Yiddish in Lithuania
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18.1.2012
Joseph Melamed on “The Yiddish Voice”
Joseph Melamed will be a guest on “The Yiddish Voice” (WUNR 1600-AM,
Boston) this Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012, at 7:30 PM, talking particularly
about his experience as a partisan fighter during World War II, and also
about the current controversial relations between the former Jewish
partisan fighters and the present-day Lithuanian government, which has
accused several former Jewish partisans of war crimes, and even accused
Melamed himself of slander against Lithuanians. For further information
about that, see the article in the Ha’Aretz newspaper: “Expelling the
Ambassador” (Nov. 7, 2011, by Yossi Melman,
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/expelling-the-ambassador-1.382986).
23.10.2011
Lithuania declared this year as one of remembrance for the country’s holocaust victims. But that doesn’t include focusing on the brutality the people endured under the Nazis. As RT’s Paula Slier reports, it’s trying to sue the survivors instead.
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25.12.2010
Jewish Lithuania program 2011
Litvak Studies Institute (LSI) and Summer Literary Seminars (SLS: http://www.facebook.com/l/f18a52BKpMY8DKXSVlSJ-ljM14w;www.sumlitsem.org) announce their joint 2011 Jewish Lithuania program in Vilnius. It will take place July 31-August 13. Core faculty includes: Regina Kopilevich, Vytautas Toleikis, Efraim Zuroff, and a number of other distinguished individuals (TBA). The program will be held in parallel with the SLS-Lithuania program, and will share with SLS such eminent writers-in-residence as Ed Hirsch, Robin Hemley, Joseph Kertes, and Rebecca Seiferle.
Details can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/l/f18a5bfHRbnsZuD6O6mCDzGWPlQ;www.sumlitsem.org/lithuania/lsi.html
Application from here: http://www.facebook.com/l/f18a5N2KMhexU_TkYR9BSKFwp7Q;www.sumlitsem.org/lithuania/litvak/application.html.
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24.8.2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/82764856@N00/217892703/lightbox/
1.8.2010
5. august · 18:30 – 20:00
Jewish Community of Lithuania, Pylimo 4, Vilnius
LSI Vilnius is proud to host
Dr. Samuels, who is Director for International Relations
at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Paris.
The topic this Thursday:
‘POST-DURBAN ANTISEMITISM ― THE EFFECTS OF IDENTITY THEFT’.
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The Litvak Studies Institute (LSI) is an interdisciplinary academic and arts center devoted to the language, literature, history, culture and future of Lithuanian Jewry.
Based within the Jewish community in Vilnius, the international non-profit institute works to support, strengthen and extend the vitality of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, as well as its future and contemporary life. This uniquely vibrant community thrived for over six centuries before being nearly annihilated during the Holocaust—it remains fragile in the present day.
Today, the LSI serves as a resonant local and international voice for contemporary Lithuanian Jewish issues, and provides unique resources about Litvak culture and the global diaspora of Jews of Lithuanian descent.
An educational and creative epicenter for Litvak Studies, the LSI offers a spectrum of projects, initiatives, and partnerships, including the annual publications, public affairs advocacy, Lithuanian Yiddish programs, heritage tours, Holocaust survivor advocacy, and much more.
The Institute will also work to counter the reemergence of anti-Semitic trends in the region (including Holocaust revisionism and “Double Genocide”), and will be a stalwart and loyal advocate for the surviving Litvak communities in the region and the world.
DIRECTOR: Dovid Katz
FOUNDING DIRECTOR: Mikhail Iossel
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Quintan Ana Wikswo
ADMINISTRATOR: Charissa Brammer
LISTEN TO:
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1.7.2010
Charissa Brammer is an American student
who studied at Vilnius University for 2009-10 academic year.
She also has her own blog.
Charrisa Brammer:
“A few days before I left Lithuania on holidays to my home, I had the opportunity to participate in the weekly Yiddish Reading Circle at the Jewish Community Center located at Pylimo 4. It is an open event, with some of the last remaining native Lithuanian Yiddish speakers, students, and people like myself who are there to hear the music of the language even when we don’t understand it at all. There were maybe fifteen people there, ranging in age from the early twenties to eighties and above. The beginning of the meeting was noisy, as people greeted each other in whatever language they felt comfortable speaking.
Once the meeting was started, the primary language spoken is Yiddish, whatever the discussion turns to. Texts are handed out, and people take turns reading from them, jumping in to correct each other’s pronunciation or to discuss the finer points of this or that dialect in Yiddish. It gets really interesting when there is a debate about the meaning of a word or a description. It starts with a mumbling, maybe the person next to me explains it to his neighbor in Russian, or the woman serving tea is called in to decide what the word would mean in Lithuanian. The discussion often gets heated, with people explaining the idea in English, Lithuanian, Russian, and Yiddish, all at the same time. Sitting in the corner of the room, trying to make myself small, I can get a word here or there; ponimaesh? Someone asks, and I laugh to myself, because that might be the only word I do understand, surrounded by a cacophony of language.” Read more!
Vilnius Jewish Community Center.
The Vilnius Yiddish Institute
http://www.judaicvilnius.com/en
25 July ~W 20 August 2010
at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute <http://www.judaicvilnius.com/en> at
Vilnius University <http://www.vu.lt/en/>
The summer of 2010 marks the twelfth year of the Vilnius Summer Program in
Yiddish (= the one-month European Summer Program in Yiddish, founded by
Prof. Dovid Katz http://www.dovidkatz.net/> at Oxford in 1982 and
relocated to Vilnius in 1998). The faculty comprises Prof. Dov-Ber Kerler
<http://www.indiana.edu/%7Ealldrp/members/kerler.html> (University of
Indiana); Ms. Natalia Krynicka
<http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/krynicka-natalia> (Medem Library,
Paris); Prof. Abraham Lichtenboim http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/2a3/284>
(Director of Yivo in Buenos Aires); Prof. Anna Verschik
<http://www.jewish-languages.org/averschik.html> (Tallinn University &
University of Helsinki, Finland).
In addition, there will be a rich program of cultural activities,
historical walks, concerts, workshops, seminars, panels and the renowned
/shabes-tish/. There will be a visit to a former shtetl with its old-time
features still partly in evidence.
for more information please contact:
INDRE JOFFYTE
Coordinator of Programs
Vilnius Yiddish Institute
Vilnius University
Universiteto 7
Vilnius 01513
LITHUANIA
telephone: +3705 268-7187 fax: +3705 268-7186
email: info@judaicvilnius.com <mailto:info@judaicvilnius.com>
www.judaicvilnius.com/summer <http://www.judaicvilnius.com/summer>
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Yiddish songs in old Vilnius
Kopjik International Daily Yiddish Edition 
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