News – Page 33 – Lithuanian Jewish Community

Exhibit of Shtetl Artworks by Simon Karczmar

The AP Gallery in Vilnius’s Užupis neighborhood is holding an exhibit of drawings and paintings by Simon Karczmar featuring shtetlakh. He was born in Warsaw in 1903, left France for Israel in 1962 and died in 1982. His grandfather with whom he spent his vacations as a youngster lived in the shtetl Divenishok near Vilnius/Wilno.

AP Gallery is located at Užupio street no. 4 in Vilnius. The exhibition called Luminous Shtetls opens at 6:00 P.M. on May 31. No information was provided on when the exhibit ends.

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Condolences

Long-time Community member Izrailis Šifrinas passed away May 18. He was born in 1938. Our deepest condolences to his widow, children and many friends.

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LJC Chairwoman Greets Veterans

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman made home visits to greet WWII veterans on the occasion of Victory Day this year. Usually the LJC holds an event on May 8 and/or May 9, VE Day and Victory Day, respectively, at the LJC in Vilnius under the aegis of the Seniors Club, but our aging soldiers are finding it more and more difficult to make that trip, so chairwoman Kukliansky went to them instead. She visited 99-year-old Community member Eliziejus Rimanas and Aleksandras Asovskis who will celebrate his 102nd birthday in the next few days.

2023-05-18

Fayerlakh Celebrates Israel’s 75th

The Fayerlakh Jewish song and dance ensemble gave a special presentation dedicated to celebrating Israel’s 75th birthday called Promised Land. Friends from the Israeli embassy were there and took some nice photographs of the event.

2023-05-18

Condolences

Musia Gleizer passed away May 15. She was born in 1938 and was a long-time member of the Šiauliai Jewish Community. Our deep condolences to her children Natalja and Edikas, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and many other friends and family members.

2023-05-18

Pages from Music History: Anna Varshavski

Sarah Matz took the married name Anna Varshavski aka Anna Lvovna Warsaw. She was a singer and a philanthropist. She was born in Vilnius in December of 1896 when it was part of the Russian Empire. Her parents Jehuda and Fradel Matz owned a Jewish publishing house. She began studies at the Berlin Conservatory in 1920. In 1928 she set up an amateur choir in Kaunas which grew in reputation and size and eventually included around 50 members, coming to be known as the Jewel of Joel Engel Choir. They performed throughout Lithuania and on state radio. The choir disbanded in 1936. Varshavski also contributed to setting up the New Jewish Theater in Vilnius. She and her family were put in the Kaunas ghetto in 1941, and she was murdered at the Klooga concentration camp in Estonia in 1944.

http://yiddishmusic.jewniverse.info/varshavskianna/index.html

Tsum Hemerl (Avrom Reisen – Avraham Moshe Bernstein)

Anna Varshavski & “Engel-Chor”

Columbia DMX 301 (WJLX 8)

2023-05-172023-05-17

Jewish Scouts Attend Vilnius Regional Jamboree

Jewish scouts under scout leader Adomas Kofmanas joined more than 500 scouts from throughout the Vilnius region for a two-day jamboree over the weekend on the shore of Laumenas Lake. They learned rhetoric in debates and tried out different arts, crafts and skills including making jewelry, leatherwork and painting in acrylic. The paintings were mainly of the cat which has become the symbol of Vilnius’s Užupis neighborhood and were hung up in a sort of ad hoc art gallery/alley in the forest. They played capture the flag and sang around the campfire in the evening. The ever-growing number of Jewish scouts celebrated the Sabbath with prayer. Adomas Kofmanas’s group meets regularly at 3:00 P.M. on Sundays and young people who might be interested are encouraged to attend. For more information, write an email to skautai@lzb.lt.

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What Do You Know about Litvak Writers?

Arakdijus Vinokuras’s monthly quiz asks that question at the next quiz scheduled for 2:00 P.M. on Sunday, May 21 at the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius. This quiz will be dedicated to the three Litvak writers Icchokas Meras and the recently deceased Grigoriy Kanovitch and Markas Zingeris, may they rest in peace. It will be streamed on facebook as well.

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Makabi Table Tennis Team Takes 2nd Place in Lithuanian Competition

The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club’s women’s table tennis team took second place in Lithuanian play-offs held last weekend in VIlnius, meaning they’re now in the upper league in Lithuania and will play next year against the top dozen teams. Neta Alon made a strong showing and won 3:0 against the favorite. Makabi team players won against the teams from Šiauliai and Utena and only lost to Jonava.

This is the first time Makabi ping-pong players have risen to the upper leagues in Lithuania.

Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium students Uosis Račinskas and Jokūbas Kačerginskis won in team-play championship in the under-12 category. They began playing two years ago under the tutelage of Neta Alon, and are now training under Khen Alon. In singles-play Uosis Račinskas placed 5th in Lithuania and Jokūbas Kačerginskis 6th.

2023-05-16

Vilnius Square to be Renamed in Honor of Israel

The Vilnius city municipality intends to rename a square in a southern Vilnius neighborhood Israel. The decision was made by the city’s commission for historical memory but awaits approval by the city council. A member of that commission told Baltic News Service negotiations had taken place over an extended period with the Israeli embassy to Lithuania and that the city had sought a suitable location, resulting in a decision made on the site for honoring the state of Israel. In the end the council decided on a location on Algirdo street, a central location in Vilnius due to the 24-hour supermarket located there.

2023-05-15

Arkadijus Vinokuras Responds to Anti-Semitic Statements by MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis

Writer, reporter and public figure Arkadijus Vinokuras has responded to anti-Semitic statements made by Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis on the Lithuanian state television program Dienos tema [Topic of the Day]:

“How should a democratic state respond to these kinds of statements by a member of parliament? We heard condemnation from the heads of state and from some of the intelligentsia. Should we not respond at all?” Mindaugas Jackevičius asked Arkadijus Vinokuras.

“We have to respond,” Vinokuras replied, “because this isn’t incitement to hatred against one people, but against all peoples. I also believe that interpolation [impeachment hearings] must be brought against Mr. Remigijus Žemaitaitis who, for reasons I don’t know, doesn’t understand what he has done,” Vinokuras said.

Full interview in Lithuanian available here.

2023-05-15

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 8:55 P.M. on Friday, May 12, and concludes at 10:26 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

2023-05-11

Happy Birthday

We wish a very happy birthday to Sergejus Kanovičius. Mazl tov. Bis 120!

2023-05-10

Two Hundred Historians Back Polish Holocaust Expert under Attack

In a letter of support, historians and scholars worldwide said that the Polish attack on Holocaust scholar professor Barbara Engelking harmed attempts “to understand the processes that allowed the Holocaust to take place.”

Two hundred historians, including senior Holocaust scholars from Israel and around the globe, signed a letter in support of professor Barbara Engelking, a Polish historian who has been under attack in her homeland after she said the Poles did not do enough to help Jews during the Shoah.

“We, the undersigned scholars of the Holocaust Era, the Second World War, and Modern and Jewish History, express our firm support for Professor Barbara Engelking and for academic freedom, in the face of an unbridled and unfounded attack by politicians, media, and other public figures. … We can attest to the fact that she is a scholar of impeccable personal and professional integrity. Her scholarship adheres to the highest academic standards, for which she has earned worldwide esteem,” the historians wrote.

2023-05-10

Lithuanian MP Denounces Israel for Razing Palestinian School EU Financed

Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis, chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party formed of two rival liberal parties to contest municipal elections in Vilnius in 2014, denounced Israel’s destruction of a school in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The US, Israeli and German ambassadors called for him to apologize for the remarks, first made on facebook on Monday, May 8, repeated in parliament Tuesday, the same day Israel started bombing the Gaza Strip in what it calls Operation Shield and Arrow. Despite the demands of the ambassadors and his fellow MPs, Žemaitaitis said he won’t apologize.

On Tuesday he told parliament assembled: “I want to emphasize this school was fully financed by the European Union, by Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria, Germany, Spain and the other countries. … And if we believe that it’s alright to allow in the 21st century some country to blow up or destroy these kinds of sites of another country, then ask yourselves, what sort of moral and political values do you live by today? Mine are much higher than you think.”

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Naval Guard Kills 4 at Tunisian Synagogue

A Tunisian naval guard shot dead four people at Africa’s oldest synagogue in an attack Tuesday that sparked panic during an annual Jewish pilgrimage on the island of Djerba.

He gunned down two visitors, including a French citizen, and two guards before he was shot dead himself, the Tunisian Interior Ministry said.

Another four visitors and five police officers were wounded in the attack.

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Litvak Community Leaders Mark Victory Day in Israel

On May 8, VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day, the heads of several constituent communities in the Lithuanian Jewish Community, including LJC chairwoman Faina Kukliansky, Kaunas Jewish Community chairman Gercas Žakas and others, marked the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the capitulation of Nazi Germany to allies during a trip to Israel.

Shmuel Yatom, the chairman of the Vilnius Religious Jewish Community, performed a prayer prayed by victims on the way to Treblinka in Sderot, Israel.

The Litvak leaders are in Israel for workshops sponsored by the European Commission for more effective implementation of the EC’s strategy for fighting anti-Semitism and fostering Jewish life in the European Union.

They visited Sderot on the border with the Gaza Strip which saw Israeli counter-attacks last night and into the morning of May 9. The Israeli town is known as Israel’s bomb shelter capital because of frequent rocket attacks from Gaza. They also planned to meet the mayor of Ashkelon, and to take part in a ceremony honoring Mordechai Aneliwicz, an organizer of the Warsaw Uprising. The LJC is planning a joint conference with the Poland’s Jewish Historical Institute this fall to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilna ghetto.

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