Mr. Takanobu Fuchikami, the mayor of Tsuruga, Japan, sends holiday and New Year’s greetings to the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Tsuruga is a Japanese port city which received Jewish refugees issued transit visas by Japan’s consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, Righteous Gentile Chiune Sugihara.
The Hanukkah celebration at the Choral Synagogue in Vilnius yesterday was both moving and fun with many esteemed guests and traditional Hanukkah foods including latkes and doughnuts. A warm and happy atmosphere prevailed and the klezmer group Rakija Klezmer Orkestar contributed to the festive mood with great performances of Jewish song. Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky greeted celebrants of the Hanukkah miracle. The miracle of this year’s Hanukkah, she said, was Lithuanians celebrating the Jewish holiday with Jews at the synagogue and Lithuanians and people of other ethnicities performing Jewish music there. It is a blessing to be able to celebrate together with the Jewish community in one’s own land, she said.
Lithuanian parliamentary speaker Pranckietis, Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon, Lithuanian ambassador to Israel Bagdonas and US embassy deputy chief of mission Solomon attended.
Snapshots available here.
Video footage available here and here courtesy of Amit Belaitė.
Dr. Aušra Pažėraitė
The Talmud (Shabbat 21b) speaks rather laconically of the origins of this holiday:
“Kislev 25, the days of Hanukkah which are eight, there is no mourning, there is no fasting during these days. When the Greeks came into the Temple, they polluted all the oil in the Temple, and when the Hasmonean dynasty overcame and defeated them, they checked [the Temple] and found just one jug of oil, which was in its place, and was sealed with the seal of the High Priest. But in it there was oil [only sufficient] for burning for just one day. A miracle occurred in connection with it: it burned for eight days. The next year they established them [these days] as holy days for giving glory (hallel) and thanks.”
The retelling isn’t as comprehensive as found in the Christian Bible where the two Books of the Maccabees written in Greek are found. They tell a longer story of Jewish persecution during the reign of the Hellenistic king of Syria Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jewish revolt under the brothers Maccabee and their victory. The Greek telling is full of rhetorical details speaking to how widespread Greek culture had taken root throughout the nation, even among the priesthood of the Temple in Jerusalem: “Now such was the height of Greek fashions, and increase of heathenish manners, through the exceeding profaneness of Jason, that ungodly wretch, and no high priest; That the priests had no courage to serve any more at the altar, but despising the temple, and neglecting the sacrifices, hastened to be partakers of the unlawful allowance in the place of exercise, after the game of Discus called them forth; Not setting by the honors of their fathers, but liking the glory of the Grecians best of all” (2 Maccabees 4:13-15). Athletics were practiced in the nude, and so displayed the evidence of circumcision, which caused shame, since it didn’t fit with the Greek ideal of manly virtue, kalokagathia. It tells how the Temple was looted and desecrated, and renamed Jupiter Olympus. Demands by the “Greek” regime to violate the Torah are also enumerated, and the story of the martyrs who refused to do so is provided. Many of the details of the stories are unclear to historians, but a general picture of the times is more or less provided. And this includes not just the brutal actions of the Hellenistic regime, but also the attraction and endless temptation Hellenistic thought and the Hellenistic lifestyle exerted.
Baltic News Service reported a statement by outgoing US leader Barack Obama angered president-elect Donald Trump, who issued a text on twitter in response stating he is trying not to pay attention to Obama’s many attempts to bait and provoke. Trump said he had expected the transfer of power to go smoothly, but had been disappointed, according to BNS.
Earlier in the week Obama claimed he would have been elected to a third term if he were allowed to do so, and that a majority of the electorate supports what he called his political vision.
President-elect Trump took Obama to task over Israel in his postings on twitter, saying the US had alienated her best friend Israel by acting dishonorably and in an insulting manner. Trump said the current spat began with an agreement with Iran over the peaceful use of nuclear energy and then moved into the arena of United Nations. “Stay strong, Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!” the new leader of the United States wrote.
Last week for the first time since 1979 the 15-member Security Council of the United Nations adopted a resolution demanding an immediate halt to Jewish settlement in occupied Palestinian territories. In past efforts the United States used its veto power to stop such resolutions. This time the US abstained and allowed it to pass. Trump said the US needed to veto the resolution and criticized Obama for stances taken against America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
The Ethnic Minorities Department under the Lithuanian Government held a discussion called “Respect for Ethnic Community Heritage a Successful Element of Integration” just before Christmas where heritage specialists, representatives of Lithuania’s ethnic minorities and members of the press discussed ethnic heritage.
Ethnic Minorities Department director Dr. Vida Montvydaitė opened the discussion noting the topic of heritage unites all of the country’s communities and associations.
Diana Varnaitė, director of the Cultural Heritage Department under the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture, said Lithuania’s cultural heritage is reflected in the country’s ethnic associations and their stories in the context of the development of the Lithuanian state. “Our state is very rich in associations who have created symbols. The most easily and most frequently recognized ones are sacred sites,” she said, noting many associations hold dear their historical cemeteries. She said there is often a lack of knowledge preventing recognition of this diversity, so that the ethnic communities are often the best partners in heritage protection work, and that her organization has great expectations of the Ethnic Minorities Department. Varnaitė said recognition of heritage is the key to its preservation. “What we recognize, what we hold dear, becomes part of us, our communities, the ethnic associations themselves and the local communities.”
jfunders.org
December 26, 2016
Hi Friend,
I wanted to remind you that we’re still collecting nominations for the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award (see the previous email below for more details.) Believe it or not, it’s almost the new year and after that there will only be two weeks until the deadline. Don’t leave it until the last minute!
Watch some of the past acceptance speeches for this award, and I know you’ll agree that it’s quite an honor for the recipient, and an important way for the Jewish philanthropic field to identify and promote excellence and commitment. Nominate someone now!
Call me if you have questions: 212-726-0177, x205.
Warmly,
Merav
To: All WJC Affiliated Communities & Organizations
From: Robert Singer, WJC CEO & EVP
Re: Rome Remembrance Run – 22 January 2017
Dear Friends,
I am delighted to share with you a wonderful initiative of the Union of Jewish Communities of Italy: the ‘Run for Remembrance’, which will be held in Rome as part of the International Holocaust Commemoration Day activities, on 22 January 2017.
The Run for Remembrance will consist of two separate races, one of 10 KM and one of 3.6 KM, and each of the runs will stop at places of historical significance along the way and pay tribute to the victims of Nazism.
WJC is very pleased to be supporting this initiative of the Italian community and we are inviting our member communities to send some participants to join in the run.
Attached is the Flyer for the event (click to download): please share this with members of your community.
Members of the Hesed Club of the Kaunas Jewish Community celebrated Basia Šragienė’s birthday last week and everyone had a great time. The always youthful and energetic Šragienė is one of the Kaunas Jewish Community’s longest-standing members. For many she sets an example with her energy, resolution, selflessness, caring and warm conversation.
Over the years she has participated in and even organized many Kaunas Jewish Community events and activities including people from across the age spectrum and with different interests. As a former medical doctor she also provides useful advice to those who seek it. Those who gathered to celebrate her birthday remembered these and all her other wonderful features in their greetings to the birthday girl. Everyone was pleasantly surprised as well at the event by Kaunas Jewish Community member Stasys Makštutis, who arrived suddenly and unexpectedly from Lyons where he studies and gave a moving and tantalizing concert on clarinet.
Mazel tov!
Dear members of the Jewish community, greetings to all on this holiday of Hanukkah!
I hope good feelings and warm and pleasant moments with loved ones will accompany you as you light the first Hanukkah candle. I wish you health and concord in your family, and that our children would grow up safe, dignified and happy and be proud of their parents and their roots.
It is a happy thing that there is ever-growing interest in the rich history of the Jews, and I probably won’t be making a mistake to say that there was never so much interest in the Jewish community as there is now, although so few Jews are left in Lithuania. The Jewish Community works actively to insure the rights and freedoms of our members and to promote Jewish interests. Unfortunately we weren’t able to achieve all our goals in 2016, but we will continue to strive after them in the coming year: monuments to those who shot Jews need to be removed, and Vilnius needs to have a monument commemorating those who rescued Jews from the Holocaust. We will continue to work on the issue of restitution of private property.
The Jewish Community is investing in the future, issuing scholarships and stipends for Jewish students and accomplished athletes. Plans for a new kindergarten have been completed, a kindergarten which will insure Jewish values are passed down to the youngest members of our community and prepare them for further education at the Jewish school.
One of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s top priorities is to improve the living conditions of clients in our Social Programs Department. We help when emergencies and misfortune occur. This will remain our priority in 2017. We also help rescuers of Jews, whose humility and sincere gratitude encourage us to grow and improve. I would like to thank Jewish rescuer Regina for the gloves and socks she knitted.
The Community building itself has become lighter and cozier. We have new audio-visual equipment in the Community concert hall and there are always new and different exhibitions on display. It’s a great joy that there is cultural life, ferment and creativity in the community, and that performers from Lithuania, Israel, the USA, the Netherlands, Romania and other countries perform concerts here. It is also a happy occasion that we have deepened our contacts with the foreign embassies, other countries, municipal institutions and NGOs. Thanks to this cooperation legal amendments were finally adopted to make it easier for Litvaks to restore Lithuanian citizenship. We signed an agreement on cooperation with the American Jewish Committee, we are enjoying wonderful relations with other world Jewish organizations and we are expanding contacts in the West as well as in the East, with the Jewish communities in India and Japan.
Interest in religion is reviving as well. We have two rabbis working at the Community who give lessons educating young and old on various topics in Judaism.
In cooperation with international Jewish organizations and based on their recommendations, we have increased security at the Community and synagogue buildings, and are approaching western standards of security.
We have the only kosher café in Vilnius. The Bagel Shop has attracted significant attention and television crews from Canada, Germany and of course Lithuania, too, have featured the café. It has become a place where not only Jews gather, but also aficionados of Jewish cuisine and culture. Our challa-baking event was a good time for all, and US ambassador Anne Hall was enchanted by the experience. The Jewish languages project carried out with the Cultural Heritage Department attracted much attention by many residents of the Lithuanian capital and visitors from elsewhere. In greeting you all, I invite Community members to show even greater initiative and self-confidence in proposing ways to make their hopes and dreams come true, because the Community exists to benefit its members.
My holiday greetings go out as well to Israeli ambassador Amir Maimon and the chairmen of the regional communities: Gennady Kofman, Gercas Žakas, Artūras Taicas, Feliksas Puzemskis, Moisej Šapiro and Josifas Buršteinas. Thank you all for the active roles you play and for working together.
Khag Khanuka Sameakh!
Marius Ivaškevičius, the writer and organizer of a Holocaust commemoration march in Molėtai, Lithuania, has been named Man of the Year for 2016 by Lithuanian National Radio and Television.
Last May Ivaškevičius published an internet appeal for the public to attend a march in his hometown along the route Jews were taken to their deaths in 1941. He followed this appeal with an essay called “I’m Not Jewish,” a translation of which attracted the most visitors to any single item on the Lithuanian Jewish Community web site ever.
Ivaškevičius’s march in Molėtai attracted international attention and dominated the Lithuanian media on August 29, 2016. About 3,000 people from Lithuania and abroad marched from the town square to the mass grave site, the same route about 2,000 Jews marched to their deaths 75 years earlier.
Vilnius, December 25, BNS–After the law was amended to provide greater opportunities to Jews who left Lithuania between the wars to restore citizenship, several hundred requests for Lithuanian citizenship have been granted.
The Lithuanian Migration Department reports following amendments adopted in April of 2016, Lithuanian citizenship was restored to 223 people of Jewish ethnicity through the third quarter of the year. Of these, 209 held Israeli citizenship and 14 South African. No applications were rejected. A significant portion of requests have not been processed yet, but Migration Department representatives said the trend continues for the fourth quarter and citizenship should be restored for another 200 people.
Citizenship was also granted to 36 people whose applications had been rejected earlier. Before the new law came into effect, both the number of requests granted and requests rejected were growing annually. In 2014 10 were rejected, in 2015 76, and in the first half of 2016 105 applications by Litvaks for restoration of Lithuanian citizenship were rejected. Correspondingly, in 2014 528 cases of restoration of citizenship to Jews were granted, in 2015 602, but in the first half of 2016 just 125 people of Jewish ethnicity received positive answers.
“As early as the beginning of the year we knew there would be some sort of changes, so we froze potentially negative decisions. When the new law was adopted, we renewed the frozen cases, so that perhaps explains why the positive decisions increased. But there is no flood,” Migration Department director Evelina Gudzinskaitė told BNS.
She said there are three main reasons Litvak descendants seek Lithuanian citizenship. “For some there is a symbolic tie to Lithuania, they want to restore citizenship, to have it, they want to maintain their roots. For some they need it for practical reasons, they want to come back here, they’re involved in cemetery protection, restoration of synagogues, they are concerned with heritage which still survives here, they want to visit [heritage sites]… A Lithuanian passport is also citizenship in the European Union, so there’s the opportunity to arrive in the EU, to travel more easily,” she commented
In April the law was changed to make it more explicit, following a new procedure by migration officials and courts demanding Litvaks provide proof they or their ancestors were persecuted in Lithuania during the period between the two world wars. The matter revolved around a nuance in meaning, between the words “fled” and “withdrew.” Both cases are now covered in the new language.
Israel’s ambassador to Lithuania Amir Maimon and Lithuanian Jewish Community chairwoman Faina Kukliansky lit the first Hanukkah candle on a menorah on the balcony of the Community building in Vilnius Saturday night. Vilnius Choral Synagogue cantor Shmuel Yatom added to the beauty and dignity of the ceremony with his performance of a hymn.
Saturday evening, December 24, marked the beginning of the Hanukkah holiday. Hanukkah is always celebrated for eight days, beginning on the 25th day of Kislev on the Jewish calendar. The word itself is often explained as coming from a root for inauguration, consecration and dedication.
Gymnasium director for informal education Ela Pavinskienė said students in a volunteer group had learned how to make decorative garlands which were hung up around the school. The teacher taught students in grades 1 to 5 about the holiday, story and meaning of Hanukkah, and about kosher food rules. The students learned how to make traditional Hanukkah doughnuts.
Pavinskienė said students from grades 1 to 4 held a concert directed by third-graders, with each grade contributing a song, dance or skit. All participants received a doughnut and a small gift. The children came to the concert in their holiday best and in a festive mood. There was a contest for best homemade menorah. The menorahs are now on display on windowsills on the second floor. Each grade also held a light-show with music.
Children were asked to make doughnuts at home with their parents, and so many delicious doughnuts were brought in. A lottery was held for those who had contributed doughnuts with the winner selected at random who received a special prize.
“Škirpa doesn’t deserve a street named after him any more than Paleckis does.”
Poet, writer, translator and intellectual professor Tomas Venclova, currently living in the U.S., is highly critical of a street in Vilnius still named after interwar Lithuanian diplomat and colonel Kazys Škirpa.
“I think Kazys Škirpa, who obsequiously served Hitler and worked with the Gestapo, has no more earned having a street named after him than has Justas Paleckis, who kowtowed to Stalin and worked with the NKVD,” Venclova said in a statement which was read at a discussion at the Old Town Hall in Vilnius.
“The argument that Škirpa was in favor of independence while Paleckis was against is demagogic and full of error. THey both attempted to preserve independence formally but not actually under the protection of totalitarian regimes, and both of them killed independence,” the professor of literature and one of the five founders of Lithuania’s Helsinki Group said.
Full story here.
WASHINGTON, D.C. December 22, 2016
FROM: Mark B. Levin, CEO
Daniel Rubin, chairman
Alexander Smuckler, president
In the early morning of December 21 the site of the tomb of Hassidic Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman Ukraine was desecrated with a pig’s head with a carved swastika and red paint. Two attackers entered the synagogue, sprayed tear gas and shouted anti-Semitic epithets at the worshipers.
Worshipers visit the site throughout the year, especially during Rosh Hashanah, and hold services at the rabbi’s grave at all hours.
SKOVAGALIU, LITHUANIA… NOVEMBER 1943 Lea Port and Samuel Ingel were members of a resistance group in the Kovno ghetto. They escaped the ghetto and walked more then 100 kilometers towards the village of Simnas. There they met Semonas Tamulinas, a communist who had been hiding from the Germans for three years. He said that since Lea did not look Jewish she could pass as a Christian and his sister, Elena Ivanauskai, would take her into her home. Lea lived with Elena and Petras Ivanauskai and their two children, Giedrute and Gintautas. At first Elena did not know that Lea was Jewish, but once she found out she agreed to keep hidding her. As the weather became colder Lea asked Elena if Samuel could hid in their barn. Elena agreed to help Samuel too. Lea and Samuel stayed with the Ivanauskai family until the area was liberated by the Soviet army in August 1944. In 2006 the JFR reunited Lea with Giedrute.
To read more about Giedrute and Gintautas Ivanauskai click here.
Read more at: https://jfr.org/video-library/reunion-2006/
Friends,
JTA was founded in 1917 to inform the world about the plight of Jewish refugees after World War I.
As we get set to turn 100, more than 1 million Jews still live in Europe. They aren’t refugees, but they face alarming developments — including anti-Jewish violence from jihadist terrorists and spikes in anti-Semitism, anti-Israel activism and political extremism. The post-Holocaust framework that has kept the peace in Europe for 70 years is teetering.
One thing that hasn’t changed and won’t change: JTA is paying attention — and keeping you informed about the lives of our brothers and sisters in Europe.
We are on the ground with a full-time reporter and a network of correspondents.
To continue and even expand our reporting efforts, we need your help.
Your financial support is critical to our efforts. Please make a tax-deductible gift today. Join our community of supporters who believes that keeping everyone informed and connected helps Jewish communities throughout the world remain safe and strong.
May the Hanukkah lights bring much warmth and joy to your home.
Sincerely,
Ami Eden,
CEO and executive editor
newsdesk@jta.org
P.S. A generous donor will match all new and increased gifts to JTA. Thank you in advance for your support. Should you wish, mail your check to JTA, 24 W. 30th St., 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001.
If you have already made you year-end gift, you have my heartfelt thanks.
