The Sabbath begins at 5:28 P.M. on Friday, February 25, and concludes at 6:43 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
![Sabbath Times Sabbath Times](https://www.lzb.lt/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/peace-river-robert-braley-670x300.jpg)
The Sabbath begins at 5:28 P.M. on Friday, February 25, and concludes at 6:43 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
The next Kabbalat Shabat ceremony will be via internet on the zoom platform at 6:30 on Friday, February 25. To register contact viljamas@lzb.lt.
Progressive Rabbi Nathan Alfred from Israel led a Kabbalat Shabat ceremony with about 50 members of the Lithuanian Jewish Community including our seniors and families with children. In the afternoon prior he attended the LJC Seniors Club Abi Men Zet Zich and sang the hymns to usher in the Sabbath. One of our oldest members, Libė Britaniskina, lit the Sabbath candles and the meeting concluded with songs in Hebrew and Yiddish. He led the prayer service and delivered the weekly Torah portion.
The Sabbath begins at 5:14 P.M. on Friday, February 18, and concludes at 6:30 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
LRT Radio-Documentary: An Unknown Story from 1991
On the last two Sundays in February Lithuanian State Radio listeners will have the opportunity to hear an extraordinary two-part radio documentary called “Roots: The Story of One Journey.” This story involves a group of about 27 children who left Lithuania in 1991 to study in Israel.
“We immediately listened up when we heard from historian Violeta Davoliūtė about children who travelled abroad at those times without their parents,” writer Rimantas Kmita recalled. He and the journalists Vaida Pilibaitytė and Vita Ličytė produced the documentary. “Right away we were unable to understand who and how. Why didn’t their parents travel with them? How did these high school students live there by themselves? Back in those times when there were no mobile telephones or internet [in Lithuania]? Why did they send them there at all? What did they do there, where did they live, how did they adapt, what sort of lives did they have? Our imaginations immediately began painting all sorts of different stories and dramas.”
The radio documentary made in cooperation with the Goethe institute in Vilnius tells the stories of five adolescents from the period: Judita, Laurina, Nira, Rašella and Rananas. It includes recollections by the organizers of the trips, Daumantas Todesas and Ilja Bereznickas. Ilja Bereznickas escorted a group of students to Israel at the time.
The Choral Synagogue in Vilnius will host a Kabbalat Shabat ceremony with Rabbi Nathan Alfred from Israel at 6:30 on February 18, followed by a Sabbath meal. To register contact Viljamas by telephone at 867250699 or write viljamas@lzb.lt
The Sabbath begins at 4:59 P.M. on Friday, February 11, and concludes at 6:16 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
Good-Will Compensation is being used in compliance with legal acts. The National Audit Office of Lithuania carried out the audit of the compliance of management, use and disposal of state budget funds allocated in 2021 to the public establishment Foundation for Disposal of Good-Will Compensation for the Immovable Property of Jewish Religious Communities. The audit determined that the compensation is being used in accordance with legal acts.
The Law on Good-Will Compensation for the Immovable Property of Jewish Religious Communities entered into force on December 1, 2011. It established the amount of monetary compensation to be paid annualy: EUR 37.07 million. The total amount is planned to be paid by March 1, 2023.
Each year the Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas, approves within the state budget the amount of EUR 3.62 million for this compensation. The compensation is paid to the Foundation by the Office of the Government as manager.
Full story here.
A Kabbalat Shabat ceremony will be held via internet under the tenets of Progressive Judaism at 6:30 P.M. on February 11. To register, write Viljamas at viljamas@lzb.lt
The Sabbath begins at 4:44 P.M. on Friday, February 4, and concludes at 6:03 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
PRESS RELEASE by the Committee for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe
(CPJCE)
January 18, 2022
The Lithuanian Government reaffirms its commitment to follow CPJCE guidelines on future plans of the Sports Palace Building situated in the Snipiskes Jewish cemetery in Vilnius.
The future function of the existing Sports Palace Building was discussed at a meeting held in Vilnius on November 25, 2021, between first deputy chancellor Mr. Rolandas Krisciunas, accompanied by his working team, and Mrs. Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, together with Rabbi H. Gluck OBE and Rabbi Y. Schlesinger representing the CPJCE.
Rabbi Gluck pointed out that regardless what the future plans hold, the Government must respect the agreements signed between the Government and the CPJCE in 2009 and 2015 and therefore no movement of soil is allowed in the entire cemetery area, and the Government should continue to work hand-in-hand with CPJCE to ensure the safeguarding of the cemetery and other cemeteries in the framework of the halachic guidelines.
The Sabbath begins at 4:30 P.M. on Friday, January 28, and concludes at 5:50 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
LRT.lt: This interview is taking place on January 27, which is International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust. This topic is important to you, you took part in the Road of Memory procession several times if I recall correctly. The topic of the Holocaust is sparking a great many discussions in Lithuania and it’s clear we haven’t answered many questions. Have we, Lithuania, as a state, bearing in mind the entire history, have we commemorated sufficiently the victims and rescuers?
Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė: I think we haven’t fully realized over all what Jews mean in Lithuanian history. … The very scope, the understanding that 200,000 people, that the residents of the towns were in the majority the large Jewish communities which simply disappeared, someone took and wiped 200,000 people out of the picture. I came to that realization rather late.
…
Regarding the Palace of Sports, it has its own specific features because it is a building which is [protected] cultural heritage, nothing new may be built there, it can only be commemorated and put to public use. I won’t hide that there are people who say we should let this building fall into ruin because there are so many off-limit areas, so let the building fall down of its own accord. This is a difficult decision, to wait for the building to fall down in the middle of the city. I don’t think we should do this, but I also don’t think some other kind of application would meet with great support.
On International Holocaust Day Lithuanian prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė told LRT.lt the Palace of Sports complex in Vilnius could become a memorial to Jews. For more than a decade now there has been consideration on how to renovate this historical building of brutalist architecture. The main idea was to create a modern conference center, but the Government might not go along with this now.
The building has a unique roof and is an example of brutalism [Soviet architecture]. If there are even a few sites in the Lithuanian capital where it’s possible to travel back through time in an instant, the Palace of Sports is one of them. Abandoned and apparently forgotten, although it once throbbed with life.
Many Lithuanian music stars performed on its stage and festivals and plays were held there.
In 1989 while the USSR still existed the group Sonic Youth performed there.
The Lithuanian independence movement Sąjūdis held its founding conference there.
A Kabbalat Shabat ceremony will be held to usher in the Sabbath under the tenets of progressive Judaism at the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius at 6:00 P.M. on January 28, followed by a glass of wine and challa bread. To register, write Viljamas at viljamas@lzb.lt or call 8 672 50699.
Lithuania’s Odilė publishing house has translated and printed a Lithuanian translation of Yiddish writer Moshe Kulbak’s book Mesiekh ben Efrayim under the title Mesijas, Efraimo sūnus. The description by internet vendor knygynas.biz says:
Classic of Lithuanian and world Jewish literature Moishe Kulbak (1896-1937) is known to Lithuanian readers as the author of the wonderful poem Vilne. Finally for the first his prose has appeared in Lithuanian, the novel Messiah ben Efraim. This is one of the most famous and most original of Kulbak’s Yiddish works. It was written in Berlin in 1922 and is suffused with magical realism, something which hadn’t been seen before. The author’s vital and innovative imagination connects surrealistic and expressionistic images here with the oral tradition and strong mystical spirit of Lithuanian Jews. This ensemble recalls the impressive paintings of Marc Chagall.
The novel Messiah ben Efraim is based on a Jewish legend which comes from the Talmud that there are always 36 hidden just men living in the world without whose unseen actions the world would pass away [lamed-vavnik tzadikim or lamed-vavniki]. Kulbak creates a story about these holy people living in historical Lithuanian [Grand Duchy] lands–in Belarus and Žemaitija. Elderly miller Benya, Simkha the rabbi who ran away from his community, the philosopher-bum Gimpel, Christian sauna operator Kiril–these souls trapped in the world seeking the light, guided a strange unease embark on a journey without any explicable destination. During this fantastic trip filled with humor and mystical experiences the cause of this unease driving on the travellers gradually comes into focus: it’s the impending advent of the Messiah to the land of Lithuania.
The Sabbath begins at 4:15 P.M. on Friday, January 21, and concludes at 5:37 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region.
by Michael Medved
Israel’s contemporary critics angrily insist that the special relationship between America and the Jewish state stems solely from the outsize electoral and economic clout of American Jews. But those who argue that this undue influence has always shaped our policies in the Middle East ignore the fact that the commitment to a rebuilt Jerusalem and a reborn Israel began at a time when the Republic’s Jewish community played an insignificant role in national life, with a minimal population amounting to far less than 1 percent of the federal total. In fact, the idea that the United States ought to link its fate to a Jewish state officially originated in 1844 with the very first diplomat America ever dispatched to Jerusalem, more than a century before Israel’s Declaration of Independence. His name was Warder Cresson, and he led an extraordinary and singular American life.
Cresson’s own Huguenot forebears first came to the New World from Holland in 1657, settling in Delaware and New York. After some adventures in the West Indies, his grandfather Solomon found his way to Philadelphia, where he became an ardent member of the Society of Friends and part of the new city’s Quaker establishment. As successful artisans and entrepreneurs, the Cressons owned prime real estate on Chestnut Street in the center of town as well as valuable agricultural properties in the surrounding countryside.
Born in 1798, Cresson began working the family farms in nearby Darby and Chester counties at age 17, impressing relatives and neighbors with his business and leadership abilities. Married at 23 to another devout Quaker, he proceeded to raise six children of his own and to follow the clan’s pattern of judicious investment and accumulation of wealth.
Full story here.