My Father was Reb Zev HaKohen (Mr. William) Stern z”l. You may have heard of him and the fact that he passed away recently on 25th Adar.

He was a true legend.

In addition to being a famous and influential businessman in his heyday, he was an Askan par excellence and a person who lived his life for others.

In his last years, he set up The Jewish Center in Kaunas.

My Father always felt warmly for Jewish students studying in Universities, having studied himself in Harvard University Law School. He saw the danger of mixing and assimilating with non-Jewish fellow students and felt an “achrayus” to influence Jewish students to marry within the Faith.

My Father had been doing business in Kaunas for a number of years when, to his surprise, he discovered that Kaunas University has a prestigious Medical School, attended by hundreds of Israeli students.

The Jewish students who attend the Kaunas medical school will generally be no different from a typical student in a similar Israeli university. They will in most circumstances not be knowledgeable of the Jewish heritage and consider themselves primarily as Israelis, rather than Jews.

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When thrust into the environment of a University in Chutz Laaretz, these students are eager to integrate with their fellow students and will unfortunately often partner with non-Jewish boyfriends and girlfriends. Thus, an already weak link to their religion is further weakened by this integration into a non- Jewish environment and many of these students will return home to Israel with their non-Jewish partners eventually becoming their spouses, ensuring wholesale destruction ch”v of their lineage.

My Father created the concept of The Jewish Center, which provides a warm Jewish environment that seeks primarily to look after the physical needs of these students, providing a hot Kosher lunch daily in rented premises, with a “home away from home” atmosphere. In the evening, students are offered hot soup and sandwiches and are encouraged to do whatever they want to do, with their Israeli friends, in the Jewish Center. The evening activities incorporate study cubicles for those who want to do their homework together, chess boards, video facilities, etc.

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To look after the spiritual needs of the students, my Grandfather established a partnership with the Wolfson-backed Nefesh Yehudi organisation in Jerusalem which specialises in lecturing to some 6,000 Israeli students. Nefesh Yehudi initially provided some visiting lecturers for weekends but, for the past six years, Kaunas has had three Israeli couples, who have moved to Kaunas, to look after the spiritual needs of the students.

There are daily shiurim – for beginners and more advanced students – and this winter there started a small “Kollel” which studies Gemoroh for 90 minutes every evening, for which the students receive a stipend of $200 each term.

Currently the daily lunch attendance numbers approximately 80 and the Shabbos attendance 130. On Rosh Hashanah, in larger rented premises, there was an attendance of 250 students.

The Jewish Center successfully instils into these students a pride in their religion, a belief that they are special not because of their nationality but because they are Jews. They learn more about their heritage in the short time they spend in Kaunas, than they did in their entire youth in Israel. They realise what it means to be a proud Jew, and they take this knowledge and pride back home with them when they qualify as medical professionals. 

With every patient they will ever treat, with every colleague they interact with, with every friend they ever hang out with, they become ambassadors for Yiddishkeit. They may not necessarily become fully practicing Orthodox Jews, but they will be very proud of their heritage and they will spread that pride across the vast swathe of Israeli society they interact with.

The running costs of the operation (premises, food, staff salaries, etc.) amount to about €600,000 a year, and even in my Father’s lifetime, this was a monumental amount to put together, although I can personally attest to the hundreds of thousands of Pounds that he diverted from pressing personal needs, to shower on his blossoming project in Kaunas.

We are therefore running a charidy campaign, to ensure that both the moadon and my Father’s legacy continue to flourish.

Please click here to donate. Any kind of donation would be greatly appreciated, and it would be a tremendous Ilui Neshomo for my Father Reb Zev ben Reb Chaim Hakohen z”l.

Tizke LeMitzvos.