the Lithuanian Jewish Community today

Yesterday we heard a talk by Dr. Simon Alpirovich, the director of the Lithuanian Jewish Community, and Simon Gurevich, the professional executive director of the Lithuanian Jewish Community. Dr. Alpirovich is a Holocaust survivor, and Simon Gurevichius is a young man in his 30's with a baby daughter, so they represented different generational perspectives on Jewish life and the development and future of Jewish life in Lithuania. Both of them spoke to us in Yiddish. Dr. Alpirovich described his experiences in Kovno and Vilnius befor the war, and his feelings about how the government has not full-throatedly acknowledged the Holocaust and espouses a false ideology of a symmetrical dual genocide of the Jews at the hands of the Germans and the Lithuanians at the hands of the Soviets, with a belief that most Jews were Communists, and therefore the culprits in the latter genocide. He talked about wanting a fair representation of history from the government, and fair compensation for the property that belonged to the Jewish community (not to individuals but to communal institutions) before the war, so that they can use that compensation to support todays Jews of Lithuania. Simon Gurevichius told us that there are officially, according to government statistics, 3200 Jews in all of Lithuania, but that he suspects the real number to be about 5000, and to include most of the people who in the polls refused to state their nationality. Most of these Jews are in Vilna, but many of them are located in Kovno and in other smaller towns and villages. He told us that the priorities of the community are to make sure that people can live dignified Jewish lives - that is to say, that they have food, clothing, social and psychological services, that antisemitism is countered and fought, and that they can exercise their Jewishness freely; to create an active Jewish identity among Lithuanian Jews who have lived for so long under regimes that wanted Jews to forget what it meant to be Jewish; to preserve heritage, which means both cemetaries and mass murder places and also Jewish culture and Yiddish language; and to become financially self-sufficient (the communioty is now supported largely by Jews abroad). He told us that they have a welfare association that helps 1300 people who are needy, may of whom are Holocaust survivors, but the number of young families who need help is rising due to the economic crisis, and that these include people in 29 cities and towns in Lithuania - the community tries to connect with every Jew in the country, however isolated they may be. They have a kindergarted with 42 Jewish students - they could enroll more but their facility is not large enough to accomodate more children. In Vilna there are 272 kids in the Jewish middle/high school, and there is simply no space for more. They could have as many as 400 students if they had more space, and they hope one day to be able to afford to build another floor onto their school. They have a summer camp for three sessions that serves 600 children, youth movements, student activities, and at their last Limmud (Jewish educational experience/conference) 1300 people came to learn in Volna from all over the Baltic regions. He said that Jews here still face prejudice, but that the largest prejudice recently (because perhaps there are so few Jews) is directed toward Arabs and Africans. He told us that he believes that under the Soviet regime nothing was possible but now, even though they have less knowledge and fewer people than they might have had right after the war, they are in a free country and rebuilding Jewish life is possible. He told us that the people in their 80's might be afraid that any minute a Jew will come back and reclaim their home and property, and that people in their 50's might belive that Jews are captialists and suspicious, but that young people, who are exposed to the internet, to a westernizing and modernizing free state, and so forth, might overcome the history of antisemitism so that Jewish life can flourish here. He says that there are not mnay iptimists in his community, but he counts himself among them and believes profoundly in the possibility for Jewish life in Lithuania, which would be a living monument to those who perished here.
It was really helpful to see what a living community of Jews in Lithuania is today, to hear these hopeful and energetic words from a young person, and to recognize that Lithuania is not only a place of gruesome and horrific death, but a place of rebirth and renewal, and a place of hope. I was impressed and inspired by the efforts of the Lithuanian Jewish Community to regrow itself, despite its tragic history and the challenges it continues to face.