Religion

LJC Celebrates Tolerance Day with Darna Event

LJC Celebrates Tolerance Day with Darna Event

The first Darna event was held in 2020 during the corona virus panic. Despite many restrictions that time we were able to do more than we had expected, creating an entire virtual festival to mark the International Day of Tolerance. We tried to show during that tough time what diverse and interesting things we have right here in Lithuania, and how these differences are not only interesting, but complement one another perfectly. Today we are very happy to announce we can continue this event for its third year in a row, only this time we can meet face-to-face at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. Everyone of all religious, ethnic and other backgrounds and of all views is invited to come have a cup of tea or coffee, listen to live music and sample Israeli street food from our Cvi Park kiosk starting at 7:00 P.M. on Wednesday, November 16, at the LJC. Note: please disregard earlier announcements which stated the event would be held at the Choral Synagogue. It will be held on the third floor of the LJC at Pylimo street no. 4 in Vilnius.

The event program is available here. Musical performers, cooking workshops and meaningful conversations from the first Darna festival can be found here. More information about this iteration of the celebration can be found here.

#InternationalDayOfTolerance

World War I Remembrance Day Marked

World War I Remembrance Day Marked

Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky together with religious leaders and ambassadors resident in Vilnius took part in a Remembrance Sunday event held by the British embassy to Lithuania November 13 at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Vilnius. She read from the Book of Ecclesiastes.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

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Lithuanian PM Proposes Compensating Expropriated Jewish Private Property

Lithuanian PM Proposes Compensating Expropriated Jewish Private Property

Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė proposed the Lithuanian Government set up a 37-million euro fund to compensate the Jewish community for private property expropriated during World War II.

The fund would complement a previous initiative launched a decade ago which has paid out a similar amount of money to Lithuania’s Jewish community in compensation for seized communal property.

Under the Law on Goodwill Compensation adopted in 2011, Lithuania pledged to pay out over 37 million euros over a decade in compensation for the property of Jewish communities nationalized by totalitarian regimes.

Full story here.

Lithuanian Attitudes on Ethnicity and Religion

Lithuanian Attitudes on Ethnicity and Religion

The NGO Diversity Development Group, the Ethnic Studies Department of the Lithuanian social sciences center Sociology Institute and Media4Change invite you to a virtual event on International Tolerance Day to present the results of a study and media monitoring on the topic of Lithuanians’ views of ethnic and religious groups.

When: 10:00 A.M. to 11:30 A.M., November 16.
Where: MS Teams via login link https://bit.ly/3EhuyI1

Speakers:

Giedrė Blažytė, migration sociologist, Diversity Development Group, the Ethnic Studies Department of the Lithuanian social sciences center Sociology Institute

Neringa Jurčiukonytė, founder and director, Media4Change

Invitation and program here.

Sabbath Times

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 4:05 P.M. on Friday, November 11, and concludes at 5:20 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

Global Sabbath and Challa Bake-Off at the Bagel Shop

Global Sabbath and Challa Bake-Off at the Bagel Shop

The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you and your family to come back challa and celebrate the Sabbath in the Shabbos Project’s Global Challa Bake-Off at the Bagel Shop Café in Vilnius from 2:00 to 4:00 P.M. on Friday, November 11.

Every fall millions of Jews around the world come together in an extraordinarily moving activity, baking challa, blessing the wine and bread, singing the Sabbath hymns, celebrating the Sabbath together with friends and family and lighting the havdalah candle.

Senior Bagel Shop Café chef Riva Portnaja and other Community members will share their families’ traditions celebrating the Sabbath. You are invited to come make challa together, to take the loaves home, to invite our more isolated members to come as well and to bless the loaves and the wine together with the entire world Jewish community as we enter into the blessed rest of the Sabbath. The event is free and open to the public.

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Thank You, Rabbi Nathan Alfred

Thank You, Rabbi Nathan Alfred

The Lithuanian Jewish Community thanks Rabbi Nathan Alfred for three meaningful and fascinating days spent with our community.

We took some snapshots of the Kabalat Shabbat on Friday and the Shacharit prayer service last Saturday morning, below.

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World of Trakai Executed in Varnikai Forest: A Fancy Menorah, a Mad Mob and a Leather Briefcase

World of Trakai Executed in Varnikai Forest: A Fancy Menorah, a Mad Mob and a Leather Briefcase

Photo: Trakai in 1952. From the personal collection of Algimantas Dočkus courtesy LRT.

by Rasa Kalinauskaitė

“Sir, I report that while inventorying the Jewish property taken to the synagogue I discovered seven fur coats suitable for police service. Three of them are of a yellow and unlined falling to below the knees, four are lined with cloth material, coming down to the knees. I request an order these fur coats be seized for police officers to wear as they perform their duties.”–from report by chief of Trakai police department to chief of district police, October 17, 1941.

I and a contingent of Trakai residents as well as two people who came from further off went on a tour of the Trakai Old Town, visiting sites recalling the Jews who lived here before World War II, stopping at former Jewish homes which are still standing. We became fellow travellers, in that those who toured Trakai in earlier times have shared their memories from many decades ago in the photographs they took, which show a town which has now completely changed. I wanted to share this with those who were not able to come, so I will attempt to describe this trip.

This is a journey through memory, because that same day, September 30, was the day in 1941 when the Jews of Trakai, Aukštadvaris, Lentvaris, Rūdiškės, Onuškis and Žydkaimis, 1,446 people of whom 597 were children, were murdered in Varnikai Forest.

Full article in Lithuanian here.

Three Days with Rabbi Nathan Alfred

Three Days with Rabbi Nathan Alfred

Lectures:

“Raising Children in the Jewish Family,” 7:00 P.M., November 3, Conference Hall, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius.

“Sabbath for the Whole Family” under the tenets of Progressive Judaism, 6:30 P.M., November 4, prayer upstairs followed by kiddush at the Bagel Shop Café. Cost is 10 euros, young people 16 and under enter free.

Morning Prayer Service:

Shakharit, 10:30 A.M., November 5, at the site of the former Great Synagogue, Vokiečių street no. 13A, Vilnius.

To attend any or all of these events and for more information, please register by contacting Viljamas at viljamas@lzb.lt or by calling +37067250699.

News from Kaunas

News from Kaunas

Several weekends ago some members of the Kaunas Jewish Community travelled to Alytus. On the way, they stopped in Butrimonys, once a thriving Jewish town, where local school teacher Danutė Anušauskienė provided a guided tour of her hometown.

In Alytus they visited bonzai gardener Kęstutis Ptakauskas who created the Morning Dew Japanese garden there. They toured an exhibit of Litvak artists at the restored synagogue, now a museum, after which they went to the Dzūkijos dvaras restaurant to try the traditional dishes from the Dzūkija ethnographic region of Lithuania.

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Sabbath Times

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 6:22 P.M. on Friday, October 7, and concludes at 7:31 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.

Sukkot Begins Next Week

Sukkot Begins Next Week

Sukkot, or Sukkos in Ashkenazic, begins at 6:17 P.M. this Sunday, October 9.

The Festival of Sukkot–literally meaning booths, tents, tabernacles–is celebrated for seven days in Israel and eight days in the Diaspora, starting on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. It is one of the three festivals during which Jewish men were required to make pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the times of the Holy Temple.

Commemorating Holocaust Victims in Švenčionys

Commemorating Holocaust Victims in Švenčionys

On October 3 a ceremony was held in the Švenčionys city park to mark the anniversary of the onset of the mass murder of Jews in the region in the first week of October, 1941. In total over the course of the Holocaust approximately 8,000 Jews from the city and surround district were murdered.

Kristina Sizonova moderated the event. Speakers at the ceremony included Lithuanian Jewish Community executive board member Ela Gurina who is the chairwoman of the Holocaust Victims Commission, Švenčionys Jewish Community chairman Moshe Shapiro, Sholem Aleichem ORT Gymnasium principal Ruth Reches, Polish ambassador to Lithuania Urszula Doroszewska, deputy mayor of the Švenčionys district Violeta Čepukova, Pabradė’s Rytas Gymnasium history teacher Danguolė Grincevičienė and others.

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Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue

Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue

Yom Kippur at the Choral Synagogue, Pylimo street no. 39, Vilnius:

Monday, October 3:

6:30 P.M. Preparations for Yom Kippur, lesson on the holy day, kapparot ritual

Tuesday, October 4:

5:30 P.M. Supper before fast
6:10 P.M. Kol Nidre
6:30 P.M. Fast begins

Wednesday, October 5:

10:00 A.M. Shacharit morning prayer
12:00 noon Izkor
5:30 P.M. Mincha prayer
7:30 P.M. Niila prayer
7:38 P.M. conclusion of fast, dinner