Jews of Lithuania - Episode 1
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- Опубліковано 13 жов 2024
- The Litvaks
Join Shirley Lee as we journey to the land of the Litvaks. Even if your ancestors didn’t come from Lithuania, you, too, may be a Litvak! Be an armchair spectator as I help write the first Lithuanian Torah in almost 80 years.
Visit one of the best -preserved wooden synagogues in Eastern Europe.
Attend a most unusual Rosh Hashanah service in Kovno.
Celebrate Shabbat at a Jewish preschool.
Share my Lithuanian cousin’s memories of living as a Jew under Soviet Occupation.
In four sessions, we will explore:
1. The history of the Litvaks up to the eve of WWII
2. The three major Lithuanian cities: Vilna, Kovno, and Klaipeda
3. The outlying areas of Lithuania: shtetls, cemeteries, and even a castle
4. The Holocaust, Soviet Occupation, and the good deeds of righteous gentiles
To register for this class, please sign up here: www.templesanj...
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Most interesting and enjoyable. My mothers family was from Shavel.
nice and educational
Thanks so much for a really interesting presentation and I enjoyed the Q&A as well. Ilana Gordon (South Africa)
Thanks a lot very educational.
Glad this video was still available - thank you Shirley; it was very educational for me and may some day visit Lithuania. Look forward to the next presentation.
This is all pretty interesting. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to visit Lithuania, after all if my mom's folks were so desperate to get out of there, why go back?
Another way my own katz chassidic grandfather showed tolerance , was to encourage his grandchildren , girls and boys to study , or make their own decisions about careers. Four of five of his grandchildren children were educated at the Magnus Vytautis university in kovna , the capital. They boarded there with Rakishker families. A strong sense of generosity . Of course , there were exceptions . Many were related and helped one another., whether secular or religious . Though they were all taught Tanach and Talmud at a high standard . When the mitnaggid shul burned down, they attended the chassidic shul. ( did not “ look down “ on them. ) . A sizeable number of mitnaggid Jews left for the USA early in the 1880s , but chassidic families left too. In t,he USA they usually became conservative rabbis (not reform .) Most Jews were literate , knew Lithuanian and Russian as well as Yiddish and were taught Hebrew as well in tarbut schools . My mother remembered reading letters , official documents , newspapers in Lithuanian or Russian to neighbours . My great grandfather attended the opening of the railways when he sat on the podium with the president . The railways brought progress .My mother and her siblings travelled to university by train. But were required to have their internal passports / ID books stamped by the police , did not have freedom of movement ( like black South Africans in the apartheid years ). And in our large family Bundists / socialists / communists ( forbidden) , zionists and anti-zionists , writers and artists . not everyone studied Tanach or received yeshiva training , some played sport , (Maccabee ) had a wide range of youth moments. My grandfather had been in an Jewish orphanage in Birzh , also served on the local board of the Volksbank, ( distributing money from the Joint) communal firemen., members of guilds like cobblers , and horse traders. They did not depend on the Lithuanians for communal help. And many were educated in gymnasia and also Tarbut schools. Yet were integral , as you said , to trade and commerce, hostelry where they hosted Lithuanians on market days. They had their own institutions . But the pharmacists and medics served everyone . and were more than 50% of the population . Yet more our families perished in Lithuania . And I don’t think historians believe today there were many “official “ pogroms either between the wars .
I’d like you to know that my Rabbinical family in Rakeshik/ Rakiskis were Chassidim - and exceptionally tolerant . The katz tradition
Went back at last 200 years . My great grandfather Reb Bazalel Katz studied in Volozhen and Mir , but Rakeshik was an official capital in the north east . He was happy for his daughter Asne to marry a mitnaggid . Ironically Rabbonim did not pay taxes , so there are no records of them in the archives.
My katz family , included Shalom Aleichem and those who changed their names mid 1950s, so there were Kaplan’s and Kagans and Rabinowitz as well as Katzes who studied maths in Moscow ! Spent his life publishing at the Vilna press despite his being a chassid! Their were only three of four shtetlach , yet were responsible for many innovation in tradition, for example the mustard movement . Thx for your simplification of years of anti-semitism from locals .
A recent lecture at UCL revealed the unvarnished truth of how the locals resented it when they were challenged by those who benefited materially from occupying Jewish houses, and when the returning survivors wanted their children and property buried in the garden! It’s a complex set of reasons . Best, and thanks, sorrel