2010 Jewish Lithuania Program Dates Coming Soon

THE SLS JEWISH LITHUANIA PROGRAM

Directed by Professor Dovid Katz

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Before World War II, there were sixty thousand Jews (about a third of the population) living in Vilna(then Polish Wilno; in Yiddish, always: Vílne, and today — Vilnius, the thriving capital city of Lithuania). The city had over a hundred synagogues and was an international center for diverse forms of Jewish culture ranging from ultraorthodox to radical. It housed the Yivo Institute and became the international center for modern Yiddish scholarship.

After the transfer of the Vilna region to Lithuania in 1939, the country’s Jewish population numbered well over 220,000. There were 239 Jewish communities spread through all parts of the country. Various towns had yeshivas (Talmudic academies) that were world famous; to this day the Yiddish forms of their names are well known from their derivative institutions in the West and in Israel (e.g. Telz, Pónevezh, Slabódke, corresponding with today’s Telšiai, Panevėžys, and the Vilijampolė suburb of Kaunas).

Tragically, around 95% of Lithuania’s Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, the highest rate of genocide of any country in Europe. There are 200 mass grave pits scattered around the country, and many smaller ones.

History

The tragic end in the Holocaust must not obscure the many centuries of extraordinary tolerance and multiculturalism espoused by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (for a long time pagan), where Jews escaping the Crusades and other Christian excesses in Central Europe found refuge and tolerance, famously symbolized by the charters of tolerance of Grand Duke Witold (Vytautas) for Brest in 1388, and for Grodna in 1389 (like many great historically Lithuanian cities, they are not part of today’s’ Republic of Lithuania which is only the “far west” of the old Grand Duchy, and indeed, of the territory of Jewish Lithuania, known in Yiddish as Líte, in traditional Lithuanian Ashkenazic Hebrew as Líto, and in modern Hebrew as Líta).

By the seventeenth century, Lithuanian Jews — the Litvaks (Yiddish Lítvakes), as they are known, were becoming famous in the Jewish world for a rigorous devotion to scholarship, education, and precision in Talmudic and rabbinic studies. Eventually they also became known for their specific dialect of Yiddish, known as Litvish, and in Yiddish folklore, they have been thought of as poor, honest and upright but cold and humorless, stubborn and obsessed with learning ever more facts and getting to the bottom of every issue and mystery.

By the eighteenth century, Vilna had become the world center for traditional rabbinic scholarship, in no small measure because of the life and work of the Gaon of Vilna, Eylióhu ben Shlóyme-Zálmen (Elijah ben Solomon Zalman), who lived from 1720 to 1797. Shortly thereafter, the city became known as Yerusholáyim d’Líte (“Jerusalem of Lithuania”), or Jerusalem of the North. In the nineteenth century, Vilna also became the international center for exquisite rabbinic publishing.

The city was also a major center for the rise of modern Hebrew literature in the nineteenth century, attracting talent from the Lithuanian lands and beyond. It was a Litvak from further east, Eliezer ben Yehuda, who revived the Hebrew language after two thousand years of it not having been spoken in daily life.

In 1897, the Jewish Labor Bund, the major arm of the new Jewish socialism, was founded in an attic in Vilna. And a few years later, it became a major center of the opposing Zionist movement in Eastern Europe as well.

Shortly after the First World War, young researchers dedicated to the brand new field of Yiddish scholarship, converged on the city from all over the Litvak lands, and in 1925, the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research was founded on Great Pohulanka (today’s Basanavičiaus).

Today

Today’s Jewish community, comprised entirely of city dwellers, numbers just several thousand, most of them elderly. Some think it is heading for imminent demographic extinction. Nevertheless, it is a bustling and vibrant community, boasting middle aged artists, writers and musicians, and exhibiting a number of the unique classic traits of Lithuanian Jewry. The community’s elected chairman, Dr. Shimon Alperovitch, is a dynamic personality who fights many battles on behalf of his community. There are even two competing active synagogues (we recommend visiting both). There is still time to “inhale” authentic Lithuanian Jewish culture from sprightly seniors who are thrilled to impart it to visitors from faraway lands.

Jewish institutions and sites in today’s Vilnius include:

• The Jewish Community of Lithuania at Pylimo 4 (left entrance).
• the century-old Khór-shul (Choral Synagogue) at Pylimo Street 39.
• Chabad House which offers daily services, kosher food and holiday celebrations at Saltiniu Street 12.
• The Green House, a modest museum that is considered to be the only place in Lithuania where an accurate account of the Holocaust is provided.
• The Jewish Museum at Pylimo 4 (right entrance). Bookstore in the foyer.
• The Tolerance Center and Jewish Museum branch at Naugarduko 10. Books sold in the foyer.
• The Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University (Daukanto Courtyard).
• Various plaques and historic descriptions, mostly in the Old Town (the old Jewish quarter that became the Vilna Ghetto during the Holocaust years).

Literary Legacy

There is vast Lithuanian Jewish literature in all three Jewish languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Yiddish. Much of it remains to be discovered and studied.

Brief list of online resources

INTERNATIONAL:
Litvak section of JewishGen
JewishGen Shtetllinks
Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel
Lithuania section of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

IN LITHUANIA:
The Jewish Community of Lithuania
Chabad Lubavitch of Lithuania
Vilna Gaon Jewish Museum
Vilnius Yiddish Institute

Some online pieces by Dovid Katz:
Lithuania page of his website
Who is a Litvak?
Brief history of Jewish Lithuania
Excerpts from Lithuanian Jewish Culture
Seven Kingdoms of the Litvaks

For further reading:

Cohen, Israel.
1992       Vilna. Jewish Publication Society: Philadelphia & Jerusalem [photomechanical reprint of the 1943 edition].

Dawidowicz, Lucy S.
1989       From that Place and time. A Memoir. 1938 – 1947. W. W. Norton: New York & London.

Katz, Dovid
2004       Lithuanian Jewish Culture. Baltos Lankos: Vilnius.
2007       Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish. Basic Books: New York.
2008       Windows to a Lost Jewish Past: Vilna Book Stamps. Versus Aureus: Vilnius.
2009       Seven Kingdoms of the Litvak, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania: Vilnius.

Lempertas, Izraelis
2005       Litvakai, Versus aureus: Vilnius.

Levin, Dov
2000       The Litvaks. A Short History of the Jews in Lithuania. Yad Vashem: Jerusalem.

Liauška, Virgilijus
2007       XX a. Lietuvos žydų enciklopedinis žinynas. Musmirė: Vilnius.

Minczeles, Henri; Plasseraud, Yves; Pourchier, Suzanne
2008       Les Litvaks. L’héritage universel d’un monde juif disparu. La Découverte: Paris.

Puišytė, Rūta; Staliūnas, Darius
2007       (compilers), Jewish Life in Lithuania. Exhibition Catalogue. Second edition. Edited by               Jurijus Greismanas. Zara &Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum: Vilnius.

Sutton, Karen
2009       Massacre of Lithuania’s Jews. Lithuanian Collaboration in the Final Solution, 1941-1944. Gefen: Jerusalem.