Invited guests celebrated the Queen’s 93rd birthday at the British embassy in Vilnius Friday, donning fedoras, an important fashion accessory at official British functions.
Although Queen Elizabeth II was born April 21, the Official Birthday is set in many Commonwealth nations to correspond with good weather in June. The weather in Vilnius proved beautiful Friday.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky attended the birthday party.
Full story in Lithuanian here.
URM.lt
The Lithuanian Embassy to South Africa presented a mobile exhibit at the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town June 6 called “One Century Out of Seven. Lithuania, Lite, Lita.” The installation informs viewers of different aspects of Jewish history in Lithuania from the time of the Grand Duchy to the present. The exhibit travelled to South Africa’s second-largest city from the Holocaust and Genocide Center in Johannesburg.
Lithuanian ambassador Sigutė Jakštonytė welcomed the large audience including members of the Cape Town Jewish community and members of the parliament of the Republic of South Africa. She told them the Lithuanian parliament had named 2020 the Year of the Vilna Gaon and Litvak History in appreciation of the Litvak contribution to the Lithuanian state and to preserve the memory of Holocaust victims. The ambassador also thanked the museum in Cape Town for four years of close cooperation.
The exhibit at the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town runs till the end of June.
DELFI.lt
An event to commemorate the Jews of Biržai and Holocaust victims is to be held on Sunday, June 16, including honoring rescuers of Jews, a memorial procession and the unveiling of a 30-meter-long Holocaust memorial.
The Biržai Jewish Cultural and History Association, the Biržai regional administration and the Sėla Museum in Biržai are organizing the event. Partners include the Israeli embassy to Lithuania, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry and the secretariat of the International Commission to Assess the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupational Regimes in Lithuania.
We celebrate the holiday of Shavuot on June 9 and 10. June 8 is the eve before the holiday, and the entire night is dedicated to studying the Oral and Written Torah. The Torah is read out on this night.
Shavuot is an old holiday of pilgrimage and its rituals add cohesion to the community. During the holiday, a series of milk and cheese dishes are prepared and sampled. The king among them is the classic cheese pie. In Lithuania as in other European Jewish communities pancakes with cheese are popular. During the holiday in Israel, smaller cheese makers open their doors to visitors. Shavuot tourists are also invited to attend the Northern Cheese Pie Festival held now for its third year and children are taught how to milk cows and how to make butter from fresh milk.
This Sunday the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius will celebrate with treats made by Shoshana, a mashgiach who came especially from Israel to cook for the Bagel Shop Café this year.
The Bagel Shop Café recommends making Shavuot breakfast from the best challa with cream cheese and berries.
The Vytautas Landsbergis Cup 2019 Chess Tournament will be held beginning at 9:00 A.M. at the Lithuanian parliament on Saturday, June 8.
The tournament is being organized and sponsored by the Chancellery of the Lithuanian parliament and the Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Chess and Checkers Club. Head referee will be Raimondas Paliulionis. Expected to attend are professor Vytautas Landsbergis, Russian (Soviet) world champion Gary Kasparov, the best Lithuanian chess players and a host of diplomats, MPs and heads of government institutions, with at least 48 participants in total. The tournament will be held at the Gallery of Stained-Glass and Defenders of Freedom in building 1 of the Lithuanian parliament at Gedimino prospect no. 53 in Vilnius.
Registration of participants and guests begins at 9:00 A.M. and continues until 10:00 A.M, with the event beginning at 10:30 A.M. Time control is 10 minutes per move with no overtime. The winner is to receive the rotating Vytautas Landsbergis Cup. Those receiving trophies as well include winners in the women’s, children’s (under 16), seniors’ (60) and amateurs’ (with FIDE ratings up to 1600) divisions. All participants will receive medals of participation and souvenirs. To register contact Boris Rositsan at info@metbor.lt
The Lithuanian Jewish Community sends warm birthday wishes to Michael Schneider, who just turned 80.
Michael Schneider served as Executive Vice-President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) from December 1987 until May 2002. In this capacity he directed one of JDC’s largest operations in the field of Rescue, Relief and Reconstruction. Schneider, who was born in South Africa, began his career with JDC in 1978 after ten years of service as Chief Welfare Officer of the London Jewish Welfare Board. His first posting was as resident Country Director for Iran where he was based during and after the Khomeini revolution. After leaving Iran he continued to work on behalf of Iranian Jewry from JDC’s offices in Rome. In December 1979 and 1980 respectively, he became Country Director for the Iron Curtain countries of Hungary and Czechoslovakia and for Yugoslavia. In 1982 he was sent to Ethiopia following the expulsion of ORT by the Mengistu regime and obtained permission for JDC to work among the Jewish villages in Gonder Province.
Read more here.
Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky addressed a meeting of the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry (NCSEJ) in Washington, D. C., June 4, at the organization’s spring board of governors meeting. She gave a presentation entitled “The State of Lithuanian Jewry in the 21st Century.” She shared the stage with speakers including U.S. congressman Ted Deutch, congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, the two chairmen of the Congressional Bipartisan Task for Combating Anti-Semitism who took part in a panel discussion moderated by NSCEJ CEO Mark Levin called “Confronting Anti-Semitism: A View from Capitol Hill,” and U. S. envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism Elan Carr who delivered a presentation called “A View from the State Department,” as well as officials and Jewish representatives from Bulgaria and Ukraine.
Osip Mandelshtam and Anna Akhmatova
The Lithuanian Jewish Community held a conference on Jewish influences in the life and work of Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova on June 5. The conference was initiated by poetess Elena Suodienė, a doctor of the liberal arts and recipient of the Golden Quill award from the European Academy of Art and Literature.
Dr. Suodienė presented at the conference her new and newly-published poem in Russian about Akhmatova. She wrote a special article exclusively for www.lzb.lt about the Akhmatova the great poetess and the extraordinary person.
Shavuot or Shavuos is the holiday marking the giving of the Torah. The Vilnius Jewish Religious Community and Chabad Lithuania invite you to come celebrate together at 11:30 A.M. on Sunday, June 9, at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius. We will read the Ten Commandments and everyone will have the opportunity to sample delicious traditional Shavuot milk-product dishes. Children will receive small gifts. Because Shavuot is a time when studying the Torah is especially apt, traditional and successful, you are invited to an extended Sabbath dinner at Bokšto street no. 9 in Vilnius at 8:30 on June 8 where we will learn more about the Shavuot holiday.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community invites you to come celebrate the Sabbath with a guest, famous Lithuanian clothing designer Agnė Kuzmickaitė. LJC executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas will lead a discussion with her.
Time: 6:00 P.M. June 7
Place: LJC third floor, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius
Children aged 6 to 12 are invited to attend the 2019 Amehaye children’s summer day camp. Parents with younger children aged at least 4 can also contact the organizers for their children to attend. This year the camp will be held at the scenic Karvys mansion estate next to Lake Karvys in the Vilnius region from July 1 to 12. Please contact Sofja at sofja@lzb.lt or by telephone at +370 601 46656 for more information on how to register before June 14. An electronic registration form is available in Lithuanian here.
Dear Makabi members,
The Lithuanian Makabi Athletics Club will host a mini-Maccabiah Games event from 12 noon to 4:00 P.M. on June 16 at the Lithuanian Educology University, Studentų street no. 39, Vilnius. Badminton competitions will be held at the A. Puškinas School at Gabijos street no. 8 in Vilnius. Your local teams are invited to compete in:
Indoor soccer (7 players plus coach)
Three-on-three basketball (5 players plus coach)
Volleyball (9 players plus coach)
Table tennis (men’s and women’s)
Chess (men’s, women’s)
Badminton (men’s, women’s)
Rules for the competition will be set following determination of exact numbers of teams and players in different sports.
Please send an application by e-mail to makabilita.duskes@gmail.com by June 14.
For more information, call 8 698 19999
Michailas Duškesas, executive director
The Lithuanian Jewish Community will host an event dedicated to celebrating the 130th birthday of the Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova and discussing Jewish influences in her life. The event will take place at the LJC beginning at 1:00 P.M. on June 5. At least five speakers will present various topics. A screening of a film about Isaiah Berlin will punctuate the program of speakers, with a discussion with the audience following the last speaker. The event is expected to be held mainly in Russian.
In the period between the two world wars, the Jewish population was the majority population in Kalvarija, Lithuania. The architecture of the old town, a unique synagogue complex (with a winter and summer synagogue and the Talmud school) and the only surviving Jew, Moishe Segalis–all of this stands as a testimony to that time. For four Saturdays in a row now, as spring blossoms forth, there have been readings from Icchokas Meras’s novel “Lygiosios trunka akimirką” held near the synagogues in Kalvarija and in their courtyards. Lithuanian Jewish Community executive director Renaldas Vaisbrodas attended the final reading on May 24.
Students and soloists from the Sonantem choir in Kalvarija read from the work about the life of the Vilnius ghetto and about life which can be decided by the movement of a single piece on the game board.
A youth initiative invited the local community to an informal meeting with the relatives of those who once lived in Kalvarija, with our ancestors and neighbors.
President-elect of Lativa Egils Levits, 63, has Jewish roots. His father Jonass was Jewish but his mother was not, he said in an interview last month for the Delfi news channel. He and his parents were allowed to move away from the USSR to West Germany in 1972. His father Jonass was a Jewish engineer and his mother Ingeborga Levita (née Barga, nom-de-plume Aija Zemzare) a Latvian poetess. Egils earned degrees in political science and law before returning to Latvia in 1990 to help draft the Latvian declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. In 1993 he was elected to the Latvian parliament and went on to serve as Latvia’s justice minister and ambassador to Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. Levits was appointed Latvia’s representative at the European Court of Human Rights in 1995 and is currently the Latvian representative at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. He was elected president of Latvia by the parliament on May 29.
Speaking on Latvia’s Radio 1, Levits said he spends all his free time in Latvia with his family. “I like to walk around and meet ordinary people. I will get to know Latvia that way more profoundly and more personally than many of the politicians resident in Riga.”
Many Levits in Riga and Latvia hail from Panevėžys and Pabradė in Lithuania. Egils Levits, who likely has distant Litvak roots, has said Latvia should follow Lithuania’s example in supporting Jewish culture and history issues.
Members of the LJC’s Ilan and Dubi Clubs took a field trip May 26 to the “Artistic Village” traditional arts and crafts center in Molėtai, Lithuania. Children watched an animated film about working with ceramics, got to see an actual kiln and then made their own pottery.
The Lithuanian Jewish Community held its annual reporting and election conference May 28.
The conference is the highest governing body of the LJC. Delegates from the member organizations considered the conclusions from an independent audit and approved the financial report for the 2018 financial year. They also approved of the activities in the 2018 reporting period and discussed plans for 2019 and 2020, including conceptual directions for celebrating the upcoming Year of the Vilna Gaon and Jewish History.
Photographs by Milda Rūkaitė
