SYMBOLOGY | THE TEN-EURO “GAON COIN” | ABUSE OF JEWISH PROJECTS | THE “FAKE LITVAK” INDUSTRY | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage
When Symbol Adored by Neo-Nazis is Plonked on a “Gaon of Vilna Coin”: Selling at $1500 a Pop on Ebay
Posted in Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Ten Euro Gaon Combo Coin (and its prehistory), Yitzhak Arad
Tagged Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish coins, Lithuanian Jewish coin, Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, neo-Nazi symbols, neo-Nazis and far right in Lithuania, ten euro Lithuanian Jewish coin, ten-euro Gaon of Vilna coin
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Ad-hoc International Group Issues Protest on Lithuanian Gov’s “Vilna Gaon Coin”
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VILNIUS—An ad-hoc group of rabbis, lawyers and Jewish communal leaders, mostly from the United States, today issued a statement of protest calling the new “Vilna Gaon coin” issued by the Lithuanian government a “rare display of cynicism.” Their press release:
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Ten Euro Gaon Combo Coin (and its prehistory), When an East European Gov. Imposes a Far-Right Symbol Beloved of Neo-Nazis as 'Representative' of Nation's Annihilated Jewish Minority Culture
Tagged 10 euro coin for Gaon of Vilna, Kenneth E. Pinczower, Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, Moishe Zakheim CPA, Old Vilnius Jewish cemetery (Piramont, Prof. Bernard Fryshman, Rabbi David Niederman, Rabbi Lazar Stern, Rabbi Zev Friedman, Snipiskes
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When is a Hollowed-Out Jewish Menorah a Flowerpot for a Symbol Nowadays Brandished by Far-Right Antisemites?
OPINION
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by Dovid Katz
[UPDATE OF 27 NOV: See now the same author’s follow-up article of 22 Nov. including links to the known responses and debates up to that date. See now Ruta Bloshtein’s short essay in DH].
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Many in the local Lithuanian Jewish and the international Litvak communities have responded with some shock to the news that the Lithuanian government’s official “Year of the Gaon of Vilna and Jewish Heritage” has been launched by a handsome, shiny 10 Euro Coin that plonks a symbol beloved in recent years of neo-Nazis (and prominently used in their new projects) onto a Jewish Menorah. The symbolism strikes some as evoking the idea that the largely vanished Lithuanian Jews and their language make for one of the “cute Jewish toys” for the ultranationalist camp to exploit in its PR outreach to unwitting foreigners.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Antisemitism & Bias, Celebrations of Fascism, Christian-Jewish Issues, Collaborators Glorified, Double Games, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Ten Euro Gaon Combo Coin (and its prehistory), When an East European Gov. Imposes a Far-Right Symbol Beloved of Neo-Nazis as 'Representative' of Nation's Annihilated Jewish Minority Culture
Tagged 10 euro coin for Year of Vilna Gaon, Holocaust in Lithuania, Jewish life in Lithuania, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Lithuanian Jewish issues, Martynas Mazvydas Library + Jewish affairs, neo-Nazis in Lithuania, Professor Pinchos Fridberg, Year of Gaon and Jewish History
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Curious History of a Yiddish Professorship at Vilnius University & its “Vilnius Yiddish Institute”
LAST UPDATE
YIDDISH AND JUDAIC STUDIES MANIPULATED FOR HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM | VILNIUS YIDDISH INSTITUTE | BORNS JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY | RICHARD MAULLIN
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Its Prehistory (1990-1999), History (1999-2010) and Posthistory (2010-2018) from the Year of Lithuania’s Declaration of Independence Onward
CAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES STILL WRITE INDIVIDUALS OUT OF HISTORY IN POST-SOVIET SPACE? DO VILNIUS UNIVERSITY’S DEANS AND RECTOR APPROVE OF THE PRACTICE? CAN A PAST PROFESSOR WITH A PERFECT RECORD OVER 11 YEARS (NO COMPLAINTS, NO INCIDENTS) BE WRITTEN OUT OF THE UNIVERSITY’S HISTORY AND DEFAMED IN THE UNIVERSITY’S NAME ON ORDERS OF SOMEONE AT THE “INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE EVALUATION OF THE CRIMES OF THE NAZI AND SOVIET REGIMES IN LITHUANIA” (THE “RED-BROWN COMMISSION“)?
A “for the record” page in progress, developed in response to repeated public statements by the current director of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, a member of the state-sponsored Commission on Nazi and Soviet crimes, claiming that Defending History’s editor (a) was never a professor at the university, (b) if he was an elementary Yiddish alphabet teacher paid by some surfers in California, he got fired for not turning up to work. Further documents are being processed for inclusion in the bizarre but curiously telling chapter of the history of Yiddish Studies in the 21st century. The political manipulation (ranging from West European far-left to East European far-right) of Yiddish-less “Yiddish” is a theme in the final chapter of Yiddish and Power (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) by the Yiddishist in question, Dovid Katz.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Bloomington-Borns Program Manipulated?, Free Speech & Democracy, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Richard Maullin, Views of Mr. Ronaldas Račinskas and the State-Sponsored "International Commission" (ICECNSORL), Views of Prof. Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Céline Maullin (Wharton), Dovid Katz, Michèle Tamar Maullin, Nathalie Maullin Nathanson, Sarunas Liekis, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, Yiddish in Vilnius
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Summer Glut of Lithuanian Gov. Awards for (Alleged) “Useful Jewish Enablers” of Holocaust Revisionism
OPINION | AWARDS FOR WESTERN AND JEWISH ENABLERS | BACKGROUND TO EAST EUROPEAN HOLOCAUST REVISIONISM | WHEN FOREIGN MINISTRIES PLAY WITH HOLOCAUST HISTORY FOR POLITICAL GAIN | DOUBLE GENOCIDE | (AB)USE OF JEWISH, JUDAIC, HEBRAIC & YIDDISH STUDIES | UPS AND DOWNS OF ISRAELI POLICY | LITHUANIAN JEWISH COMMUNITY SAGA | YIVO MANIPULATED
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More Lithuanian Government Glories & Medals for Alleged “Useful Jewish Enablers” of Baltic Holocaust Revisionism
♦ To the outgoing Israeli ambassador, HE Amir Maimon, after he posed with a portrait of an alleged Nazi collaborator Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas) in support of the collaborator’s glorification. Defending History’s Evaldas Balčiūnas has reported for years on the collaborator, who is also featured on the front banner of neo-Nazi torchlit parades. The Wiesenthal Center had spoken out in good time.
♦ To the “fudged election” government-backed head of the state-supported Jewish community, eminent attorney Faina Kukliansky, after she granted “legitimacy” to the erection of a statue in Chicago to the same alleged Nazi collaborator, the first on American soil. The same monument was soundly rejected a year earlier by the democratically elected town council of New Britain, Connecticut. Head of the Jewish Agency now calling for monument’s urgent removal.
♦ To the current head of New York’s Yivo, Dr. Jonathan Brent, after a decade of intimate collusion in Holocaust obfuscation, glib betrayal of Holocaust victims and survivors and defamation of Yiddish scholars who disagree with far-right instrumentalization of this fragile language and literature and are loyal to the survivors and their families. See the plea by Vilnius’s last Vilna-born survivor, Prof. Pinchos Fridberg.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Debates on Adolfas Ramanauskas (Vanagas), Faina Kukliansky, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, History, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, ministries, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Dr. Jonathan Brent (Yivo), HE Ambassador Amir Maimon, Ms. Faina Kukliansky (Vilnius)
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“Pylimo Jewish Commissariat” Ensures Readers Won’t Ever Hear About the New York Times
HUMOR (OF SORTS) | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | OPINION | MEDIA WATCH
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by Motke Chabad
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Our national Ministry for Jewish Control’s website editors were recently faced with a daunting quagmire. An article in the New York Times (one written, to make matters worse, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist), had featured, right on top, a large beautiful photo of a handsome young Lithuanian Jewish man, Simon Gurevich, who was elected head of the Vilnius Jewish Community by an overwhelming majority, one year ago. Even worse, he is of pure Litvak heritage going back seven hundred years on all sides of his family. Shockingly, the article quoted him as saying that the government might find a better place for its new national convention center than on top of the old Vilna Jewish cemetery. (Obviously he was misled by those 42,500 people who signed some petition or other. By the way, a few years ago I helped the Commissariat in its search at the time for a suitable new rabbi with that question in mind.)
Who’s afraid of Simon Gurevich and The New York Times?
Naturally, all those local Jews who voted for Mr. Gurevich are Russians who claim to be Jewish, as the Commissariat demonstrated brilliantly last May beyond any shadow of a doubt. The challenge became to ensure that readers from the lands of the capitalist leaches, those who speak English, never find out about this article. Easy enough, who will ever hear about a New York Times article about our distant country? Mum’s the word.
Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Humor (Of Sorts), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, Motke Chabad, News & Views, Opinion, Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius)
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Новая «литвакская» почтовая марка стала источником беспокойства для литовских евреев, жертв Холокоста и любителей идиша
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Довид Кац
Перевод: Юлия Рец
Исходный текст на английском языке здесь
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Не нужно быть великим теоретиком, чтобы заметить разительный контраст между двумя главными «продуктами» последней недели сентября, на которую приходится ежегодная поминальная активность Литвы по чествованию убитых в годы Холокоста литовских евреев – особенно в легендарной столице Литвы, в Вильнюсе. Под «продуктом» мы понимаем культурные события, имевшие вещественное воплощение, артефакты, которые надолго переживут недельное позерство, речи и встречи блестящих государственных чиновников и национальных лидеров.
Posted in Dovid Katz, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, In Russian, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs
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New “Litvak” Postage Stamp is Disturbing for Lithuanian Jews, Holocaust Survivors, and Yiddish Lovers
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | IDENTITY THEFT OF LITVAK HERITAGE | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | SYMBOLOGY
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by Dovid Katz
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One does not have to be a theoretical champion of Free Enterprise vs. Government Intervention to take stock of this week’s incredible contrast between the two major products of this last week in September, the annual week of intensive Jewish commemoration activity in Lithuania, and particularly, in its fabled capital, Vilnius. By “products” we mean things of substantive physicality that will outlive by far the week’s posturing, speeches, and meetings with glittering public officials and national leaders.
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Israel, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Ten Euro Gaon Combo Coin (and its prehistory), When an East European Gov. Imposes a Far-Right Symbol Beloved of Neo-Nazis as 'Representative' of Nation's Annihilated Jewish Minority Culture, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Lithuanian-Jewish affairs, Litvak symbols
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Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky: Not Afraid to Blog on Community Leaders’ Injustices
CHABAD IN VILNIUS | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | GOOD WILL FOUNDATION
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VILNIUS—After a number of readers reported technical difficulties in accessing the publicly posted and widely read blog of Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, in the interests of preserving the history of the Lithuanian Jewish community these are here offered in chronological order with separate links for each (the original is also available in internet libraries). Rabbi Krinsky’s respectful call for the resignations of leaders of the Good Will Foundation is perhaps the best known, covering the wider issue of integrity of restitution payments far beyond Chabad issues alone. For highly divergent views on the events the rabbi covers in these blog posts, see the Defending History section tracking Rabbi Krinsky’s recent history in Vilnius, and the official website of the state-sponsored Jewish Community of Lithuania (e.g. here; here).
Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Andrew Baker (AJC), Chabad in Lithuania, Faina Kukliansky, Jewish community in Lithuania, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, rabbis in Lithuania, rabbis in Vilnius, Vilnius Chabad, Vilnius Jewish religious community
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Neo-Nazis Pick Up Hate Materials from… (Hijacked?) Official “Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community” Website
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | DEMOCRACY | GOOD WILL FOUNDATION | HUMAN RIGHTS
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VILNIUS—Lithuania’s top neo-Nazi blogger “Zeppelinus” has republished with some noticeable relish, in a post dated 27 May 2017, parts of the 19 May official “Lithuanian Jewish Community website” attack (as PDF) on this journal’s editor, Dovid Katz. The attack was, some would say shamefully, signed “LJC staff” though sources rapidly revealed its prime author (see our rapid response on the day). It is not the first time that the antisemitic far-right has found its material on the website of the official Jewish Community under its current leadership (that is under legal challenge after the recent allegedly rigged election), at a time when the website is, disturbingly, allegedly under control of elements very far from the interests of Lithuania’s Jews. Last autumn’s website attacks on Rabbi Sholom-Ber Krinsky were picked up and elaborated by another key antisemitic blogger who went so far as to dig up the 1790s antisemitic attacks on a prime founder of Lithuanian Hasidism.
You know something is wrong when the neo-Nazis are finding their material on the “website of an official Jewish community”. It’s a website funded in fact by the state via restitution funds deriving from the communal religious properties of the annihilated Jewish communities of Lithuania, administered by a (this one’s for you, George Orwell) “Good Will Foundation”.
Then there was the most recent fiasco, a comparison of the democratic electoral congress of the Vilnius Jewish Community on 24 May to Russia’s “Zapad 2017” military exercises, and the charge that the assembled 300 or so Vilnius Jews were “mainly Russian speakers calling themselves Jews, with only a minority of people with Litvak blood” (see our report which led to JTA’s coverage, and the essays by Professor Pinchos Fridberg and by Leonas Kaplanas). This was a proverbial gift of the gods to the local antisemitic establishment here that revels in delegitimizing the country’s living Jews while embracing a de-Judaized ersatz “Litvak heritage” for PR, with some help from a tiny elite of privileged “court Jews” who themselves at times, it seems, become conduits for antisemitic invective against the local Jewish community. Prof. Fridberg has pointed out that a subsequent vague and unclear “apology” posted failed to disclose the author(s) of the offending text, and never even appeared in the Russian-language section of the website. Is the author of the offending text still employed by the official “Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community”? Why is his or her identity a secret?
Posted in Antisemitism & Bias, Herbert Block and Issues of Lithuanian Jewish Cemetery Preservation, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevičius)
Tagged Andrew Baker, Aryeh Bucheister, Faina Kukliansky, Geoff Vasil, Herbert Block, Lithuanian Jewish Community, Michael Hilsenrath, Nachliel Dison, Reuven Dessler, Ruta Vanagaite, Simon Gurevich (Simonas Gurevicius), Zeppelinus
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Dr. Jerrold A. Zoloto’s Open Letter to Ms. Kukliansky
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | DEMOCRACY | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Jerrold A. Zoloto, PhD
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The following Open Letter appeared today on Dr. Zoloto’s public Facebook page and is reposted in Defending History with the author’s permission.
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We have watched in horror the events leading up to and concluding with your “election” as the leader of the Lithuanian Jewish community. Having grown up in the world’s greatest democracy, it appalls me to see how you have ruthlessly and illegally managed to maintain your power base.
I am a proud Litvak, but you would not consider me a Litvak because I do not fit your definition of a Litvak. My mother was a Litvak and my father was a Jew born in Zhitomir. I grew up with my grandmother who was born in Kaunas. My grandfather was also from Kaunas, though he had died before I was born. Yiddish and Russian were spoken in my home as I grew up. You have disenfranchised Litvaks whose native language was not Lithuanian or whose parents were not both Litvaks or who was not born and raised in Lithuania. Your rhetoric on this subject is dangerously close to that of the Nazis who tried to destroy us. Within that concept of yours, you remind me of a Kapo who will do anything to her own people to ensure her own survival.
Posted in "Good Will Foundation" (Jewish Restitution in Lithuania), Free Speech & Democracy, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion
Tagged Elections of Lithuanian Jewish Community, Faina Kukliansky, Jerrold Zoloto, Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community, Litvak projects, LJC (Lithuania), Who is a Litvak
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The Revised “Nationalist Menorah”: New Low in Litvak Identity Theft?
OPINION | LITVAK IDENTITY THEFT | LITVAK AFFAIRS | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Dovid Katz
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A“designer menorah” proposed as an official “new Litvak logo” featuring the candelabrum’s center replaced by a Lithuanian national symbol that is perfectly legitimate but has in recent years frequently been adopted by neo-Nazi and far-right nationalist groups? One that is also at the center of the logo of the far-right organization that sponsored a demonstration defaming 95 year old Holocaust survivor (and anti-Nazi partisan hero) Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky just a few months ago? One over which women’s rights campaigners have been prosecuted in recent years (at the whim of far-right groups) for “desecrating”? One which a far right political candidate has used on his poster along with swastikas?
The official Lithuanian Jewish Community website, lavishly financed in three languages by the restitution-funded “Good Will Foundation” has this week featured on its English and Lithuanian pages the design, under the headline A New Litvak Logo. The accompanying unsigned editorial purporting to represent the “Jewish community” boasts with some potentially obsequious glee that the Justice Ministry has graciously given the community “permission” to use the symbol in its “Jewish” logo, going on to announce for the benefit of readers that incorporating the symbol “into a Litvak logo makes perfect sense” and indeed, to warn any would-be copycats that this dazzling invention is being “patented”. There is no mention anywhere about any local Jewish people (in other words the members of the community in whose name various pronouncements are being made) being surveyed, questioned or consulted.
Lithuanian Jewry may be small and fragile but it is vibrant as ever. The first published protest came within minutes of its publication in the “Motke Chabad” blog on the website of the Vilnius Russian-language publication Obzor [update: following this article, a report appeared in Izrus.il].
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Foreign Ministries: Holocaust Politics Abuse?, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Ten Euro Gaon Combo Coin (and its prehistory), When an East European Gov. Imposes a Far-Right Symbol Beloved of Neo-Nazis as 'Representative' of Nation's Annihilated Jewish Minority Culture
Tagged Lithuanian Jewish Community, Lithuanian Jewish community logo, Lithuanian Jewish culture, Lithuanian-Jewish relations, Litvak logo, Litvak symbols
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Divide and Conquer?
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Iam very concerned about the situation for the last several years at our Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC). More specifically, about the LJC’s chairperson, whose policies have brought about instability and disunity in the Jewish community. It is a sad paradox, that a non-religious person is responsible for the most acutely religious questions in our community. It is even more unacceptable that a secular person, drawn to mundane and material things, would deign to push around the rabbis in town as if they are pawns on the chess table. Such behavior is totally opposite to Jewish religious standards. Yet for external consumption it is called “a renaissance of religious Judaism.”
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein
Tagged Faina Kukliansky, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Jewish religious life in Vilnius, Lithuanian Jewry, Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Ruta Bloshtein
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Skaldymas ir valdymas
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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Ruta Bloshtein
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Noriu išreikšti susirūpinimą dėl padėties, kuri jau keletą metų klostosi Lietuvos žydų bendruomenėje. O būtent, dėl LŽB pirmininkės veiksmų, keliančių pavojų Lietuvos žydų gyvenimo vienovei ir darnai. Paradoksas ir liūdna ironija tame, kad žydų religinius klausimus sprendžia nereliginga moteris. Ir dar labiau nepriimtina, kad pasaulietė, siekdama savanaudiškų žemiškų tikslų, stumdo rabinus kaip šachmatų figūras. Tokia elgsena prieštarauja religinėms tradicijoms. Ir tai vadinama „judaizmo atgimimu“?
Posted in Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Ruta (Reyzke) Bloshtein
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Barring a Jew from Prayer Services is a Human Rights Issue
OPINION | VILNIUS JEWISH LIFE | LITVAK AFFAIRS | HUMAN RIGHTS
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by Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—Rabbi Sholom Ber Krinsky, Vilnius’s Chabad rabbi, has served Jewish people here and the city’s diverse cultural mosaic for some twenty-two years. And sure, he has had his share of issues, run-ins and errors over the decades, just like everyone else in town. His numerous packed Jewish holiday celebrations have become part and parcel of the city’s remarkable twenty-first century Jewish footprint, most famously on Chanukah. But yet again, he was denied entry to the Jewish community building for daily prayer services this morning by the burly security guards at the official Jewish Community building, who seemed highly adept at avoiding frontal photography. Services were abruptly moved there on Friday evening because of a mysterious “plumbing problem” (heating, in some versions) at the city’s Choral Synagogue. Then, on Friday evening 28 October, police were called to evict from the makeshift prayer address Rabbi Krinsky and his children, pupils and co-worshippers (reports by R. Bloshtein, Z. Olickij, and J. Piliansky). A sad date in the modern history of Jewish Vilnius.
Posted in Chabad in Vilnius, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, Opinion, Rákishok (Rokiškis)
Tagged Chabad in Vilnius, Choral Synagogue in Vilnius, Vilnius rabbis
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Yiddish Loses Last Global Position as Symbolic “First Jewish Language” in Vilnius
OPINION | COMMEMORATION OF DESTROYED COMMUNITIES | YIDDISH AFFAIRS | LITVAK AFFAIRS | IDENTITY-THEFT LITVAK INDUSTRY
by Dovid Katz
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VILNIUS—For close to three decades, Vilnius has been the only city in the world with municipally sponsored public plaques and signs that regularly include Yiddish. Symbologically for a small, weak, stateless, threatened and “threat-to-nobody” language in this part of the world, it was an equally important statement of respect for the language, literature and culture of the murdered Jewish people of the city that Yiddish sometimes came first, “on top,” and always so when it was a question between Yiddish and modern Israeli Hebrew.
For the first time in thirty years, Yiddish has been denied primacy of place among the Jewish languages of the city. The new sign starts with an Israeli Hebrew version used by nobody in pre-Holocaust Vilna.
Posted in Commemorations for Destroyed Communities, Dovid Katz, Events, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Israel, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, Symbology, Yiddish Affairs
Tagged Amir Maimon, Emanuelis Zingeris, Faina Kukliansky, Hebrew-Yiddish conflict, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust remembrance in Vilnius, Jewish Community of Lithuania, Vilnius Jewish street names, Vilnius Yiddish street signs, Yiddish in Lithuania, Yiddish in Vilnius, Yiddish street names, Yidishe gas in Vilnius, Zydu gatve in Vilnius
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NY Professor Exposes Rabbis — and the US Federal Agency — that Enable Lithuanian Gov’s Sham New “Convention Center in the Old Jewish Cemetery”
PAPER TRAIL | REGISTRY OF OPPOSITION TO CONVENTION CENTER | DH SECTION
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NEW YORK CITY—Dr. Bernard Fryshman, physics professor at the New York Institute of Technology here, today published a new article concerning the imminent danger to thousands of Jewish graves in Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery upon which a huge $25,000,000 convention center, structured to yield hundreds of millions for property developers is about to be erected, where revelers will clap, sing and use toilets surrounded by the graves of Vilna Jewry paid for, on the understanding of possession in perpetuity, by untold thousands of families between the late fifteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Protestant and Catholic ethicists have noted that such would never be the disrespect shown a cemetery full of Christian (or majority ethnicity) scholars in a great capital city of Europe. Last summer, Lithuania’s chief rabbi was rapidly fired by the Jewish community’s lay-leader-cum-private-attorney, after he spoke against the convention center project. His replacement has yet to speak out for the record; in the interim the search for a new chief rabbi was the subject of latter day Vilna folklore).
Posted in Cemeteries and Mass Graves, Human Rights, Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Media Watch, News & Views, United States, US Commission for Preservation of the American Heritage Abroad, US State Dept Manipulated?
Tagged Commission for the Preservatin of American Heritage Abroad, Committee for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe, CPJCE, Jewish Vilnius, Lithiuania, Piramont in Vilnius, Shnipiskes Jewish cemetery, Vilnius, Vilnius Jewish cemetery
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First Test of Torah Integrity for New Vilnius Rabbi Samson Daniel Izakson?
PIRAMÓNT | PAPER TRAIL | OPPOSITION | CEMETERIES
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VILNIUS—When Lithuania’s official chief rabbi of eleven years’ standing, Rabbi Chaim Burshtein, was dismissed last summer after disagreeing with the government’s plan to erect a national convention center in the heart of Vilna’s old Jewish cemetery, the event caught the attention of both local and international media. It was quietly hoped, both in Vilnius and abroad, that the eventual replacement would be loyal to sacred Jewish causes (see Rabbi Burshtein’s final statement of his tenure in Vilnius), someone who would not dare, for the considerations of a job, betray the letter and spirit of Jewish law, or the living and the deceased actual Jews of Vilna over the centuries. See Prof. Shnayer Leiman’s essay on the subject, our editor’s summary, a satiric Motke Chabad take, and Dr. Bernard Fryshman’s reminder that “Even now, the cemetery contains the bodies of the Chayey Odom and the Be’eyr ha-Goylo among many others.” A second essay by Professor Leiman paves the way for inspiring reconstruction of many of the major historic structures of Lithuania’s foremost Jewish cemetery.
by Vulovak (Vilnius) for DefendingHistory.com
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, Cemeteries and Mass Graves, CPJCE (London), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Lithuania's Jewish Community Issues, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Old Vilna Jewish Cemetery at Piramónt (in Šnipiškės / Shnípishok), Politics of Memory, Ponár (Ponary, Paneriai)
Tagged CPJCE, Piramont (Snipiskes), Rabbi Samson Daniel Izakson, Rabbi Samson Izakson in Vilnius, Vilna Jewish cemetery
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Forward Coverage of Yivo Strife Omits Mention of Instrumentalization by Lithuanian Holocaust Revisionism Industry
YIVO MANIPULATED? | MEDIA WATCH | POLITICS OF MEMORY | DOUBLE GAMES
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NEW YORK CITY—A 9 March 2016 Forward article, by Britta Lokting, focused on Martin Peretz’s recent resignation from Yivo’s board, cited a number of current Yivo issues. It did not, however, mention the major issue of instrumentalization by the Lithuanian government’s campaign of Holocaust obfuscation, relativization and revisionism. It did reference the now-famous Vilnius-based digitization project.
In 2011, Yivo honored an antisemitic foreign minister while failing to honor the Yiddish speaking Vilna Holocaust survivors maligned by Lithuanian prosecutors, resulting in a heartfelt plea from the long-time editor of the Jewish community’s quadrilingual newspaper. Then, in 2012, it sent its director to Vilnius to help cover for the reburial with full honors of a Holocaust perpetrator, and saw its director join (and thereby give legitimacy to) the notorious “Red-Brown Commission.” A year ago, the organization was called to task by a Vilna Holocaust survivor in the Yiddish Fórverts (English translation here; unmentioned in the English Forward?). See Defending History’s section on Yivo issues in recent years.
Posted in "Jewish" Events as Cover?, "Red-Brown Commission", Dr. Rokhl (Rachel) Margolis (1921-2015), Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, Media Watch, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory, United States, Yiddish Affairs, Yivo Manipulated?
Tagged Britta Lotking, Bruce SLovin, Forverts (Yiddish newspaper), Forward (nespaper), Jonathan Brent, Martin Peretz, Y.L. Peretz, Yivo + Peretz, Yivo and Lithuania, Yivo and Vilna, Yivo Digitization Project, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
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Another Holocaust-Obfuscating PR Bash at “Vilnius Jewish Public Library”
VILNIUS JEWISH PUBLIC LIBRARY | DOUBLE GAMES | RED-BROWN COMMISSION
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VILNIUS—Yet again, the “Vilnius Jewish Public Library,” housed in exquisite city-center premises in a courtyard off the capital’s central Gedimino Boulevard, has been the base for a Holocaust-obfuscating event featuring stars of the state’s “Red-Brown Commission” who are dispatched far and wide to deny the existence of the state-sponsored “Double Genocide” campaign, to mitigate the campaign against Holocaust survivors, the efforts to glorify local collaborators, and to obscure entirely the Second Opinion expressed in the Seventy Years Declaration. Incredibly, the roster of invited speakers did not include Ms. Rūta Vanagaitė, author of Mūsiškiai, the new best-selling book on the Holocaust that has in effect revolutionized the country’s coming to terms with its Holocaust-era past. What is the “Jewish” Library afraid of?
Posted in "Red-Brown Commission", "Vilnius Jewish Public Library", Identity Theft of Litvak Heritage, Lithuania, Litvak Affairs, News & Views, Opinion, Politics of Memory
Tagged Double Genocide, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust in Lithuania, Holocaust Obfuscation, Musiskai, Prof. Saulius Suziedelis, Ruta Vanagaite, Seventy Years Declaration, Vilnius Jewish Public Library
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