The only shochet (kosher slaughterer) in Soviet Lithuania died a few days before Rosh Hashana at the age of around 60 and “there is nobody to replace him,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was told by Rabbi Pinchas Teitz, former member of the presidium of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the US and Canada. The shochet, identified by Lithuanian sources as “Reb Yaacov,” was based in Vilna.
Rabbi Teitz also reported that the cantor from Memel, Lithuania, who had served Vilna for several years on the High Holidays, sang at Rosh Hashana services this year and died before Yom Kippur. He said there was no indication of foul play in either death.
Rabbi Teitz added that a monument in memory of the late Rabbi Yitzhak Rabinowitz, the Lithuanian “Rav of Ponievez,” who died in 1918, was recently unveiled there. The monument was paid for by Rabbi Teitz after the authorities decided three years ago to liquidate the Jewish cemetery and allowed bodies to be exhumed and reburied.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
