On June16, 2017 the academic director of the International Yiddish Center at the World Jewish Congress Dr. Mordechay Yushkovsky provided a lecture "What Yiddish has to say in the XXI century" to 42 officers of Israeli Defense Forces.

The military men visited the Lithuanian capital in the framework of the educational project „Mahut" - an educational program which involves the IDF officers visiting different Jewish communities in diaspora, study about the history and contemporary life of Jewish communities.

This event is the continuation of our long-term cooperation with the educational department of IDF, Hebrew University in Jerusalem and foundation "Genesis".

We have done a very hard preparatory work, we had doubts about the reaction to our suggested topics, but the result exceeded all our expectations.

The first short seminar for the officers of IDF was held on September 8, 2016 in Vilnius. After that event, a wish to forward the cooperation between these organizations had been expressed by the educational department of IDF. Thus, the decision to carry on mutually beneficial and fruitful partnership was made.

This time, like at the previous one, Dr. Yushkovsky's talk arouse enthusiastic reception of the audience, which overwhelmed the lecturer with questions after the presentation. This short seminar proved once again that decision to expand relationship with educational department of IDF was correct.

In the summarizing speech, colonel Omer Sharon, the head of the group, said that before the seminar he asked himself why for lectures about Yiddish is needed for the officers of the IDF, and why we are "wasting" our time here. But just after the first lecture, he understood absolutely clearly that it not only needs but must be included in the educational programs for Israeli soldiers and officers. The colonel expressed his gratitude to the WJC Yiddish Center and presented Certificate of Appreciation to Dr. Yushkovsky.