Ponar Memorial Complex outside Vilnius.

LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky spoke at the event, saying among other things: “I have several requests by the Lithuanian Jewish Community. First, I want to know the names of the people who were murdered here. And throughout Lithuania as well, where 400, 500, 600 Jews were murdered in every town. Where are their names? … The Lithuanian Jewish Community also wants to know the names of the murderers. Many years ago now we were promised they would be made public, but they remain unknown to us. I am convinced it has to be made very clear who was a murderer and who was a rescuer. So I would like to ask sincerely the lists of those are known now at least be made available to us.”

Also attending and speaking were Lithuanian MP Emanuelis Zingeris, Israeli ambassador Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein with Israeli embassy chargé-d’affaires Erez Golan, German ambassador Cornelius Zimmermann, US ambassador Kara McDonald, speaker of Lithuanian parliament Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė and others. Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom performed kaddish. Vilnius Religious Jewish Community chairman Simas Levinas also participated.

2024-09-252024-09-25

Holocaust Commemoration in Pabradė

A Holocaust commemoration was held September 23 in Pabradė, a town in eastern Lithuania on the border with Belarus. September 23 is Lithuania’s Day of the Genocide of Lithuanian Jews. The event was held under the umbrella of the Memory Road civic initiative in cooperation with the Švenčionys Jewish Community, the Pabradė Municipal Culture Center, the Pabradė aldermanship and 6th, 7th and 8th graders from the Rytas Gymnasium in Pabradė under the tutelage of history teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė.

Participants walked the path along which Jews were marched to their deaths to the mass murder site there. Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro and history teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė spoke to the students about the former Jewish community there.

2024-09-242024-09-24

Remembering the Holocaust in Nemenčinė

A ceremony was held in Nemenčinė (Nementchin, Niemenczyn) just north of Vilnius Friday at the site of the former synagogue to remember the approximately 500 Jews from that once-thriving shtetl murdered in the Holocaust.

Those attending the ceremony included Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Israeli ambassador Hadas Wittenberg Silverstein, Tammy Nguyen representing the US embassy, Lithuanian MP Rita Tamašunienė and Vilnius regional administration mayor Robertas Duchnevičius, among others. Students from the Sholem Aleichem school in Vilnius staged brief presentations. The participants proceeded on to the mass murder site several kilometers away where Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yaatom prayed for the victims.

2024-09-24

Condolences

In deep sadness we report the death of Fania Brantsovskaya on September 22 in Vilnius. She was born in 1922.

Fania was a Jewish partisan who originally served as a courier. Several films have been made about her life. She was one of only a handful of Jewish partisans who remained in Lithuania after the Holocaust. In her later years she continued to speak out publicly and teach younger generations about what happened in Lithuania.

Our deepest condolences to her family and many friends.

2024-09-232024-09-24

Natalja Cheifec Lecture Series Continues

Natalja Cheifec’s #ŠALOM club invites you to a zoom meeting at 5:30 P.M. on September 26 featuring an intriguing account of Jewish life and traditions. Receive zoom credentials by registering and don’t forget to include your questions of interest on the registration form.

2024-09-23