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2005-09-28
The VYI Spotlighted in British Cultural Journal

The July 2005 issue of the London quarterly Jewish Renaissance features a section on "The Jews of Lithuania," in which the VYI draws prominent attention. Summer Program graduate Nicole Taylor ('03, '04) describes the diversity of the program's student body, her walking tours of one-time Jewish Vilna, guided by the Institute's Fania Brantsovsky and Rokhel Margolis, and her intense experience of the Jewish past that was obliterated. In a side-piece to Nicole's article, writer Norma Cohen portrays our librarian Fania's wartime ordeal as a Vilna ghetto fighter and forest partisan; and a fullpage interview with Fania on her childhood and teenager years in prewar Vilnius helps to round out the portrait. In yet another piece, Norma Cohen speaks with the Lithuanian-Jewish prose author Markas Zingeris, who acquainted the 2003 Summer Program group with the Jewish past and present of his hometown of Kaunas (Kovne) during the group's visit there; and our director of research Professor Dovid Katz tops off the isuue with an instructive, humorous commentary on the question of who is a Litvak. (The website of Jewish Renaissance can be accessed at www.jewishrenaissance.org.uk.)