New President of the Republic of Lithuania Visits YIVO

(New York, NY) – On Thursday, September 26, 2019, the recently appointed President of the Republic of Lithuania H.E. Gitanas Nausėda and First Lady Diana Nausėdienė visited the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York.

Elected in July 2019, President Nausėda’s visit highlights the important ties between Lithuania and YIVO.

“Jewish history and culture shaped the identity of the countries of the world, including Lithuania. Lithuanian and Jewish communities share a rich history since the 15th century. Vilnius was even referred to as Jerusalem of the North,” said President Nausėda.

“The activities of Lithuanian Jews have left an invaluable religious and philosophical legacy to the Jewish community around the world and it is especially being cherished at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, based in New York,” the President continued.

The President and First Lady viewed an array of materials from YIVO’s Library and Archive, including the Pinkas of Rabbi Elijah ben Solomon Zalman’s, synagogue.  Rabbi Zalman, known as the Vilna Goan, was an outstanding Lithuanian rabbi and religious leader.

The Pinkas will be on loan to Lithuania in 2020 to mark 300 years since his birth. The Parliament of Lithuania (Seimas) has designated 2020 as the Year of the Vilna Gaon and the History of the Jews of Lithuania.

The Pinkas records the legal and financial transactions of the synagogue and is a key document about the history of the Jewish community of Vilna.

“YIVO was born in Vilna in 1925 and re-establishing our relationship with Lithuania through the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections (EBYVOC) project, founded in 2014, as well as other activity is of great significance to us,” said Mr. Jonathan Brent Executive Director of YIVO.

The EBYVOC project, a historic international project, is a partnership between YIVO and the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, the Lithuanian Central State Archives, and the Wroblewski Library of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences to preserve, digitize, and virtually reunite YIVO’s pre-war archives, located in New York and Vilnius.

The project is over halfway complete, with over 500,000 pages of documents now available online at vilnacollections.yivo.org.

“We look forward to strengthening this relationship in the coming years through working together with our Lithuanian partners to uncover significant new knowledge about Jewish life in Eastern Europe and by making this knowledge accessible to the world,” added Mr. Brent.

This past July, Mr. Brent was conferred the Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania in recognition of the cooperation between Lithuania and YIVO and for the preservation of the prewar Jewish archives of Lithuania.

Along with Jonathan Brent, the President and First Lady met the Chair of the YIVO Board Ruth Levine, Vice Chair of the YIVO Board Irene Pletka, and YIVO Board Member Edward Blank. Asta Skaisgirytė, Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the President, Audra Plepytė, Ambassador of the Republic of Lithuania to the UN, and Gitana Skirpaitė, Acting Consul General of Lithuania in New York, were also present at the visit.

YIVO

The YIVO Institute was founded in Berlin, Warsaw and in Vilnius (Vilna) in 1925 as the Yiddish Scientific Institute with the support of leading intellectuals and scholars. Its mission was to document, study and preserve Jewish life in all its forms. World War II forced YIVO to relocate from Vilnius to New York City, where it has continued its mission since 1940.

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