Ongoing projects:

·        Since 2004 Centre is running educational, students orientated research programme “Jewish heritage in towns” which aims to record present state of Jewish heritage in Lithuania's towns that once had a significant Jewish communities. As part of the project Centre organized three research expeditions for students of Lithuania universities. Students from all Universities (with accredited Bachelor degree) of Lithuania can apply to this programme and the best ones can participate. Since foundation of the Centre 60 students in total participated in these kind of educational programmes. The main educational idea of the project was to supply information in Jewish traditions, history of community in Lithuania, to point out the singularities of living in shtetl, to introduce field research methods and to teach to use them in autonomous researches.

Annual events:

·      CONFERENCES

· In 2006 Centre published its first yearbook „PINKAS. Annual of the Culture and History of East European Jewry“(Vilnius, 2006) volume (editor Dr. L. Lempertiene). It is a scientific publication in English, which has international academic council; all of the articles are reviewed by two reviewers. The second volume is being prepared right now. (Call for submission of articles)

Finished projects:

·        Project "Synagogues of Lithuania. Catalogue" started in 2006 together with Vilnius Academy of Fine Arts (in 2007 Centre of Jewish Arts of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem joined the project and as a partner co-operates Vilnius Gediminas Technical University) as a research of stone synagogues and now it is extended and its goals are to record all synagogues of Lithuania, to take measures of them, to make schemes, to localize these buildings in the space of the town, to gather archival, cartographic, iconographic and other information about particular synagogues. The Catalogue will include 88 articles on different synagogues. It is crucial to carry out these researches and to drag heritage issue to the attention of public eye, because heritage is vanishing rapidly (in 2005 wooden synagogue of Seda collapsed; recently synagogue of Plunge was fenced and preparations for destruction is under way). First volume of the Catalogue was published in 2010 (second will be published by the end of the year).

·        Another Centre's publication - „Jews in Lithuania: History, Culture and Heritage“- was published in 2009. Publication includes 35 articles concerning Jews of Lithuania. It is an academic study for the general public, in which Jewish traditions, history and heritage themes will be discussed. The authors of the including articles are well-known Lithuania and foreign scientists from various fields of researches (dr. Alexandr Lvov, dr. Mordechai Zalkin, dr. Shaul Stampfer and others) . Help of the latter was very important to reveal some issues of Lithuanian Jews that was not previously explored. This publication will also be a handy tutorial supplement for students of universities.

·        The Centre initiated and supported Jewish courses at Vilnius University (Prof. Leonidas Donskis course “Identity, Toleration and Modern Imagination” (course lectured in 2005-2006, 2006-2007 autumn semesters; in total 330 students attended; course was very popular, not all participated students were officially enrolled); dr. Egle Bendikaite course “Jewish Nationalism Studies” (course lectured in 2005-2006 spring semester at The Institute of International Relations and Political Science of Vilnius University); Dr. Larisa Lempertiene and Dr. Jurgita Verbickiene course „Jewish Traditional Way of Life: Day-to-day History and its Modern Virtualization” (course first lectured in 2006-2007 spring semester; now it is in progress in autumn semester).

·        Research of Municipal museums and virtual exhibition „Judaica in Municipal Museums“ (2004-2005). Analysis of all municipal museums that are open was carried out to accomplish two goals: 1. to find and identify Judaic objects in the funds of museums; 2. to record all exhibit and to create a system of them. Result of the Project – virtual exhibition „Judaica in Municipal Museums“(in Lithuanian and in English, at www.jewishstudies.lt).

·        Seminar for museums’ staff (2004). Centre initiated a seminar “Museum exhibitions of Judaica objects” for staff of municipal and public museums. The aim of seminar was to present the opportunities and forms of exhibiting objects of Jewish culture, religion and daily life.

·        Seminar for high school teachers (2004-2006). The aim of these seminars was to introduce teachers in a form of lectures with the latest academic researches of history and culture of East European Jews.

·        Since the beginning of activity, Centre initiated three support programmes: Students Scholarships (grants for the most talented students of the region), Publications Programme (support for publications), and International Research Support Programme (support for research projects). Programmes‘ participants  had to carry out research related with Jewish studies.

Students Scholarships.

The studies of the Jewish culture and history in the Baltic region are not developed enough; there is a shortage of researches and specialists of various fields of Jewish studies. Interest of academic community and society in Jewish history and culture constantly grows, there is realization of this topic actuality and need for lecturers and scholars who would be able to conduct independent research in Jewish studies. Since 2004, when these programmes were started, 34 students received scholarships from the Centre (full list of scholarship receivers).

Publications Programme.

In order to present the latest scholarly research of the region, scholarly publications and Jewish history and culture subjects for general audience, The Centre for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews announce a competition for preparation of publications on Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe. We encourage preparing monographs and carrying out scholarly studies on basis of successfully defended doctoral dissertations (PhD thesis). Publication programme supported publication of 11 books (list support receivers).

International Research Support Programme

Seeking greater involvement of the academic society in study, popularisation and presentation of Jewish historical and cultural heritage to wide public, The Centre for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews continues an international research programme for support of research. It is expected that this programme will encourage the appearance of new and valuable academic results.

11 Scholars and institutions received support for their research on International research support programme (list of support receivers).

Last three programmes are currently on hold.

Future

Centre for Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews is working on lessening the educational programmes and concentrating more on academic activity. For this reason Centre gradually is closing some of the projects (Students Scholarship programme, “Jewish heritage in towns” project). While doing the latter, Centre also concentrates on its strongest academic initiatives as annual conference and projects like "Synagogues of Lithuania. Catalogue". Centre is starting two new projects: „The Myth of Ritual Murder in Lithuania“ (middle of XVI c. – XX c.) and „Documents of Lithuanian Archives to Research Jewish History“. The latter project seeks to gather information on where those documents are available, quantity and quality of them, etc.; create ways for the participants of the project to consult and share information with foreign institutions and individuals who are carrying out analogue projects.