Category Archives: Interwar

Jewish economic life in Kėdainiai and vicinity before WWII

By Aryeh Leonard Shcherbakov and Moshe Girshovich The purpose of this study In 2011, the director of the Kėdainiai Regional Museum, Rimantas Žirgulis, compiled a list of Jewish enterprises active in Kėdainiai in the interwar period (Source #1). Here we … Continue reading

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Coming Together for Passover

“Getting together for Passover” used to be one of those second-nature ideas, an assumption for families and groups of friends every year about this time. This year, of course, the phrase has become bitterly ironic. With everyone more or less … Continue reading

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A Century in Photographs

This website – and everyone interested in Keidan – owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the Kedainiai Regional Museum, whose director, Rimantas Zirgulis, has been the driving force behind efforts to preserve and commemorate the history of  this complex, … Continue reading

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A Visit to a Lithuanian Town

This was published in “The Keidaner” bulletin in three parts, from October to December, 1938. It was exerpted from the Warsaw Yiddish newspaper “Haynt” (“Today”), which carried the author’s account of travel through Lithuania. By Chaim Vital “When you are … Continue reading

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A Greeting From Home, 1939

This unsigned article appeared in “The Keidaner” bulletin of the Keidaner Association of NY,  September 1939. Never have our landsleit come to hear such an interesting report about Keidan as that which took place at the last meeting. The report … Continue reading

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A Family Dispersed

By Sonja Shacknofsky-Setting My father, Joseph Setting, was born in Keidan in 1910. He arrived in Cape Town on Christmas morning, 1927, then went on to Johannesburg, where he found work with relatives. My grandparents likely sent him to South … Continue reading

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The Keidaner Association in the U.S.

By Charles Lipshitz[1] I left Keidan in 1907, shortly after my Bar Mitzvah as a student in the Keidan yeshiva. A short time after my arrival in the United States, I learned that there is a Keidaner organization in existence. … Continue reading

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The Keidaner Association in South Africa

Published, in English, in the 1977 Keidan “Sefer Zikaron” (memorial or yizkor book) By Max Rochin After World War I, immediately after the liberation of Lithuania, the Lithuanian government granted the Jews a certain autonomy. A Jewish National Council was … Continue reading

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Zvi Lipschitz, Zionist Martyr

By Ben-Moshe (Johannesburg) Originally published in the Keidaner Sick Benefit & Benevolent Society jubilee book, 1950.  Young Zvi Lipschitz hy’d [1], from Kfar Etzion, was a Keidaner landsman. He was born in 1919 in the town of Yasven (Josvainiai), near … Continue reading

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Reb Meishe Chone Shamesh

Translated by Bella Golubchik. Reb Meishe Chone Shamesh, of blessed memory, was one of the most significant Jews in Keidan. He was humble, modest and self-effacing. He was not very conspicuous outside of the cheder, where he taught the children, … Continue reading

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