Lithuanian Jewish Community

Liova Taicas Memorial Tournament Marks 15th Year

The Šiauliai District Jewish Community held the 15th iteration of the sporting tournament to commemorate Liova Taicas (1952-2009) on February 9. The annual event began back in 2010.

The commemorative games not only honor Taicas’s memory and bring teams together from Jewish communities throughout Lithuania, but have also come to promote healthy living and an active lifestyle.

The Ukmergė Jewish Community sent athletes this year for the ping-pong competition and they made an excellent showing with Feliksas Lermanas taking first place and Lina Kuzmienė a respectable third. The Šiauliai district firefighters team of Jonas Poškus, Karolis Laukutis, Andrius Orlovas and Ugnius Tarasevičius won in basketball. Josifas Buršteinas took first place in the chess competition. Teams from Kaunas and Vilnius played in various sports and French soldiers from the NATO forces patrolling Lithuanian airspace took part in the basketball competition.

2025-02-13

National Library Celebrates 100 Years of YIVO

The Martynas Mažvydas Lithuanian National Library conserves a YIVO document collection of very significant volume and content. The YIVO was established exactly a century ago in Vilnius in 1925. It is the only Vilnius Jewish institution which did not stop operating during the Holocaust and which continues to operate today. After World War II YIVO made its main headquarters at its branch in New York City. This branch took over the institute’s functions as a center for the preservation of Jewish heritage and research.

Many traces of the institute’s work survived in Vilnius: fragments of its documentation, correspondence, library collection and archives, scattered among several commemorative institutions. The National Library is conducting a study of the institute’s archives which is revealing YIVO’s origins in Vilnius and its especially fruitful period of activity in Vilnius before WWII.

The 100-year anniversary of the founding of the YIVO was noted back in 2023 in a resolution by the Lithuanian parliament as being of special significance to world culture and the National Library. Lithuanian National Library director Aušrinė Žilinskienė spoke about this at the Lithuanian embassy in Washington, D.C., on December 9, 2024. That event to mark the anniversary was organized with YIVO headquarters in New York.

The National Library is holding an event in cooperation with a large number of Lithuanian and foreign partners with a spectacular program, including the publication of books on the history of the YIVO, an international academic forum and an exhibit of textual heritage.

2025-02-122025-02-12

New US Attorney General Unveils Anti-Semitism Task Force

Newly-appointed United States attorney general Pam Bondi announced last Monday (February 3) the creation of an inter-agency task force to fight anti-Semitism using “the full force of the federal government,” according to Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, specifically aimed at protecting the rights of American Jews on college campuses.

Measures are to include arrests and the withholding of federal funds to universities which fail to protect Jewish faculty and students from harassment.

The Civil Rights Division was created in 1957 and came to prominence in protecting the rights of black students in America’s South during the Kennedy and Johnson era.

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Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 5:10 P.M. on Friday, February 7, and concludes at 6:08 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit at 4:52 P.M. and completed before sunset at 5:10 P.M.

2025-02-06

Israeli Speaker to Address LJC Sunday

Litvak Raffael Hletzer will speak at the Lithuanian Jewish Community Sunday. He was born in Lithuania but left for Israel with his family at a young age. He is currently the executive director of the renowned Kehilor Netaim Jewish educational program. His presentation will be about his roots in Lithuania, the upcoming holiday Tu b’Shvat and connections with the past and present. The event is free but registration is required by sending an email to zanas@sc.lzb.lt.

Time: 1:00 P.M., Sunday, February 9
Place: Room 306, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Vilnius

2025-02-062025-02-06

Natalja Cheifec’s Discussion Club: Secrets of Longevity of the Jewish Family

This Thursday Natalja Cheifec’s discussion club will address male and female relations in Judaism. The Talmud says a God-fearing man vindicates an immoral woman and becomes immoral himself, but when an unjust man marries a God-fearing woman, he comes God-fearing.

This discussion will also talk about the hidden strengths of the Jewish family, the circumstances surrounding quick divorce, legends about Jewish weddings, the concept of love in Judaism and miracle-births by Jewish women.

To receive zoom credentials, click here. To make a donation to #NataljosPaskaita and/or the LJC, click here.

Time: 5:30 P.M., February 6
Place: internet

2025-02-05

Trump Announces Expulsion of Palestinians, US Annexation of Gaza

Speaking at a press conference with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House Tuesday after meetings there US president Donald Trump said the only option now is to send Gazans out of the territory, and that the US would take over the territory, remove the rubble and undertake development projects employing “many people of the area.” Trump also announced the cancelation of funding to UNRWA and withdrawal from the UNHCR, and measures to combat rampant anti-Semitism.

Netanyahu called Trump “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House” and praised his efforts during his first term and in the first weeks of his second on Israel’s behalf.

Asked whether the US would send to troops to Gaza, Trump said that was an option and the US would “take over the Gaza Strip” and “we’ll own it.”

2025-02-052025-02-05

Remembering Sutzkever

Ambassadors from Germany, the USA and Israel and the Lithuanian Jewish Community marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day by attending a play about the life of Abraham Sutzkever at the Vilnius Puppet Theater, a venue which was the Vilnius ghetto theater during the Holocaust.

Abraham Sutzkever was a Yiddish poet before, during and after the Holocaust and was imprisoned in the Vilnius ghetto. He joined the underground and fought as a Jewish partisan against the German and Lithuanian Nazis. In February of 1946 he was called up as a witness at the Nuremberg trials, testifying against Franz Murer, the murderer of his mother and newborn son.

The play, “Witness,” was written by Sutzkever’s granddaughter Hadas Kalderon. Israeli actor and stand-up comic Michael Hanegbi performed the role of Sutzkever.

Lithuanian foreign minister Kęstutis Budrys introduced the play. After the play Kalderon and Hanegbi shared reminiscences of Sutzkever and their thoughts and feelings about the play itself.

2025-02-042025-02-04

The Trump Doctrine

by Geoff Vasil

United States president Donald Trump announced across-the-board tariffs against Mexico, China and Canada over the weekend, exempting oil and natural gas imports from Mexico and Canada, in what the Wall Street Journal trumpeted with the headline “The Dumbest Trade War Ever.”

Initially citing illegal migration and fentanyl smuggling, Trump allegedly told Alberta premier Danielle Smith at his winter White House Mar-a-Lago it was really about percentages of national GDP devoted to NATO defense spending.

The announcement of sweeping tariffs follows a whirlwind two weeks of executive order, presidential decrees and social media statements by Trump completely overturning president Biden’s policies and seemingly an American return to the letter of the law in president Monroe’s doctrine.

President Hames Monroe claimed the US right to defend the entire American hemisphere, North and South America, against European colonization. The doctrine echoes down the corridors of history to the spheres of influence of the period between the two world wars and the standoff between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War.

2025-02-032025-02-03

Condolences

Elizabeth Lichtenshein has passed away. She was born in 1949. She was a remarkable teacher, who worked for many years as the head teacher of the Sholem Aleichem school in Vilnius, and will be remembered as a wonderful wife, mother and grandmother. Our deepest condolences to her family, friends and students.

2025-02-03

Sabbath Times

The Sabbath begins at 4:55 P.M. on Friday, January 31, and concludes at 5:55 P.M. on Saturday in the Vilnius region. Sabbath candles should be lit starting at 4:37 P.M. and completed before sunset at 4:55 P.M. Different countries celebrate Lunar or Chinese New Year from before to several days after the weekend, and the United States and Canada celebrate Groundhog Day on February 2, which coincides with the Christian holy day Candlemas.

2025-01-30

Panevėžys Marks Auschwitz Anniversary: No Statute of Limitations on Holocaust, nor Memory

The Panevėžys Jewish Community marked the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, the date UNESCO proclaimed the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust back in 2005, with ceremonies and educational outreach.

Students from local schools attended a quiz on the Holocaust at the Panevėžys Jewish Community. Community members and chairman Gennady Kofman also met with reporter Jogintė Četkauskienė to talk about Jewish life in the city and country during WWII.

“Today it is our duty to do all we can to ensure this tragedy never happens again. That means encouraging tolerance, there is enough air for everyone on our beautiful planet. It also means courageously fighting against anti-Semitism, which is the most urgent problem in the world today,” Panevėžys Jewish Community chairman Gennady Kofman told the reporter.

He also touched upon statements made by Lithuanian MP Remigijus Žemaitaitis during the interview.

“This politician’s apathy towards the tragedy of the Jewish people and his anti-tolerance are incomprehensible. How is it possible not to think about normal, friendly relations between the different ethnic communities in Lithuania?” Kofman asked the reporter.

2025-01-30

Those We Have Lost

Stories of civilians and soldiers killed since Hamas’s onslaught on Israel on October 7, 2023:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/those-we-have-lost/

2025-01-302025-01-30

Synagogue Bombing Averted in Sydney

Mark Morri, crime editor for Ausralia’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, reported January 29 a plot uncovered by New South Wales Police over a week ago involving a large amount of explosives placed inside a caravan, or van, to be used to bomb a synagogue, presumably in Sydney where the discovery was made.

According to Sky News Australia, the NSW Police, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian ASIO intelligence agency are investigating and several arrests have been made. Morri told Sky News Australia police believe they have arrested low-level operatives in the plot but not the ring leaders. Police also found a list of addresses of Jewish targets including at least one synagogue in the same van with the explosives, according to Sky News Australia and the Daily Telegraph.

2025-01-292025-02-05

NAALE Offers Students Chance to Study in Israel

Younger Community members exclusively again have the opportunity to meet with a representative of the NAALE Elite Academy at the Lithuanian Jewish Community this Sunday.

NAALE is a unique program providing Jewish adolescents the opportunity to receive a scholarship and to study from 3 to 4 years at an institution of higher learning in Israel.

The program was established in 1992 by the Society for Advancement of Education in partnership with The Ministry of Education and the Jewish Agency, as a response to the pressing need for quality education for Jewish youth after the dissolution of the former Soviet Union had left the educational system there in disarray. Initially intended for those repatriating to Israel, it came to include talented Jewish teenagers from around the world, providing them the best high school education and a priceless tool to achieve their future goals. NAALE Elite Academy also helps reestablish firm ties with Jewish roots and friendships which last a lifetime.

Different Israeli schools have NAALE programs which have their own individual features tailored to different styles, interests and religious and secular views.

Project leader of the NAALE directorate Igal Brantman will visit the Lithuanian Jewish Community this week to answer all your questions.

You must register to attend the event by sending an email to viljamas@lzb.lt.

Time: 11:00 A.M., Sunday, February 2
Place: Lithuanian Jewish Community, Pylimo street no. 4, Vilnius

2025-01-29

Conservative MP Openly Wonders What Israeli Ambassador Must Think of Coalition Government

Lithuanian Conservative/Union of Christian Democrats MP Žygimantas Pavilionis attended a special concert to mark the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust held in Vilnius Monday night also attended by Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda and the ambassadors from the Netherlands and Israel. The president and the two ambassadors delivered speeches about the meaning of “Never again!” and the Israeli ambassador told the story of her family which included two survivors of Auschwitz, the date of the liberation of which back in 1945 was chosen for commemoration by UNESCO back in 2005. The concert was called Music for Future Generations: Concert for the International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust and featured performances by Rafailas Karpis and others.

After the concert, MP Žygimantas Pavilionis posted to his facebook page:

2025-01-28

WJC President Lauder Warns Anti-Semitism that Led to Holocaust Still Threatens Global Stability

OSWIECIM, Poland–The virulent anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust is still rampant around the globe today, World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder said against the backdrop of Monday’s solemn commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In a fundamental way, he added, a common thread links what happened at Auschwitz to the recent manifestations of Jew-hatred, including the October 7, 2023, terror attacks on Israel: the age-old hatred of Jews. Anti-Semitism “had its willing supporters then, and it has them now,” Lauder, who also serves as chair of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation and who has dedicated decades to preserving the site, said. “It was fed by the indifference of people who thought they were not affected because they were not Jewish.”

Lauder also stressed that anti-Semitic acts undermine the central tenets of civil society. “These attacks are not just targeting Jews,” he said. “They are an attack on Judeo-Christian values, which are the bedrock of Western civilization.”

He delivered his remarks alongside four Auschwitz survivors and Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum.

Full text and video here.

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