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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/6485/full/6485/vilna-gaon-commemoration-sparks-debate-among-jews/ <br /><br /> <b>Vilna Gaon commemoration sparks debate among Jews</b> <br /> Friday, September 5, 1997 | by <p>REBECCA PHILLIPS </p> <br /><br /><p>NEW YORK—A Lithuanian Talmudic scholar is stirring up controversy among Jews 200 years after his death.<br /><br /> September marks the 200th yahrzeit of the Vilna Gaon, renowned commentator on the Talmud and the Torah and in his time a major opponent of the Baltic region's burgeoning Chassidic movement.<br /><br /> A split has emerged among American Jewish organizations over the six-day commemoration of the Gaon, being organized by the Lithuanian Jewish community.<br /><br /> The event provides an opportunity for Lithuania's Jewish community "to claim some of the glory that was historical Vilna," said Rabbi Andrew Baker of the American Jewish Committee, a member of the honorary committee for the Sept. 9-15 commemoration.<br /><br /> The Simon Wiesenthal Center, meanwhile, has called for a boycott of the event, believing that participation would be seen as support for a Lithuanian government that has not yet atoned for the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. Nearly 94 percent of the country's Jews perished in the Holocaust, a tragedy that local Jews say is not widely known in Lithuania.<br /><br /> Lithuanians have not "become aware of the extent of the Holocaust in this country," Israelis Lempertas, the co-coordinator of the Gaon commemoration, said in Vilnius, formerly known as Vilna.<br /><br /> "But you cannot make the entire people repent using such methods as the boycott."<br /><br /> The Jewish community has received more than $100,000 from the Lithuanian government for the event, according to Simonas Alperavicius, Jewish community chairman.<br /><br /> The commemoration has also received funding from UNESCO.<br /><br /> The Lithuanian government has assisted with promotional materials and has helped to clean up Vilnius' only functioning Jewish cemetery, site of the Gaon's grave.<br /><br /> It plans to issue six stamps featuring the Vilna Gaon and has commissioned a Lithuanian composer to write a commemorative work to be performed by the national symphony.<br /><br /> The parliament's first session after its summer recess will be dedicated to the Gaon's legacy.<br /><br /> Parliament Chairman Vytautas Landsbergis told an Anti-Defamation League delegation visiting Lithuania in August that the Gaon commemoration will help promote mutual understanding between Lithuanians and Jews.<br /><br /> Indeed, the government has been so eager to help with the event that it surprised the local Jewish community by deciding to build a sculpture of the Gaon on the Vilnius street that bears his name.<br /><br /> The community has not decided how to respond to this initiative, which contradicts the Jewish tradition of avoiding portrait images.<br /><br /> Still, local Jews are enthusiastic about the upcoming events.<br /><br /> "We believe the commemoration will draw world attention to Vilnius and the Jewish community here, which before the war numbered nearly a quarter of a million and now consists of approximately 5,000 people," said Lempertas.<br /><br /> Opponents of the commemoration, however, are not impressed by the government's efforts.<br /><br /> Such activities are attempts "by the Lithuanian government to gain publicity and earn points in the West," said Efraim Zuroff, director of the Wiesenthal Center's Israel office.<br /><br /> During a visit to Israel in 1995, Lithuanian President Algirdas Brazauskas publicly apologized for his country's involvement in the Holocaust.<br /><br /> Lithuania has established a national day of mourning for Holocaust victims on Sept. 23—the date of the Vilna Ghetto's liquidation in 1943.<br /><br /> But no legal action has been taken against five alleged war criminals who were stripped of their U.S. citizenship and deported to Lithuania in recent years.<br /><br /> Zuroff believes the Lithuanian government is trying to disguise Lithuania's wartime past by supporting the Gaon commemoration.<br /><br /> Lithuanian collaboration with the Nazis is "not pleasant to Lithuania," said Zuroff. "It is something they are trying to hide."<br /><br /> Some Lithuanian Jewish leaders believe the proposed boycott could harm their community.<br /><br /> "We do not agree with the boycott. The memory of the Gaon has nothing to do with the Nazi collaborators," said the Jewish community's Alperavicius.<br /><br /> After Zuroff's remarks were published in the Lithuanian press earlier this month, a synagogue in Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city, received an anonymous letter accusing Jews of seeking to destroy Lithuania's well-being.<br /><br /> Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said Jewish organizations and the Lithuanian government have many differences, "but these issues should be dealt with separately."<br /><br /> They should not be connected to Lithuania's desire "to recognize and celebrate its Jewish heritage," Foxman said in Vilnius.</p> <p> </p>

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