The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Ilan Club invite parents and children to spend Sunday morning with culinary chef Andžejus Žukovskis. We’ll bake hamentashen, the traditional Purim treat, together. It all begins at 12 noon on Sunday, February 21, via Zoom. To register send an email to sofja@lzb.lt and together with the Zoom code we’ll send you a list of ingredients needed. For more information you may also call Sofja at +370 601 46656.
The Bagel Shop Café will make hamantash available for Purim from February 23 to 25, made in the traditional manner with poppy seeds and raspberry jam. The cost will be 12 euros per kilogram (about 30 to 35 individual hamantashen) and smaller orders are also possible. Please reserve your pastry now or at least by February 23 so we’ll know how many to make. The Bagel Shop Café itself is closed for repairs so customers will be able to pick up their orders in the foyer at the main entrance to the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius. Pick-up will begin on February 23 and run till February 25, from 12 noon to 4:00 P.M. Payment may only be made by bank card.
Reservations: https://forms.gle/YhmP2nt82uoUALbc8
The Lithuanian Jewish Community is planning to hold a virtual Sabbath celebration at 6:10 P.M. on February 19 with Rabbi Greg Alexander from the Temple Israel Synagogue in Cape Town, South Africa. Please register here to receive Zoom credentials.
The Lithuanian public radio and television program Menora featured a story about Choral Synagogue cantor and Torah reader Shmuel Yatom:
Photo: Just a few buildings witnessing to the Jewish past still stand in Utena.
Translated to Lithuanian by Vytautas Ridikas from Massacres in Utena by Tsozdik Bleiman writing in Russian
§§§
As the only living witness left, I am able to share some special memories.
My father Jakov Bleiman, who was formerly a rabbi in Crimea, performed the same duties in Utena, where my brother-in-law Efraim Yudelovich also lived with the family. At the beginning of the war I lived in Kaunas.
I decided to see my parents and then, if the right conditions were in place, to evacuate with the entire family. As it turned out there was no way to leave for somewhere, because just as I arrived in the city the Germans entered. Our fate became clear: we were all condemned to death.
Thursday. The first day of the German regime. Dozens of Jews are herded to work, led to the Germans and their Lithuanian helpers. The work is meaningless and insignificant, just in order to deride the Jews, sending them around all day with brooms, shovels and other implements.
Belarussian progressive Jewish Community Beit Simha’s Rabbi Grigoriy Abromovich created an international project to link up cities in Lithuania, Belarus and Israel and Lithuanian Jewish Community social programs director Žana Skudovičienė was an important part of the project on the evening of Friday, February 6, when more than 40 families celebrated Sabbath together via internet.
“We know and love the Jerusalem of Lithuania Jewish Community and we love visiting there [Vilnius]. New technology allows us to be closer together despite distance in time and space,” Rabbi Abromovich said.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky said we all miss communication and support because of the difficult period of the viral pandemic, and the Sabbath has the unique ability to bring us all together.
Michailis Segalis, LJC executive director, said: “During Passover we say to one another: next year in Jerusalem. Today I’d like to rephrase that wish and say to all our virtual Sabbath participants: next year in Minsk, Vilnius and, perhaps, we will all celebrate Sabbath in Jerusalem.”
A big thank you to all who made the virtual Sabbath possible and participated. Thank you for your kind words and smiles.
Today is the Jewish holiday of Tu b’Shvat, the 15th day of the month of Shvat, the New Year for trees also known as Israeli Arbor Day. It is traditional to eat of the shvat ha’minim (seven species endemic to the Land of Israel): wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. Hag sameakh!
About the speakers
Prof. Gerald Steinberg is founder and president of NGO Monitor and professor emeritus at Bar Ilan University. His current research focuses on the politics of human rights, soft power and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). His book “Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt Peace Process: Between Ideology and Political Realism” was published in 2019.
Ellie Cohanim served as deputy special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism at the U.S. Department of State. Former deputy special envoy Cohanim helped inform and carry out policies and related initiatives that aim to counter global anti-Semitism at the State Department.
Mike Whine is a senior consultant at WJC. Between 2010 and 2012 he acted as lay advisor to the Counter Terrorism Division of the Crown Prosecution Service. In September 2013 he was appointed UK member of the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), a human rights agency of the Council of Europe.
Olga Deutsch is vice president at NGO Monitor where she works with elected officials around the world. Olga brings extensive experience in international politics and Europe-Israel relations, and expertise in advocacy and building effective strategies to combat delegitimization, BDS and modern anti-Semitism.
The Institute for NGO Research, 10 Yad Harutzim , Jerusalem, 9342148 Israel
Register here.
Photo: Faina Kukliansky, by Vidmantas Balkūnas, courtesy 15min.lt
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky remembers January 13. Lithuanian Jews, who restored their community finally 30 years ago after decades of restrictions, took part in events in those days [in 1991] Nowadays when they talk about the struggle for freedom, members of the community emphasize the greatest gift: the opportunity to speak freely.
What do you remember personally about that fateful night at the TV tower, the Lithuanian Radio and Television building and the parliament? What does the Jewish community remember about these events?
Jews did the same thing as everyone else in Lithuania. We have collected the recollections of our community members of that fateful night. They watched the television broadcast until it was cut off and they went to the barricades, in Vilnius but also in Kaunas and other cities.
We were there where the majority of Lithuania was. I remember when I travelled from Varėna during that time and saw the road full of tanks. At that time I had an elderly guest from America who said he was seeing tanks for the first time in his life.
On that particular night my friends and I–all of us were together with our young children–followed events, held vigil, waiting for our husbands who were there in the crowd by the barricades or who were doing their job as doctors.
My children are now grown up and always remember that night and the tension. It wasn’t clear what would happen and the tanks were already in place in the city. We didn’t have any information, we had seen the final frame when E. Bučelytė had to quit the [television] studio. We learned that night from medics that there were dead and wounded people.
by Geršonas Taicas
Shmuel Abba Sniegas was born in Rokiškis [Rokishyok] in 1878. He attended a Jewish primary school and completed the Kneses Israel yeshiva in Slobodka (now the Vilijampolė neighborhood of Kaunas) in 1913. He was deported to the Pskov guberniya in Russia during World War I. He began working as a rabbi in 1916.
Facts worth knowing about the Litvak poet Osip Mandelshtam
by Rūta Ribinskaitė, LJC member, for 15min.lt
As we mark the 130th anniversary of Osip Mandelshtam, the Lithuanian Jewish Community is inviting the public to take a new look at one of the most renowned poets of the Silver Age of Russian poetry. We present to readers long-forgotten and little-known facts about the phenomenal poet Osip Mandelshtam.
Mandelshtam’s family on both his mother’s and father’s side came from Lithuania. The Mandelshtam family’s roots are in northern Lithuania in the town of Žagarė. There are assertions the family settled in the town in the early 19th century.
The poet’s mother Flora Mandelshtam née Verbolvskaya was a musician and his father Hatzkel-Emil Mandelshtam belong to the first guild of merchants and was a leather tanner. The young married couple lived in Warsaw where the future poet was born on January 15, 1891, and then moved to live in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1896 and 1897.
Full text in Lithuanian here.
The Ilan Club and the Lithuanian Jewish Community are inviting children to come together and celebrate the Sabbath this January 15 at 5:00 P.M. on Zoom. We will read the history of the Sabbath together with the children. Please register by sending an email to sofja@lzb.lt or by calling +370 601 46656.
Tanks next to Lithuanian Radio and Television. Photo: P. Lileikis
Aleksandra Jacovskytė, scenographer, photographer, graphic artist
Šura Jacovskytė remembers those days in January of 1991. She lived in the center of Vilnius and her friends used to gather at her apartment during those tense days and they watched events unfold together on LRT television.
“I saw and I still remember the final frames when Soviet soldiers broke into the television [studio], the image vanished and there was darkness… It was a horrible feeling,” Šura recalled. “I felt the same as everyone else did. I couldn’t believe the Soviet miasma would come back. The people of Lithuania were already different, they had got a taste of freedom, so it was impossible to go back. It was by then inconceivable to support the actions of the government of the Soviet Union, what they were getting up to, that was totally clear. Even a few months later, after the coup began, I told myself: ‘No, this cannot be…'”
Algirdas Malcas, director, Vilnius the Jerusalem of Lithuania Jewish Community
“I was at the parliament during those days. I walked every day from one site to another, and I had arrived with my dog. I used to go day and night, like a watchman’s rounds. I lived in the center so friends used to come to me to warm up. I was young then and the memories are unerasable.
by Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis and Israeli foreign minister Gabi Ashkenazi, DELFI.lt
“The purpose of redemption is to protect the truth,” the Vilna Gaon said. One of the most renowned scholars and exegetes of the Torah and the Talmud, the Vilna Gaon held great influence through his works on the religious and cultural identity of Litvaks. The Lithuanian parliament declared 2020, the 300th anniversary of his birth, the Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak history.
The year 2020 was dedicated to the extraordinarily rich, continuing 700-year history of Jews in Lithuania. The unique Lithuanian shtetlakh gave birth to many religious authorities and sages, and also to Jewish artists of world renown. The painter Marc Chagal bloomed under Lithuanian skies. Memories of Lithuania live in contemporary author Grigoriy Kanovitch’s work. The land inspired Emmanuel Levinas to ponder the secrets of existence and provided the nostalgic ring to Lea Goldberg’s poems. When we talk about the exceptional history of the Jews of Lithuania, we also remember the horrific tragedy of the Holocaust. All of us must pledge never to forget what happened, and to judge honestly and objectively our shared past, no matter how painful it might be.
Dear Friends,
I hope you are well.
We’re looking for brighter days in the feature and with this hope we’re opening the recruitment process for the Paideia One-Year Jewish Studies Program 2021-2022.
The program is dedicated to future educators, activists and leaders wanting to broaden their knowledge of Jewish culture and history and to establish a net of connection with over 700 of our graduates.
by Ilona Rūkienė
The entire Lithuanian Jewish community knows Simas Levinas as the head of the Lithuanian Jewish Religious Community, which includes two Jewish religious communities in Kaunas and the Klaipėda and Vilnius Jewish Religious Communities. Mr. Levinas was the first principal at the post-war Jewish school in Vilnius and has also served as the head of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Social Center.
Vilnius has only one working synagogue [excluding Chabad Lubavitch House], the Choral Synagogue on Pylimo street. How are prayer services conducted there?
Prayer services are held three times daily. There are sufficient numbers of those who come to pray. Judaism is complicated, people come to prayer in the morning, afternoon and evening. Life is structured by coming and going to synagogue. They only come once during Sabbath. There are a lot of people in attendance during the summer and famous rabbis come, the followers of the Vilna Gaon. People are frequently proud of their Lithuanian roots, because being Litvak means the continuation of the Gaon’s school, meaning that their parents or ancestors came from the Lithuanian Grand Duchy, many of them from [the smaller ethnically-defined nation-state of] Lithuania. They dedicate an entire day to prayer, then travel on to Volozhin, where Chaim of Volozhin [1749-1821], a disciple of the Vilna Gaon, taught the Gaon’s method of textual analysis at the yehsiva he [Chaim] established especially for that purpose. During the Jewish holy days the synagogue is packed, at least before the pandemic, and it’s not just Jews who come, many Lithuanian guests do as well. Ambassadors from many countries resident in Vilnius also participate.
by Rasa Jakubauskienė and Vaidas Banys for 15min.lt
Kėdainiai [Keydan] is a city rich in history, culture, heritage and synagogues. Currently one of the synagogues houses the Multicultural Center of the Kėdainiai Regional History Museum, another an art school, and yet another is undergoing restoration. Restoration of the exterior of the latter was finished last year and this year the interior is being restored.
Jorūnė Liutkienė, advisor to the mayor of the Kėdainiai regional administration, said work is ongoing inside and isn’t complete. Kėdainiai historian Vaidas Banys reported, as we were writing this article, that he had discovered interesting facts never before published concerning the emergence of this synagogue, and shared them for the first time with readers of the newspaper Rinkos aikštė [local Kėdainiai newspaper].
by Gediminas Pilaitis, Lrytas.lt
Many residents of Klaipėda don’t know the city’s largest synagogue once stood on Daržų street.
There are plans to commemorate the synagogue which operated in the interwar period in the Klaipėda Old Town. A commemorative plaque is to be placed on the hotel which now occupies the location. The city has approved the plan initiated by the local Jewish community.
After a short break, the Bagel Shop Newsletter has returned with a new and much-anticipated end-of-2020 issue. The magazine has shifted to a newsprint folded edition, so the layout is slightly different from earlier issues. We hope you enjoy.
Beigelių krautuvėlė-EN-internet