NCSEJ WEEKLY TOP 10 Washington, D.C. October 19, 2018

Dedication of the Frances Aaron Hess Memorial Library at the Institute for Modern Jewish Studies in Moscow World Union for Progressive Judaism, October 18, 2018 https://wupj.org/news/2018/10/10010/hess-library-at-institute-moscow/

On October Monday October 15th, the World Union, and its partners in the Institute for Modern Jewish Studies – Russian State University, Abraham Geiger Kolleg, and Potsdam University – came together to dedicate and open the Frances Aaron Hess Memorial Library at the Institute.

Now in its third year of operations, 21 students are pursuing BA and MA degrees, with continued rabbinic certification studies, to serve as Russian-speaking Progressive Rabbis and Jewish Educators for the growing Progressive Jewish congregations across Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and more.

Below is the moving speech delivered by Dr. Alex Kagan, Rector of the Institute and Head of Global Strategic Planning for the World Union at the event, in the presence of distinguished guests including donors from the Hess family, students from the Institute, leaders from our partner institutions and Rabbi Daniel Freelander, President of the World Union.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Tonight we celebrate the dedication of the Frances Aaron Hess Memorial Library of the Institute for Modern Jewish studies in Moscow.

The Institute for Modern Jewish studies in Moscow. Who would have believed five years ago that there would be a library wholly for the Institute? Who would have believed that there would be an Institute at all?

The joint program of WUPJ, RSUH, Geiger College, and Potsdam University is:

– A four-year B.A. at the RSUH Institute for Philology and History in Moscow in a track called, “Arts and Humanities”.

– An M.A. and Rabbinic studies in Germany first completing the MA, with a thesis, in Abraham Geiger Kolleg and Potsdam University. Then going to pursue an M.A. and Rabbinic ordination from Geiger Kolleg.

– An M.A. and Ph.D. in Russia or Germany for students with high academic potential and achievements to continue studies for a PhD at RSUH or Potsdam University as an extension of their studies.

Who would have thought this was possible?

As the great Rabbi Dick Hirsch, Honorary President of the World Union, whose own library books are also kept here in the Institute’s library, taught me: if you believe in an idea, go with it all the way because you will always find partners, money and all the possible support. And so, I went with it, even ran with it.

Now, five years after launching, we have: • 21 students in the four-year study program, among the finest students in any university. We carefully searched and reviewed each one of them, selecting the most promising for our program. • Agreements of partnership and collaboration signed with Potsdam University and RSUH University, Geiger Kolleg and WUPJ • Five of our students have already been accepted to continuing studies at Geiger Kolleg • A grant has been received from the Erasmus Plus fund making it possible to start an exchange program between universities. One of our students is studying in Berlin, and a German student has come here. • We are advancing in our negotiations with Abraham Geiger Kolleg to expand the cantorial program. We have a number of talented students with beautiful voices and great talent. • This year, 2018-19 academic year, five students who began their studies in the first year of the Institute will receive their BA.

I am sure that this is only the beginning and these achievements will continue to multiply with time. Why are we doing so well? Because this is program meets the most essential need: training local Russian-speaking Reform rabbis, professional educators, and community organizers to support the entire Jewish community (not only Reform) across the FSU and the world.

We of course owe some of our success to our partners in Russia, RSUH, and in Germany, Abraham Geiger Kolleg and University of Potsdam. Additionally, without a doubt, the Institute’s success can be attributed to our dedicated staff.

But none of this have been possible without people like Frances Hess of blessed memory, who volunteered in a variety of positions at HUC-JIR, as an officer of the American Jewish Committee, and trustee of Vassar College. She chaired Temple Emanu-el Philanthropic committee, among many others and served on WUPJ NAC (now the North American Advisory Board NAAB). She endowed the Frances Aaron Hess Award at Vassar College to encourage volunteerism.

I met Frances in 2012 during one of my visits to the U.S. when I was to speak before the committee that provides assistance for the World Union’s FSU operations. She met me at the entrance of the synagogue and I felt that we had known each other for years. She asked about my family and my children and then started introducing me to all the congregation members. These are of course all the virtues of a Jewish mother and grandmother, however she was so proud of what she believed in: supporting the renewal of Jewish life in the FSU. It was so obvious and so moving.

Now, it is most symbolic that with the participation of her son, daughter in law, grandson and relatives, we are dedicating the Institute’s new library in her memory. Frances’ soul, faith and pride are captured and present in this library.

I would like to thank Frances for what she did for us, because without her support and faith, this would not have been possible.

I would also like to thank the dear Hess family for your efforts to be here, it is most appreciated and treasured, as is your continuation of France’s legacy.

We will continue our work, because we are not required to complete it, especially since so many good people believed and continue to believe in us.

Thank you very much.

Mail-Bomb Blast Leaves Russian Jewish Group Leader in Hospital in Kazan RFERL, October 15, 2018 https://www.rferl.org/a/mail-bomb-blast-leaves-russian-jewish-group-leader-in-hospital-in-kazan/29544335.html

A businessman and Jewish civic group leader in Russia's Tatarstan region has been hospitalized along with his assistant after a package they received by mail exploded in his office.

The parcel exploded in Mikhail Skoblionok's office in Kazan early on October 15, the regional branch of the Investigative Committee said.

It said Skoblionok and his female assistant were hospitalized with burns and eye injuries.

The committee said it is investigating the blast as an attempted murder.

Skoblionok is president of the Jewish Cultural Autonomy, a local nongovernmental organization he has led since 2008.

He founded and heads a company that sells oil products and is involved in construction.

Arkhangelsk Welcomes Russia’s Northernmost Synagogue By David Israel The Jewish Press, October 14, 2018 http://www.jewishpress.com/news/jewish-news/arkhangelsk-welcomes-russias-northernmost- synagogue/2018/10/14/

North Star, Russia’s northernmost synagogue, was officially inaugurated in Arkhangelsk on Thursday, TASS reported. The new synagogue is housed in a three-story building, which hosts a Jewish cultural center with a concert hall and classrooms.

Arkhangelsk is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, in the north of European Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea, and spreads along the banks of the river and the numerous islands of its delta.

As of the 2010 Census, the city’s population was 348,783, down from 356,051 recorded in the 2002 Census, and further down from 415,921 recorded in the 1989 Census.

“North Star is, first of all, a cultural center, which welcomes not only Jews – they (Jews) are few in Arkhangelsk – some 600 people only,” Chairman of the local Jewish community Anatoly Obermeister told TASS. “As for the synagogue, it is a place for praying and for reading the Torah, which will host about 40-50 people.”

Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar affixed a Mezuza to the door post at the inauguration ceremony.

“I am sure this place will host many events to enable people, including Jews, see the traditions, culture, values of our people,” Lazar told reporters. “This would promote mutual understanding […] and help local Jews learn more about the Torah, about our people’s religion and history,” Rabbi Lazar said.

“I believe it is the northernmost [synagogue] in the world, at least in Russia,” he noted.

The synagogue’s construction began in 2010, paid for by the local Jewish community, according to TASS.

Arkhangelsk Region’s Governor Igor Orlov told reporters: “In February, we opened the northernmost mosque, and today the North Star synagogue began shining in our sky. The synagogue is open, and the Jews have received their spiritual home.” Before the October Revolution, there was a wooden synagogue in downtown Arkhangelsk, and another on the Solombala Island.

Despite Rise in Aliyah from Russia, Overall Numbers Slightly Down in 2018 By Cnaan Lipshiz JTA, October 12, 2018 https://www.jta.org/2018/10/12/news-opinion/bucked-traffic-russia-aliyah-drops-slightly-2018

Jewish immigration to Israel dropped slightly in the first eight months of 2018 over the corresponding period last year, despite a 35 percent increase in traffic from Russia.

The 1% overall drop owed to a decrease in immigration from countries with major Jewish populations, including Ukraine – which saw an 8% drop to 4,094 immigrants in 2018 – and France, which dropped by 31% to 1,862 newcomers between January 1 and Sept. 1, an interim report by the Jewish Agency for Israel showed.

By contrast, aliyah from Russia leapt to 6,331 newcomers in the first trimesters of 2018 compared to 4,701 in that period in 2017.

The increase in immigration from Russia came amid a financial crisis there and in Ukraine, which in 2014 entered a territorial dispute. Many Russian Jews are feeling increasingly uncomfortable in Russia amid the erosion of democratic principles and free media there, Natan Sharansky, the former chairman of the Jewish Agency, has said.

Immigration to Israel according to its Law of Return for Jews and their relatives, or aliyah, decreased from the United States by 17%, with 2,066 US Jews making the move in the first eight months of 2018 compared to 2,483 in the corresponding period last year.

Aliyah from the United Kingdom, where many Jews are contemplating leaving in light of the prospect of the Labour Party, with its anti-Semitism problem, reaching power increased by a mere 7%, to 371 newcomers.

Overall, Israel saw the arrival of 18,965 immigrants under the Law of Return, or olim, in the first eight months of 2018 compared to 19,067 in the same period last year.

The Bosnians who Speak Medieval Spanish By Susanne Zaraysky BBC, October 18, 2018 http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181017-the-bosnians-who-speak-medieval-spanish

On our way to Sarajevo's Ashkenazi Synagogue for the Friday evening Shabbat (Sabbath) service, my friend Paula Goldman and I walked down cobblestone streets through the Baščaršija, the old Ottoman area of the city, passing mosques, shops and a madrasa (Islamic school). It was the year 2000, and the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina still bore the scars of the Balkans War. A Nato tank rolled by as we crossed the Miljacka river.

As we entered the second floor of the salmon-coloured stone building with its four onion-shaped domes, light flooded through doors set with stained glass images of the Star of David and into the synagogue. We took our seats among the congregation as cantor David Kamhi took his place in front of the ark that held the Torah (a scroll containing the Five Books of Moses). Soon, the synagogue filled with the harmonies of prayer. Paula and I looked at each other strangely when we heard ‘Adonaj es mi pastor. No mankare de nada’ (The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want) from Psalm 23 recited in what we thought was Spanish. After the service, I asked Blanka Kamhi, the cantor’s wife, why the congregation was praying in Spanish.

“That wasn’t Spanish,” she responded. “We were praying in Ladino.” Like many Bosnian Jews, Kamhi and his wife are descendants of the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain by the Edict of Expulsion in 1492. During the Spanish Inquisition, Jews who did not voluntarily convert to Catholicism were expelled from the country, killed or forcibly converted. Sultan Bayezid II of the Ottoman Empire invited the displaced Sephardic Jews to settle in the Balkans, where they were permitted to maintain their religion and customs. Many chose to move to the Ottoman Empire, while others moved to North Africa, the Netherlands and the Americas.

When the Jews left Spain, they took their language with them. Over the last 500 years, the language has maintained the structure of medieval Spanish and sounds more similar to some forms of Latin American Spanish than European Spanish. “We could not have contact with Spain and the Spanish language, and therefore we have a special language that we speak,” Kamhi said.

Today, the language is known by a number of different names: Ladino, Judeo-Spanish, Judezmo, Spanyolit, Djidió (in Bosnia and Herzegovina) and Haketia (in North Africa). And, according to Unesco, it is one of the world’s 6,000 languages that are at risk of extinction.

Before World War Two, Sarajevo’s Jewish population numbered around 12,000, and the people even printed their own newspaper in Ladino. After the , only about 2,500 Jews returned to Sarajevo, with many of them restricting their use of Ladino to the home so as not to stand out. Since the post-World War Two Jewish community in Sarajevo was so small, the Sephardic Jews had to share a synagogue – the one where Kamhi now leads services – with the Ashkenazi Jewish community, whose ancestors had relocated to Slavic countries from Germany and France following the Crusades. Because the Ashkenazi Jews primarily spoke Yiddish, the blended community relied on the Serbo-Croatian language to communicate, limiting the use of Ladino even further.

The continued use of this 500-year-old language fascinated me since I was a polyglot and spoke fluent Spanish. When I lived in Sarajevo in in the early 2000s, where I was working on post-war economic development projects, I often went to the Jewish community centre at the synagogue around lunchtime to meet the few remaining Ladino speakers and learn about their history as they socialised over cups of rakija (plum brandy) and coffee. I had to listen carefully to understand, hearing words like fazer (to do) and lavorar (to work) that sounded more like Portuguese and Italian than modern Spanish. I heard sounds like "dj" [dʒ] in the word, djente (people), “z” [z] in the word roza (rose) and “sh” [ʃ] in the word pasharo (bird) that don’t exist at all in modern European Spanish.

Before they were expelled from Spain, Sephardic Jews already used some Arabic and Hebrew words since they read Hebrew religious texts and many lived under Moorish (Arab) rule. Ladino was also heavily influenced by the different regions of Spain where Jews had lived, “This language that we speak is a mix of the dialects of Spain at that time, before the expulsion,” David explained.

After the Spanish Jews fled towards the Balkans, the language was further shaped by the regions through which they travelled, adopting words and sounds from Italian, Turkish and other languages to which they were exposed. Today, Ladino holds a profound meaning of cultural belonging and survival for those who still speak it.

In the Spanish documentary El Último Sefardí (The Last Sephardi), Yusuf Altinash, a Sephardic Jew in Istanbul said, “It doesn’t matter where the Sephardic person lives, in Sofia [Bulgaria], in the Adriatic or in Istanbul, his homeland is the Judeo-Spanish language.”

I returned to Sarajevo in 2012 with Prof Bryan Kirschen to film Saved by Language, a documentary about the last four Ladino speakers in Sarajevo: David Kamhi, Ester (Erna) Kaveson Debevec, Jakob Finci and Moris Albahari. As we conversed, I felt like I was in a game of linguistic hopscotch, jumping from my 21st-Century Spanish to their 15th-Century Spanish with leaps into borrowed words from Turkish and other tongues.

“Ladino saved my life in World War Two,” Albahari, a Bosnian Holocaust survivor, told us as we sat together in the Sarajevo Synagogue. In 1941, at age 14, Albahari used Ladino to communicate with an Italian colonel who helped him escape from the train taking Bosnian Jews to Croatia’s Jasenovac concentration camp. Because Ladino, like Spanish, has many similarities with the Italian language, Ladino and Italian speakers can have a basic conversation and understand a great deal.

That wasn’t the only time Albahari used Ladino in World War Two to save his life, he told us. He met a Spanish-speaking Hispanic-American pilot in Drvar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, who thought Albahari was the enemy. “I asked him if he spoke Spanish. He said yes. I spoke to him in Ladino. It was the only way to communicate. I took the pilot and his colleagues to a partisan base in [nearby] Ribnik.”

Ladino was also helpful for Sephardic Jews to communicate with Italian army officers when they were interned in an Italian-controlled camp on an island off the coast of Croatia during World War Two. Kamhi’s parents used the language to speak to Italian army officers at the camp. For Kamhi himself, speaking Ladino made it easier for him to attend school on the island. “Since the two languages [Ladino and Italian] are similar, I soon learned Italian,” he said.

Despite Sephardic musicians such as Yasmin Levy, Sarah Aroeste and Liliana Benveniste performing songs in Ladino around the world, young Sephardic Jews don’t tend to be keen to learn the language. And when the Spanish government announced several years ago that it would allow descendants of Jews expelled during the Inquisition to apply for Spanish citizenship, young Sephardic Jews have begun opting to learn modern Spanish over the language of their ancestors.

Now in their 70s and 80s, Sarajevo’s last four Ladino speakers lament that the use of the language in the city will likely end with them. For them, Ladino uniquely represents their histories and identities and reminds them of their family intimacy. “I began to speak in this language,” David said. “It was the language I used when I wanted to say something to my mother so others wouldn’t understand.”

Today, the only place to hear Ladino in Sarajevo is within the walls of its synagogue, where David leads his congregation, and those who wish to join them, in reciting some Shabbat prayers in the language – as opposed to Biblical Hebrew or Bosnian – as the synagogue’s cantors have done for generations.

“I don’t know what will be the future of this language in Sarajevo or in the Sephardic world,” Albahari said. “But this language is a treasure. It’s a memory. It’s life. And it’s necessary to preserve it.”

Meet the Ambassador: Marek Magierowski, of By Greer Fay Cashman Post, October 14, 2018 https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/MEET-THE-AMBASSADOR-Marek-Magierowski-of-Poland-569336

He’s been an ambassador for barely four months – not just to Israel, but in general. Marek Magierowski, the 47-year-old ambassador of Poland admits that he’s still learning.

It was not an ideal period for a novice ambassador from Poland to come to Israel, when a plethora of misunderstandings – fueled by years of preconceptions and misconceptions, and topped by legislation which is largely perceived by Jews as being anti-Semitic – is causing so many rifts and negative undercurrents.

Magierowski, whose CV includes having been spokesman and head of President Andrzej Duda’s press office, readily admits that there were and are anti-Semites in Poland, but insists that the country itself is not antisemitic.

Since the end of the Communist era, he says, most of the presidents and prime ministers of Poland have been philosemites. Duda’s wife is the daughter of a Jewish father.

While acknowledging that there are still people in Poland who harbor anti-Semitic tendencies, Magierowski cites the annual Krakow Jewish Festival, which was inaugurated in 1988, as an example of genuine Polish interest in Jewish culture and Jewish people. There is no record of violence at the festival, despite the fact that tens of thousands of people from all over Poland come to see it. In Magierowski’s view, this in itself is proof that Poland is not anti-Semitic.

Notwithstanding some of the dark chapters in Poland’s history vis-à-vis its Jewish population, Poles and Jews had a fairly good relationship and lived in harmony for a thousand years, he said. Moreover, Jews contributed greatly to Poland’s culture and were among the best-known writers, musicians and artists.

To illustrate that for Jews there is more to Poland than Shoah and shopping, Magierowski has included photographs of a Jewish athlete and a Jewish painter on his Twitter account, along with photographs of better known Polish Jews such as piano virtuoso Arthur Rubinstein, writer and Nobel Prize laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer and cosmetics queen Helena Rubinstein.

THROUGHOUT our conversation, he reiterated again and again that Jewish culture is part of Polish culture and that Poland misses its Jews.

Our interview takes place in a Jerusalem coffee shop. It’s not easy for an ambassador of Poland to be interviewed by a Jewish journalist whose ancestors on both sides have a multi-generational history of living on Polish soil, and whose grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins were deported to either Auschwitz or Treblinka, with the “lucky” ones working in forced labor camps.

It is actually Magierowski who broaches the subject of – not because he wants to issue a denial of any kind about incidents of collusion by Poles, but because he wants to make a point about how deeply they feel about salvaging their country’s image.

For decades, Poles have bristled at any mention of Polish death camps, and have consistently argued that the Poles did not build them, but rather that they were deliberately established in Poland by the Nazis.

A former journalist with more than twenty years of experience as a columnist and an editor, Magierowski says that almost any written reference to the perpetrators of the atrocities wrought during the Holocaust is about Nazis, not about Germans, even though most Nazis were German.

But when there are written references to anti-Semitic activities such as pogroms by Poles before, during and after the Holocaust; or the expulsion of Polish Jews in 1968, “the reference is not to scumbags or to Communists” or to anything else pertaining to fringe elements or alien powers in Poland, but to Poles.

Along with other Polish diplomats around the world, Magierowski regards the redeeming of Poland’s image as integral to his mission.

In this respect, it’s often an uphill climb for any Polish ambassador to Israel. While Poland can argue that more Poles are listed as “Righteous Among the Nations” than citizens of any other country, the comeback is almost always that there were more Jews in Poland than in any other country. Indeed, of the Jews who were murdered or died of starvation and disease in the Holocaust, the overwhelming majority were Polish citizens.

WHILE MAGIEROWSKI understands the reason for sending groups of high school students to Poland to take a close-up look at Holocaust history and in many cases to trace family roots, as a Pole, he is offended by the fact that such trips are limited to Poland and do not include Germany. “We didn’t start the war,” he declares.

It also bothers him that in Israel there are essentially two polarized perceptions of Poland – “Shoah and Shopping.” All the international brand names available in Israel can also be found in shopping malls and commercial areas all over Poland – and the merchandise is sold at much more affordable prices.

Born in 1971 in Bystrzyca Klodzka, some 100 kilometers south of Warsaw, Magierowski developed an interest in Jewish culture while still a school boy. There had not been a prominent Jewish community in his home town before the war, so there was very little spoken about Jews in his family. But there were many books by pre- and post-war Polish Jewish writers, and such books were readily available even in the Communist era.

The young Magierowski was drawn to this literature, which more often than not focused on aspects of Jewish life in Poland. He was fascinated by what he read, but maintains that he was not obsessive about it. As far as he was concerned, it was another facet of Polish culture.

Yet for all that, early in his career as a journalist in Poznan, where he was a student at the Adam Mickiewicz University, he came across an old synagogue that had been taken over by the municipality; a swimming pool had been built on the premises. Though bereft of Jews today, Poznan has a rich Jewish heritage, and Magierowski believed that it was most disrespectful to build a swimming pool in a synagogue. He wrote a letter of protest to the municipality, and when his protest yielded no result, he wrote a newspaper article, which again failed to amend the situation. But at least he tried.

THOUGH MOST of his professional life has been spent in the field of communications, he is actually a philologist by training with a command of several languages. Anyone who takes it for granted that he doesn’t understand Hebrew should be careful of what they say in front of him. He claims that his Hebrew is “lousy” but he acquitted himself quite well at the coffee shop.

Other than Polish and English, the language he speaks best is Spanish; he graduated in Hispanic studies from university.

In his work as a journalist, he concentrated mostly on foreign affairs, but also on politics. For a long time, he was able to express his views freely, but felt that journalism was heading towards tribalism, and that in order to maintain his professional status he would have to toe a certain line. This was something he was not prepared to do. “I didn’t want to be a politician in the guise of a journalist,” he says.

He left journalism exactly three years ago to work with Duda in public diplomacy, and in rapid succession was appointed head of the press section in the President’s Chancellory, and then undersecretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He had been in that role for a little over a year when he was offered the position of Poland’s ambassador to Israel. It was an interesting challenge, so he decided to move on once again. His current status has been official since June 25.

Late Polish-Jewish WWII Resistance Fighter Awarded State Honor Radio Poland, October 15, 2018 http://thenews.pl/1/11/Artykul/387224,Late-PolishJewish-WWII-resistance-fighter-awarded-state-honour

The family of was given the Commanders Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order by Wojciech Kolarski on behalf of the Polish president at the museum which stands at the site of the former Nazi Sobibor in eastern Poland.

In a letter marking the occasion, Polish President Andrzej Duda said the armed revolt, which allowed some 300 prisoners to escape the camp, was one of the biggest Jewish uprisings of World War II.

Felhendler is credited with devising an escape plan in 1943 with Red Army prisoner-of-war , who arrived in September in a transport from Minsk. The pair wanted to kill the camp's personnel, raid the arsenal, and fight their way out the camp.

The uprising on October 14, 1943, was detected in its early stages when a guard discovered the body of a German officer killed by the prisoners.

In the commotion, about 320 Jews managed to make it outside of the camp and 80 were killed while trying to escape. Some 170 escapees were recaptured and killed along with prisoners who did not take part in the uprising.

Felhendler managed to survive the war in hiding but died in hospital after being shot in 1945 in unexplained circumstances. The camp in Sobibor saw some 17,000 Jews killed between 1942 and 1943 when a decision was taken to shut it down after the revolt.

Excavation of Lithuania’s Great Synagogue Highlights a ‘Painful Page’ from History By Lucian Kim NPR, October 16, 2018 https://www.npr.org/2018/10/16/657482569/excavation-of-lithuanias-great-synagogue-highlights-a-painful- page-from-history

For decades, the principals at a boxy, two-story kindergarten in downtown Vilnius, Lithuania's capital, unwittingly pored over their lesson plans just a few feet above one of the city's most sacred sites.

Today there is a gaping 10-foot hole in what used to be the principal's office, exposing masonry that once was the back of the bimah, the central platform from where the Torah was read in the city's 17th century Great Synagogue. A team of archaeologists from Lithuania, Israel and the U.S. made the discovery this summer.

"I was relieved because now we know that there is something left," said Justinas Racas, one of the archaeologists who dug up the bimah. "The Great Synagogue was one of the biggest buildings in the Old Town — and one of the oldest. It's very important — not only for Jews but all people living in Lithuania."

Before World War II, Vilnius was a center of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. During the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered 90 percent of the city's Jews and destroyed their houses of worship. After the Soviet Union took over Lithuania in 1944, the Communists bulldozed the remains of the Great Synagogue and built a kindergarten on its ruins.

It's hard to imagine how the Great Synagogue once rose over a dense cluster of smaller buildings, including the famed Strashun Library, a bathhouse, schools and administrative offices. The kindergarten, which was closed last year, is hidden from the main street by drab postwar buildings. During the summer, archaeologists dug trenches crisscrossing the kindergarten playground, exposing tiles from the bathhouse and the brickwork of cellars.

The excavation, financed by Lithuania's Good Will Foundation, a Jewish compensation fund, began in 2016. Racas hopes it will continue for two more summers.

As a Catholic Lithuanian, he says it's important to him personally to take part in unearthing a lost piece of his country's past. A century ago, 40 percent of Vilnius' population was Jewish, and there were more than 100 synagogues in the city.

"I'm happy that we're discovering this rather painful page of our history about the presence, and disappearance, of the Jewish community in Vilnius," said Inga Merkyte, a Lithuanian archaeologist living in Denmark who stopped by the excavation site during a visit back home. "I think it's a great loss."

Lithuanians have long seen themselves as the victims of Nazi and Soviet aggression. But in 2016, a quarter- century after the country regained its independence, writer Ruta Vanagaite published a book that focused on the role of ordinary Lithuanians in perpetrating the Holocaust. Vanagaite faced widespread condemnation, and her book divided the nation.

Anna Avidan, the head of a Lithuanian Jewish cultural organization, says Vanagaite's intentions may have been good, but her tone was too accusatory and put many Lithuanians on the defensive. A psychologist by profession, Avidan says Lithuanian society requires "subtle therapy" to come to terms with its past.

Even Jewish children who attended the kindergarten in central Vilnius didn't always know the Great Synagogue had once stood there, says Avidan. During the Soviet era, she says, she hid her Jewish roots because of discrimination. When the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, many Jews took the first opportunity to emigrate, mostly to Israel and the United States. "It's really a paradox, because the times now are favorable for Jewish life to prosper," Avidan said. "But there are no people here."

Today there are no more than 3,000 Jews left in Vilnius, according to Avidan, compared to a pre-war population of some 70,000.

The absence of the Jewish community marks Vilnius like an invisible scar. Jewish holy places that the Nazis didn't raze to the ground, like the Great Synagogue, were later destroyed by the Soviets, who propagated Communist ideology over religion.

The gargantuan Palace of Concerts and Sports was built on top of the city's old Jewish cemetery. Tombstones were flipped on their faces and used as steps for the Palace of Trade Unions, another landmark of Communist Vilnius. Some of them have since been returned and lie before the now-abandoned concert hall.

One of the last living Jewish sites is the Choral Synagogue, the city's only working synagogue. On a weekday, a dozen older men shuffle over its wooden floors for evening prayers led by Cantor Shmuel Yatom.

Yatom comes from a long line of cantors who used to live in Hannopil, in present-day Ukraine. On high holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, his grandfather would travel to Vilnius to perform in the city's synagogues. Then, during the Holocaust, Yatom's father saw his parents murdered before his eyes — and escaped only "by a miracle."

"For me, it is very important to be present here, and to continue my family tradition," said Yatom.

He says he is still inspired by the Jewish spirit of Vilnius.

"When you walk down these streets, you hear the voices of those prewar cantors, and actually it gives you strength and a hope that carrying on this tradition is not in vain," Yatom said.

The excavation of the Great Synagogue may present an opportunity to make that past more tangible.

Although there are no concrete plans yet regarding the future of the site, archaeologist Racas would like to see a sort of memorial park, with markers to convey the grandeur of the Great Synagogue.

Avidan, the Jewish cultural leader, says a park isn't enough.

"We have to teach young people about the dangers: how cherishing your nationality can become a nationalistic approach and then can lead to stereotypes and then to violence," she said. "The sites of Jewish heritage, they can teach us these things."

Once the excavations are over, Avidan says, the site should become a place of learning and warning — but also a place that celebrates life and draws in people the same way as the Great Synagogue once did.

Ukraine, anti-Semitism, Racism, and the Far Right By Adrian Karatnycky Atlantic Council, October 16, 2018 http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-anti-semitism-racism-and-the-far-right

October 14 saw the latest in a string of annual mass marches by the far right in Ukraine. As many as 10,000 people participated, mainly young men, chanting fiercely. A nighttime torchlight parade with signs proclaiming “We’ll return Ukraine to Ukrainians,” contained echoes of Nazi-style symbolism.

Lax law enforcement and indifference by the security services to the operations of the far right is being noticed by extremists from abroad who are flocking to Ukraine. German media reported the presence of the German extreme right (JN-NPD, Dritte Weg) at the rally. According to Ukrainian political analyst Anton Shekhovtsov, far-right Norwegians, Swedes, and Italians were supposed to be there too. And on October 15, they all gathered in Kyiv for the Paneuropa conference organized by the Ukrainian neo-Nazi National Corps party. "Kyiv," says Shekhovtsov, "has now become one of the major centers of European far-right activities."

Such activism, naturally, unnerves liberals as well as Jews, and national minorities. And they often result in alarmist headlines in Western and Israeli newspapers.

Coming in a year in which the white supremacist C14 group engaged in savage beatings at a Roma encampment near Kyiv, one could draw the conclusion that the far right is on the rise in Ukraine.

But such a reading would be mistaken. Far-right sentiments exist in Ukraine, but these ultranationalist groupings attract little public support. As the March 2018 presidential election approaches, recent polls show that the combined vote of far-right presidential candidates amounts to around 4 percent. A similarly paltry level of support is to be found for the far-right Svoboda and National Corps parties. Compared to the support of far- right parties such as the AfD in Germany (12.6 percent support), Marine Le Pen’s Rally for the Nation (13 percent) and Italy’s Northern League (17.4 percent), Ukraine’s public has little sympathy for the far right.

Nor can these fringe Ukrainian parties be labeled pro-Nazi, though their leaders initially were drawn to proto- fascist ideas.Ukraine is a country on whose territory two million Jews died in the Holocaust. It is also a country in which five million non-Jewish Ukrainians perished in combat as a result of Nazi occupation. Virtually every family has the memory of Nazi brutality etched into its memory. Ukraine’s nationalists of the 1930s and 1940s, who advanced anti-Semitic and proto-fascist ideas, were also eventually hunted down for extermination by the Nazi regime.

To be sure, casual anti-Semitism and Jewish stereotypes persist in everyday life. And anti-Semitic graffiti appears with regularity near Jewish synagogues, cemeteries, and cultural institutions. Even still, this regrettable phenomenon is widespread in most advanced industrial democracies.

At the same time, in the last two years there has been not a single recorded violent attack against a Jewish person. The last such attack occurred on October 7, 2016, against a Hasidic rabbi visiting the city of Zhytomyr.

Between 2016 and 2017, acts of vandalism against Jewish targets increased from 19 to 24, but were still far below those reported in many European countries. While an Israeli government report issued in January 2018 alleged a doubling of anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine, it failed to provide detailed answers about its methodology or sources.

Unlike two decades ago, when Silski Visti, an anti-Semitic newspaper reached millions of readers, today there is no mass circulation periodical spilling out anti-Semitic bile.

Moreover, in comparison with its Central and East European neighbors, Ukraine remains a remarkably tolerant society, even as it faces Russian occupation in part of its territory. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that among South, Central, and East European countries, Ukraine had the highest level of acceptance of Jews as fellow citizens, with only 5 percent of the public disagreeing.

The leadership role of Jews in the country’s economic and political life is rarely a topic of public discourse and is accepted as normal.

The country has a Jewish Prime Minister, Volodymyr Groisman.The president’s chief of staff is Jewish, as was his last chief of staff, Borys Lozhkin, who now heads the Ukrainian Jewish Confederation and is a vice president of the World Jewish Congress.

According to the Ukrainian Jewish Confederation, more than thirty of 427 members of parliament are Jewish. And the Committee on Interparliamentary Relations with Israel is the largest of all such groupings in the Ukrainian Rada, numbering nearly 140 deputies, a third of the legislature.

Ukraine’s religious leaders have regular access to key government leaders. And Ukrainian government and state leaders routinely take part in commemorative ceremonies of remembrance of the Holocaust.

All this is not to say that there are serious problems.

Ukraine’s memory politics reflect too much heroization of a complex past and not enough acknowledgment of such issues as indigenous anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazi occupation. More, too, needs to be done in restoring the killing fields in which Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

More ominously, Ukraine’s far-right, para-military formations and their penchant for vigilantism remain a problem that must be more vigorously countered by the state and their sources of funding investigated thoroughly.

Anti-Semitic vandalism needs to be rooted out and hate speech handled in accordance with Ukrainian law. Government reactions to acts or expressions of anti-Semitism remain far too slow. And incidents of violence against Roma by members of far-right groups such as C14 must be swiftly prosecuted.

However, Western and Israeli governments, media, and NGOs should be sensitive to Russia’s hybrid warfare and disinformation around the topic of anti-Semitism and the far-right in Ukraine. Russia’s deployment of actors who wittingly or unwittingly are encouraged to engage in hate speech, incite anti-minority tensions, commit vandalism, and employ violence is another phenomenon that must be better understood. In a poor country, it is easy to buy or win the allegiance of alienated youth and enlist them in fringe politics either by far-right operatives or Russian agents.

Ukraine's far right may not be a rising force. But in a poor country facing external aggression, it is a force that cannot be ignored.

Romanian PM Consider Moving Embassy to Jerusalem The Jerusalem Post, October 14, 2018 https://www.jpost.com/International/Romanian-PM-to-consider-moving-embassy-to-Jerusalem-569393

Bucharest, Oct 12 (TNS) - Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Teodor Melescanu said on Friday that the Ministry has completed the analytical report on the potential relocation of Romania's Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and referred the document the Premier.

The Romanian Government will next send it to the Presidency and the Speakers of the two Chambers of Parliament, Melescanu said.represent serious threats to their security. Faced with such challenges, the Baltic nations will continue to develop as many political, economic and military partnerships as possible to ensure their hard-earned independence becomes the norm — instead of the exception — in a history marked by so much turbulence.

"The assessment of the Embassy's move to Jerusalem was sent to the Prime Minister and after the relevant observations are made - we'll see if there are any - the Government will send it to the Presidency and to the heads of the two Chambers. How long it will take to make the decision does not depend on me, as far as we are concerned, we have finished our job, the Ministry has practically completed the analysis," Melescanu said.

He said there are no bottlenecks, that "this is a process in which everyone is involved," but the issue is indeed very complicated. "As far as we are concerned, we have listed in our report both the elements of interest and the things that can have a negative effect, but the decision does not lie with us. The purpose of this analysis was to present to the political decision makers all the pros and cons for everybody to know and for Romania to have a current, coordinated position," the Foreign Minister said.