Lithuanian Jewish Community

Our Deepest Condolences

Girsh Vainer, member of the Lithuanian Jewish Community’s Social Club, passed away March 29. Our deepest condolences to his family and friends.

December 6, 1946—March 29, 2016

2016-03-31

LJC and Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Checkers and Chess Club Chess Championship

The Lithuanian Jewish Community and the Rositsan and Maccabi Elite Checkers and Chess Club invite you to a chess championship open to the public at 11:00 A.M. on April 3.

At 11:00 A.M. on April 10 there will be a chess tournament dedicated to the memory of chess master Donatas Lapienis.

Both events are to take place at the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo No. 4, Vilnius.

Boris Rositsan, FIDE master, will direct both competitions.

For more information and to register, contact:

info@metbor.lt
telephone +3706 5543556

2016-03-31

Lox on Bagels: An Answer to Eggs Benedict?

A Bit about Bagels

The history of the bagel is surrounded by myth and legend but seems to begin in the 12th century. One version has it that a Church ban on commercial Jewish bakeries was responsible for its appearance. In 1264 Polish grand duke Bolesław the Pious issued his Statute of Kalisz or Charter for Jews of Grand Poland which allowed Jews to freely by, sell and touch bread in common with Christians. In response a group of Polish bishops forbade Christians from buying any food at all from Jews, as it were anathema. As Moses ben Israel Isserles put it in the 16th century” “it is preferable to live on dry bread and in peace in Poland” than to remain in better conditions in lands more dangerous for Jews. At some point Jews were allowed to work with bread which was boiled, and they created the bagel to comply with his ruling, according to this version. In 1610 the first mention appears of the word “bagel” in Yiddish in the written sources, in regulations issued by the Jewish council of Kraków, which stated that bagels were to be given as a gift to women in childbirth.

Whatever the case, the bagel was popular among Jews in Eastern Europe, and came with them to America in the 19th and 20th centuries.

2016-03-31

Lithuanian Psychologist: Three Years Ago I Believed the Double Genocide Theory

Rasa Bieliauskaitė, photo: Ugnius Babinskas

Three Years Ago I Believed the Double Genocide Theory
by Geoff Vasil

So said Rasa Bieliauskaitė, a psychologist specializing in trauma therapy, at what was, for Lithuania, a remarkable meeting of the minds recently.

The Vilnius Jewish Public Library hosted a panel discussion featuring historians and psychologists on the topic of the Holocaust and collective memory.

In their introductory statements several of the speakers, including Bieliauskaitė, mentioned Rūta Vanagaitė’s new book about the Lithuanian Holocaust, and the unexpected popularity of that book became the backdrop for much of the conversation which lasted several hours and which became a much larger discussion when distinguished members of the audience chimed in towards the end.

2016-03-30

Is Turkey Planning to Destabilize Lebanon?

by colonel (retired) Dr. Jacques Neriah
March 27, 2016

Institute for Contemporary Affairs
Founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation

Vol. 16, No. 6
March 27, 2016

Interviewed by Lenny Ben-David, Director of Publications

• The Turkish leadership saw the uprising in Syria and Egypt as an opportunity to replace regimes opposed to Turkey’s policies in the Middle East. Turkey looked at two targets: Egypt and Syria. In both countries, the Islamic opposition was headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, natural allies of Turkish president Erdogan.

• Turkey viewed developments in Syria as an opportunity to intervene and topple the Alawite regime. Turkish military intelligence was instructed to assist rebel factions opposed to the Assad regime almost from the very first days of the civil war in Syria.

• Testimony in Turkish courts alleges that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells taken from Turkish intelligence depots were carried in trucks accompanied by state officials to parts of Syria under hardline Islamist rebel control.

• Turkey may have chosen to take advantage of the already boiling situation in Lebanon between Hizbullah and its Sunni opponents and try to provoke a renewed civil war in Lebanon.

• Greek authorities intercepted a ship recently, loaded with a Turkish shipment of weapons, supposedly destined for Muslim radicals in the northern part of Lebanon.

2016-03-30

Lithuanian Prime Minister Thanks Fayerlakh Ensemble

To the Vilnius Cultural Center Jewish song and dance ensemble

Fayerlakh

Dear guardians of ethnic tradition,

There is no doubt the identity of a people resides in the depths of their folklore where a unique world of music beckons to us and symbolic meanings cavort. For many a year now the Fayerlakh ensemble in their concerts have brought lovers of folklore together and have popularized Yiddish culture wonderfully.

Inventive musicians, great singers and expressive dancers have come together nicely under the Fayerlakh flag. And so your concerts are dominated by a sense of beauty and cohesion. Your playful appearances are eagerly awaited by many admirers around the world.

You are probably the only ensemble in Europe who so creatively, cleverly and tightly present your own musical sources and roots.

I sincerely congratulate the entire Fayerlakh collective on the beautiful 45th anniversary of your establishment.

Let your music ring out widely across the nations for many centuries. Celebrate and preserve your foundational values. I wish you great success, creative talent and many happy meetings with the real lovers of folklore on all continents.

Algirdas Butkevičius
March 22, 2016
Vilnius

2016-03-29

A Letter of Thanks to the Fayerlakh Ensemble from the Lithuanian Jewish Community

Celebrating their 45th anniversary, the Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayerlakh provided a real celebration for the people of Vilnius with their performance, and a packed hall of spectators applauded, swayed to the beat and tapped their feet because the musicians enchanted them and warmed everyone’s hearts. The Lithuanian Jewish Community is grateful to and proud of the Vilnius Cultural Center Jewish song and dance ensemble Fayarlakh, whose name is Yiddish for “little flames.”

Let the creative fire of this ensemble led by Larisa Vyšniauskienė continue to burn, reminding everyone of the rich culture of the Litvaks. It is extremely important to our community that the ensemble with Yiddish songs and dances which over many years has achieved a highly professional level has preserved our dear Jewish cultural legacy. Thank you, our thanks to the ensemble and their director, to the wonderful performers, for the program The Shtetl Once Upon a Time, which is now being offered to audiences in Lithuania and abroad. The program is about the small town, or shtetl in Yiddish, where until the Holocaust Jewish people and people of other ethnicities lived together in harmony. The mood of the concert is one of happy songs, dances, music which gives rise to good emotions, nostalgic and exciting, in everyone’s hearts. We appreciate that the ensemble celebrates the Yiddish language and that Jewish works in this language are performed in concert. It fills us with gladness to see all the ensemble’s groups, from children to senior citizens, on stage. Our sincerest gratitude to all of you.

Faina Kukliansky, chairwoman
Lithuanian Jewish Community

2016-03-29

Purim at the Gesher Club

The Gesher Club of the Lithuanian Jewish Community celebrated Purim March 25 at the Natali Restaurant in Vilnius. Since carnival costumes are a usual part of Purim, all participants were required to come in costume or at least partially dressed in costumes. LJC program coordinator Žana Skudovičienė took care of those who for one or another reason were unable or did not have time to get ready for the holiday. She let them chose a mask or costume accessory provided by Fayerlakh ensemble director Larisa Vyšniauskienė for the occasion.

2016-03-29

Kaunas Jewish Community Marks 72nd Anniversary of Children’s Aktion

On March 25, 2016, members of the Kaunas Jewish Community marked the 72nd anniversary of the Children’s Aktion (mass murder operation) in the Kaunas ghetto. The operation to kill all the children living in the ghetto and the elderly unfit for use as labor resulted in the murder of about 1,700 people. Children under 12 were torn from their mothers’ arms, thrown in trucks and driven away to be murdered. Other parents came back from forced labor to find their children missing. Tobijas Jafetas has spoken about his own rescue many times before, and this year was joined by Kaunas ghetto inmate Juozas Vocelka.

2016-03-29

Old Prescriptions from the Interwar Period Recall the Kukliansky Pharmacy in Veisiejai

Danutė Selčinskaja, director of the Rescuers and Commemoration Department of the Vilna Gaon State Jewish Museum, has sent us an image of a new item worthy of display at a museum: prescriptions from the Kukliansky Pharmacy which operated in the period between the wars. This pharmacy, the only one in Veisiejai, Lithuania, operated right up until the Holocaust. The pharmacists managed to escape and were rescued by people from Sventijanskas. At the present time there is a Veisiejai Regional History Museum operating in Veisiejai. Museum director Regina Kaveckienė scanned two new items, prescriptions, which were brought to the museum by a relative of an elderly female pharmacist from the town who is no longer alive.

Danutė Selčinskaja sent the regional history museum the Vilna Gaon museum’s mobile exhibit “The Rescued Child Tells the Story…” which she created. This includes a film about the rescue of the Kukliansky family. The regional history museum shows the film to students every year. A young woman from the Kapčiamiestis School Museum who lives with her parents in Sventijanskas said everyone there had already seen the film, which is being passed around as a DVD from person to person, and it has caused a great deal of excitement there. The people understand what happened and recognize the people and places portrayed in the film.

2016-03-29

When Will Our Mayors Take Down Monuments to Holocaust Perpetrators?

Marius Lukošiūnas

More than 25 years ago I spoke on C-SPAN about the pogrom the Soviet troops had prepared after the 1991 putsch before quitting the Lithuanian Television and Radio building.

Live, I explained to Americans our path to independence and showed images and montages of our ravaged television studios. Studio guests and callers were angered by this pogrom.

Just as the show was ending, an elderly woman called and asked why the Lithuanian government was rehabilitating Holocaust perpetrators. I replied I believed that was a mistake which would be corrected. I assured her they would receive neither forgiveness nor honor in independent Lithuania.

Full story in Lithuanian here.

2016-03-29

Belgium Can’t Deal with Terror Threat, Rabbi Warns

Rabbi Menachem Hadad speaking on Israeli radio said Belgium lacks capacity for fighting terrorism while other Western European states are wrestling with their own growing jihad movements.

The well-known Brussels rabbi said: “The unexpected appearance of terrorists at the airport demonstrates Belgium is unable to deal with terror threats.” He said Belgian government institutions “do not understand security issues.” Rabbi Hadad, the head of the Shomrei Had Orthodox community in Brussels, made a number of observations and criticisms on IDF radio about the current situation and expressed real concern that Belgium lacks the ability to fight terrorism. He said the soldiers sent to guard the synagogue and the city’s Chabad community building following the murder of four Jews at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in 2014 had told him they lacked firearms and ammunition for many months while they supposedly stood guard. “It was just for show. This isn’t realistic,” he said.

Hadad leveled the criticisms after examining reports about the inactivity demonstrated by Belgian government institutions when it comes to security issues. Worse, Belgium earlier received warnings from Turkey about one of the suspected attackers in the March 22 bombings. Belgium’s ministers of the interior and justice attempted to resign Thursday but their request was turned down by the prime minister. There are also a number of odd laws and a constitutional ban on ethnic profiling which exacerbate an already poor situation, he said.

2016-03-29

Businessman with Litvak Roots Has Successful Chain of Restaurants

The first time South African Litvak Robert Brozin came to Lithuania, he was most surprised by the fact it was in color. It sounds funny, one of the creators of the large restaurant chain Nando’s says, but that his first impression of the land of all four of his grandparents because he’d only seen Lithuania in black and white photographs before. When he cam back again for the fifth time in late March, he already had a number of interests going here, both business and representing the Litvak community in South Africa.

“Most Jews in South Africa have roots in Lithuania. There is a total of about 80,000 Jews here and I think about 95 percent have Lithuanian roots. It’s an interesting fact that the Jewish community in South Africa is very tight-knit, and the majority of Jews who have remained living in South Africa marry Jews from the community. My son is also married to a Litvak girl. We still maintain many Litvak traditions in the family and even have dishes from Lithuania…”

Thank You

Thank you to Žana Skudovičienė, Julija Lipšic, Ninelė Skudovičiūtė, Monika Antanaitytė and Olga Masarskaja for the wonderful organization and preparation of the Purim celebration at the Vilnius Choral Synagogue.

S. Levin, chairman
Vilnius Jewish Religious Community

2016-03-29

Lithuanian Jewish Students Union Purim Festival

The Lithuanian Jewish Students Union held a festive Purim celebration Saturday, March 26 in Vilnius.

Purim-goers were asked to dress as their favorite movie star or film character and a contest was held to pick the winning female and male roles. Attendees dressed as the Uma Thurman character from Pulp Fiction, Audrey Hepburn and Superman received prizes donated by Lux Figura.

There was also a quiz involving some brain-teasers, but most of the night was spent in conversation, eating and drinking. Rabbi Samson Isaacson attended the event as well. It was supported by the Embassy of Israel, the Goodwill Fund and the Mirameda medical clinic.

2016-03-29

Lithuanian Conservative/Christian Democratic Party Member on Trial for Anti-Semitic Remarks

The news website sekunde.lt reports Raimundas Pankevičius, leader of the Panevėžys faction of Political Prisoners and Exiles and a member of the Lithuanian Conservatives/Christian Democratic Party, has gone on trial for anti-Semitic remarks made during a meeting of the Panevėžys city council. The right-wing politician is accused of public statements to the effect Jews shot Jews during World War II in Lithuania.

As a member of the city council, Pankevičius is alleged during deliberations on the erection of a monument to commemorate the Joint Distribution Committee’s work there in September of 2014 of having denied Nazi crimes against the Jewish people by saying Lithuanian Holocaust victims killed each other and that the Jewish police in the ghettos in Lithuania sent thousands of their fellow Jews to their deaths in a single day.

That meeting of the city council apparently adopted unanimously a decision to erect a stele to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Joint. Pankevičius, however, also said he didn’t see any evidence of the Joint’s work and suspected elements of fraud in the story. He said Jewish SS shot 5,000 Jews in southwestern Lithuania in one day during World War II.

2016-03-28

Jewish American Brother and Sister Murdered in Brussels Bombings

A brother and sister resident in New York were among those murdered in the bombings at Zaventem Airport in Brussels March 22.

Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski had only just arrived at the airport when two bombs went off at passenger check-in areas near the front entrance Tuesday killing 11 and wounding over a hundred more. The siblings were confirmed as among the dead that Friday.

“We received confirmation this morning from Belgian authorities and the Dutch embassy of the positive identification of the remains of Alexander and Sascha,” James Cain, former U.S. ambassador to Denmark and a spokesman for the family, said in a statement. “We are grateful to have closure on this tragic situation, and are thankful for the loving support, thoughts and prayers from all.”

2016-03-28

Condolences

Aron Kac, member of the LJC Social Center, died March 22. He was born on January 29, 1935. The community mourns his passing and sends their deepest condolences to his family members.

2016-03-25