Litvak Affairs
How to Honor Gaon of Vilna in Style?
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Humor (Of Sorts), Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Jewish cemetery at Piramont (Snipiskes, Old Vilna Jewish cemetery, Old Vilnius Jeishcemetery
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Virus-Shmirus: Vilnius Yiddish Class Celebrates 20th Session (Safely via Skype)
YIDDISH STUDIES | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | JULIUS NORWILLA
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Julius Norwilla (standing end of table) with his class of Elementary/Intermediate Yiddish at Vilnius’s Jewish Cultural and Information Center (JCIC) in the Old Town, under auspices of the Vilnius Jewish Community in March 2020. On 24 March, with a pandemic upending life in the Lithuanian capital (as everywhere), the students and teacher decided to continue online via skype and have not missed a week. Standing at left is Rima Kazlauskaite, administrator at JCIC.
Posted in Events, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Arkady Kurliandchik, Elementary Yiddish, JCIC (Vilnius), Jewish Cutlural & Information Center (Vilnius), Julius Norwilla (Norvila), Regina Kopilevich, Vilnius Jewish community, Yiddish class in Vilnius, Yiddish in Vilnius
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Do the Bones of Old Vilna Jewry Still Lie at Piramónt Cemetery?
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | HUMAN RIGHTS | DOCUMENTS
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VILNIUS—A recent social media campaign has been spreading the message that there are no longer human remains at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt, in today’s Šnipiškės section of modern Vilnius, the capital of democratic EU and NATO member Lithuania. Of course within the Jewish faith the sanctity of Jewish cemeteries remains in situ despite earth disruptions. “There is no such thing as a former Jewish cemetery,” Lithuania’s last chief rabbi, Chaim Burshtein, pointed out, before being fired in 2015 for expressing his opposition to “the convention center in the cemetery.”
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged Arieh Klein, Jewish cemetery at Piramont (Snipiskes, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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A “Lurid Display” (& Video) of Mock Euro Notes at Vilnius’s Old Jewish Cemetery
UPDATES TO 4 MAY ENCLOSED IN [ ]
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—According to a report [full translation here] and photo spread in today’s Lrytas.lt (rapidly picked up on other major portals), a multitude of chairs, each with a mock 1000 euro banknote taped on, were on display today on the still unbuilt part of the old Vilna Jewish Cemetery, directly on top of thousands of extant graves covered by concrete slabs from the Soviet era. This is reported as a demonstration coordinated by the National Tourism Business Association (NTVA), the Lithuanian Tourism Association (LTA), and the Lithuanian Hotel and Restaurant Association (LVRA). The NTVA also published a “video of the demo” on Facebook. The video carries one line of text which reads, in translation: “By this action of empty chairs, the tourism industry reminds the state about the unemployed Palace of Sports.”
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
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Simon Gurevich, Elected Head of Vilnius Jewish Community, Reaffirms Jewish Stance on Old Vilna Cemetery
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—Today’s edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung carries Judith Leister’s article (in German) on issues arising during the current official Lithuanian government celebrations of the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of the Gaon of Vilna, Elijah ben Solomon Zalman (Eylyóhu ben Shlóyme-Zálmen, 1720–1797).
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
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Is Convention Center in Old Jewish Cemetery Really Best Way to Jumpstart Post Covid-19 Economy?
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—The major news portal Delfi.lt reported this morning on the economic recovery plan for jumpstarting the Lithuanian economy in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. After reporting on the doldrums of the construction industry, the article cites at length Mantas Miseliūnas, a top specialist on the role of commercial property in the economy. No opposing views are cited. The article, which does not mention the old Vilna Jewish cemetery, the current litigation, the international petition, and the massive international protest, informs readers of an idyllic panacea to the economic downturn wrought by Covid-19:
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged Lithuanian Jewish issues, Old Vilna (Vilnius) Jewish cemetery, Piramont Snipiskes cemetery, zydu kapines (Snipiskes)
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A Vilnius Building for Danse Macabre?
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Julius Norwilla
The author is chairperson of the Vilnius Committee for Preservation of Piramont (Šnipiškės) Cemetery. A selection of his English articles is available here.
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We return to the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramont (Šnipiškės). Back on December 19, 2019, the Lithuanian State Property Bank (Turto Bankas) announced an agreement with a tiny number of non-representative self-interested Jewish organizations for the development of the Vilnius Congress Center in the old Palace of Sports building surrounded by thousands of still extant Jewish graves going back to the 15th century (remember, graves and tombstones are two different things; the Soviets stole all the stones, and they keep turning up all around town). See Defending History’s report on the Dec. 2019 events here in Vilnius.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Human Rights, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged CPJCE, CPJCE (Committee for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe), Jewish cemeteries in Europe, Julius Norvila, Julius Norwilla, Snipiskes (Piramont) cemetery, Turto Bankas, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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‘Weekly of Vilnius’ Is Again Only Vilnius Publication to Give Both Sides of Story
COLLABORATORS GLORIFIED | NOREIKA | MEDIA WATCH | CHRISTIAN-JEWISH RELATIONS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—Once again, The Weekly of Vilnius, considered by some to be this city’s most prestigious English-language news-and-analysis publication, was the only major media outlet here to “give both sides of the story” on the recent court judgment of Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court’s 1 April decision in effect proclaiming that Holocaust collaborator J. Noreika is a national hero, unblemished by his involvement in the ghettoization, pillaging and destruction of thousands of his fellow citizens who were Jewish. Various state institutions, most notoriously the far-right Genocide Research Center, continue to spend lavishly on the glorification of Holocaust collaborators. See Defending History’s report, which includes links to other media coverage in Lithuanian and English.
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court Reconfirms ‘National Hero’ Status of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
THE NOREIKA DEBATE FROM 2012 ONWARD | COLLABORATGORS GLORIFIED | DOUBLE GENOCIDE
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VILNIUS—Coronavirus or not, Vilnius’s Supreme Administrative Court yesterday issued its dismissal of the appeal against an earlier court ruling that effectively codified in Lithuanian law the conclusion that Holocaust collaborator Jonas Noreika is indeed a national hero. The Noreika saga reached the English speaking world in 2012, when Evaldas Balčiūnas’s article appeared in Defending History. Mr. Balčiūnas followed up with articles on other perpetrators glorified by the state, and was harassed by years of kangaroo prosecutions (scroll down to May 2014, further articles following). Thereafter, challenges were mounted both here and abroad to state-sponsored glorification, in a NATO/EU state, of a proven Holocaust collaborator. These have included Californian-resident wealth adviser Grant Gochin, Vilnius-resident Lithuanian-American scholar Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, who curates a website on the subject, and, most sensationally, Noreika’s own American-born grandsaughter, the Chicago-based author and educator Silvia Foti, whose 2018 article in Salon led to international media coverage and work on a feature film project.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, EU, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, State Glorification of Holocaust Collaborator J. Noreika
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Eyewitness Report: March 11th Far Right March & Rally in Central Vilnius
MARCHES SECTION | VILNIUS MARCHES | KAUNAS MARCHES | RIGA MARCHES | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS
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by Julius Norwilla
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The Totenkopf flag, with the “Lithuanian swastika” upper right, has featured each year. Swastikas were legalized by Lithuanian courts in 2010. Photo: Julius Norwilla.
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VILNIUS—It was Wednesday March 11th at around 4 PM. The procession of the “nationalists” began, as usual, in the heart of the Lithuanian capital, with authorities’ permission, at the city’s medieval Cathedral Square. It made its way up the central boulevard, Gedimino, up to Lukiškės Square, a stone’s throw from the nation’s Seimas, or parliament.
Only Defending History came out to monitor the march. . .
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Julius Norwilla, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Racism, Swastikas in Lithuania
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Revealed: The “Secret Vilna Cemetery Agreement” of Dec. 2019
DOCUMENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY |OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION
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VILNIUS—On 19 December 2019, Defending History reported on the “Day of Shame” in this city, when representatives of the discredited “CPJCE” rabbis in London, a Haifa geotechnical specialist in tow, and the head of the state-sponsored “official” Jewish community together allegedly “morally sold out” the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery to Turto Bankas, a Lithuanian government state agency for development as a convention center where people would cheer, clap, sing, dance, drink at bars and flush toilets surrounded by thousands of Jewish graves on all four sides, including some of the greatest Jewish scholars of the last five hundred years. The international opposition to the “convention center in the cemetery” has been massive. It is a human rights issue in so far as such fates do not await cemeteries of the religious or ethnic majority.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Documents, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
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On Representation and Morality: Thoughts on Recent TV Interview with Nominal “Chairperson of the Lithuanian Jewish Community”
OPINION | MEDIA WATCH | JEWISH COMMUNITY AFFAIRS | LITVAK AFFAIRS
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by Josif Parasonis (Vilnius)
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a working translation, approved by Prof. Parasonis, of his 27 Feb. 2020 article in Lithuanian that appeared on the website of LRT (Lithuanian Radio and Television network), in response to LRT’s 24 January television interview with the chairperson of the (state-sponsored) Lithuanian Jewish Community (translation of the interview; reference in the article to an earlier program is to a 2018 broadcast, online here, at 22 min. mark). Shortly after the appearance of Prof. Parasonis’s article, the democratically elected Vilnius Jewish Community (VJC) confirmed on its Facebook page that he represents the position of the VJC. A Russian version also appears on the VJC’s page. In the event of any matter arising in the text, Prof. Parasonis’s Lithuanian original alone is authoritative.
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The trailer for the 24 January 2020 show on the “Lietuvos Rytas” TV channel was quite intriguing: “Faina Kukliansky on the still resilient discrimination against Jews.” In the course of the program, speaking to its mass audience, the official chairperson of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, Faina Kukliansky, made a series of dubious statements, some of which are incompatible with moral norms, and some of which may be incompatible with the laws of our country. In my opinion, the public space continues to pretend that the program “never took place.” I have therefore found it necessary to share my thoughts with the public.
The discussion on the program was about Lithuanian Jews, their relations to Lithuanians, the guest’s career and her personal life. When it came to Lithuanian Jews, Ms. Kukliansky talked about them in the past tense, as if she were not one of them, in a dismissive manner: “They are no longer here, they were murdered, it’s not worth harassing the remaining ones. […] Perhaps we could say that there would have been many Einsteins among those who were killed.”
Posted in A Stolen Election and a Small Jewish Community's Protest, Josifas Parasonis, Lithuania, Lithuania: Textbook Case of East European Restitution (for Lost Jewish Assets) Abused to Dismantle a Vibrant Jewish Community, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Faina Kukliansky, Holocaust in Lihtuania, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Jews in Lithuania, Josif Parasonis
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‘United Lithuania’ Invites Public to Lithuanian Independence Day Event at Old Vilnius Jewish Cemetery
EVENTS | OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION
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VILNIUS—Dr. Andrius Kulikauskas, the editor of the Vieninga Lietuva (United Lithuania) website, and a contributor to Defending History for some years, has announced an event scheduled for 13:30—15:00 this Wednesday, March 11, on the 30th anniversary of Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union, at the site of Vilnius’s oldest Jewish Cemetery, on the grass between Rinktinės street and the Soviet-built Sports Palace, which desecrated the cemetery. This is part of a series of monthly gatherings at the site to grow a network of activists who foster Lithuanian and Litvak friendship.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Events, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok)
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Those Thousands of Yiddish Books in Vilnius?
OPINION | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | VILNIUS YIDDISH INSTITUTE
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VILNIUS—Reports are mounting of inquiries about thousands of Yiddish books donated between 2000 and 2018 to “Vilnius University’s Yiddish institute” being met with Orwellian responses along the lines of “they have been deposited until further donors come forward.” After the Vilnius Yiddish Institute was closed down in 2018, and the one actual Yiddish activity of its final eight years, the intensive Vilnius Yiddish summer program, abruptly discontinued, its executive director, Dr. Sarunas Liekis, a longtime member of the state’s “red-brown commission” on Nazi and Soviet crimes, made the books unavailable to students, local and visiting scholars and the wider community. According to sources, a claim is being made that they are the personal property of the heirs of the late Richard Maullin, the donor who “bought” the (some say fictitious) shares of the institute for $25,000 from Tel Aviv resident Mendy Cahan in 2005, and then, in 2010, purged the institute of Yiddish professors not willing to go along with state Holocaust revisionist PR (Maullin was honored by a Lithuanian government medal in 2015). As a result, the “Yiddish” institute was left with no Yiddish teachers for eleven months a year from 2010 onward, but continued with the widely acclaimed summer course that was established in Oxford in 1982 and moved to Vilnius in 1998.
A documented history of these events is provided by Defending History.
Posted in Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Céline Maullin (Wharton), Jewish libraries in Vilnius, Michèle Tamar Maullin, Nathalie Maullin Nathanson, Richard Maullin, Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish libraries in Vilnius
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DH Community Invites Readers to Join Monitoring Team for “Nationalist” March 11th Vilnius March
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VILNIUS—The entire Defending History community celebrates Lithuania’s independence day this coming Wednesday March 11th. Lithuania’s independence and democracy, like those of of neighboring EU/NATO states, are splendid success stories in the annuals of the region. All the more reason to be vigilant — as genuine friends of the Baltics are — against those who would try to insert Nazist values of ethnic hatred and Holocaust revisionism into the mix. We sincerely hope that the “nationalist” march for which the beautiful center of Vilnius is gifted each year will this year not glorify local Holocaust and Nazi collaborators, will not heap scorn on the nation’s minorities and will not flaunt fascist symbols.
The Defending History team has been monitoring these events since 2008
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Events, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Vilnius
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Vilnius Braces for May 7th “Jewish Cemetery Trial of Century”; Around 160 Plaintiffs Recognized by Court
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION | CPJCE (LONDON) | USCPAHA (WASHINGTON DC)
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VILNIUS—At a hearing at the District Court of Vilnius City, at Laisves Prospect 79A on Monday, the presiding judge set Thursday May 7th 2020 as the date of the trial over plans of the state-financed property bank, “Turto Bankas” to establish a national convention center in the heart of the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. The plaintiffs in the case are Jewish people whose ancestors and relatives are still buried in the old cemetery, at Piramónt (in the Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius). Of hundreds of claims submitted, sources close to the court reported that “around 160” have been accepted as legal plaintiffs for the trial, which is expected to attract expert witnesses from the United States and Israel as well as foreign media interest. There has been extensive international opposition to the convention center project, including impassioned pleas from major Lithuanian-origin rabbis internationally, most recently the doyen of Litvak rabbis, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, a nephew of Vilna’s prewar Chazon Ish. A petition by Vilnius native Ruta Bloshtein has garnered some 47,000 signatures.
Posted in Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory
Tagged "convention center in the cemetery", CPJCE (London), Lithuanian Jewish, Minority cemetery rights, Piramónt old Jewish cemetery, Snipiskes Jewish cemetery, Sporto rumai, Turto Bankas (Lithuania), USCPAHA (Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad), Vilna + Jewish, Vilnius + Jewish
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As Usual, Leaders of Far-Right March Glorifying Holocaust Perpetrators Target DH Monitors…
VILNIUS MARCHES | KAUNAS MARCHES | MARCHES SECTION | GLORIFICATION OF COLLABORATORS
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VILNIUS—Yet again, the far right organizations that choose to glorify their country’s Nazi and Holocaust collaborators, also choose to target the human rights monitors who come to document their events. Alas, the Vilnius-based human-rights organizations, like European and international Jewish organizations, again failed to monitor last week’s central-Vilnius event. The small Defending History team was the only one on hand last Sunday, February 16th, to monitor, and DH, as usual, reported on the march, after having reported on its planners’ vow to highlight three specific collaborators. Vilnius’s prestigious Old Town, from the Gates of Dawn to the foot of Castle Mount, was allocated by authorities to the marchers for their dusk-to-evening slot of the Independence Day public festivities.
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Collaborators Glorified, Human Rights, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Neo-Nazi & Fascist Marches, News & Views, Politics of Memory
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London CPJCE and US Affiliate “Admas Kodesh” Misrepresent Rabbi Kanievsky’s Ruling to their (Naive?) Supporters
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION
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VILNIUS—The controversial London-based “grave selling rabbis” of the CPJCE, alongside its American “Admas Kodesh” branch, has posted on Twitter the recent sensational letter by the doyen of Litvak rabbis, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, writing for the vaunted rabbinical court of Bnai Brak, Israel. The edict, in a rabbinic Hebrew that is perhaps not easily read by most Twitter readers, rails against the a convention center in the cemetery under “rabbinic supervision” (referring to the CPJCE’s project), and forbids the convention center project at the old Vilna Jewish cemetery of Piramónt at Shnípishok (Šnipiškės in today’s Vilnius), and demands the old Soviet ruin be left untouched, stressing that the site cannot, in its view, be used for anything but a cemetery.
The tweet, however, seeks to misinform these groups’ Twitter readers as “supporting the almost 20 year struggle” (!) of these groups. Orwell indeed. The tweet also referenced the deeply controversial role of the US taxpayer supported USCPAHA. [UPDATE of 29 Sept. 2020: The Conference of European Rabbis has explicitly disqualified the CPJCE from further involvement in Vilnius.]
Posted in "Admas Kodesh", CPJCE (London), Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), USCPAHA (US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad)
Tagged Admas Kodesh, Committee for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, CPJCE, Jewish cemeteries in Europe, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, US Commission for Preservation of America's Heritage, USCPAHA, Vilnius Jewish cemetery Piramont / Snipiskes
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Doyen of Litvak Rabbis, Chaim Kanievsky, Signs Impassioned Plea to Save Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery from Convention Center Project
OLD VILNA JEWISH CEMETERY | OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER PROJECT | INTERNATIONAL PETITION
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The doyen of Litvak rabbis internationally, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, nephew of the legendary Chazon Ish of Vilna, signing the rabbinical court’s decree forbidding a convention center at the Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery. Full text below. Photo courtesy of Chaya Fried.
VILNIUS—The doyen of Litvak rabbis internationally, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, is among the signatories on a decree issued by the leading Litvak rabbinic court in Bnei Brak, Israel, the court of Rabbi Nissim Karelitz (1926-2019), concerning plans to erect a national convention center via conversion of a derelict Soviet building that lies in the center of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery at Piramónt (in the Šnipiškės district of modern Vilnius).
Posted in Christian-Jewish Issues, Defense of Old Jewish Cemeteries and Mass Grave Sites, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion
Tagged Chazon Ish (Abraham Yeshaya Karelitz), Jewish cemetery at Piramont (Snipiskes, Old Vilnius Jewish cemetery, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky
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