Nadene Goldfoot
From the 18th century onwards, Vilna, Lithuania was called the Lithuanian Jerusalem. Napoleon named it "the Jerusalem of the North.
Vilna many years ago, the Jewish cultural and religious center
This is why my paternal grandmother was so proud to have come from Lithuania. It was a center of Jewish learning. She couldn't read or write but wanted us all to know that she was a LITVAK. She came from Lazdijai and her husband, our grandfather, came from Telsiai (Telz) , Lithuania.
It's best-known scholar,Elijah ben Solomon Zalman was universally known as the Vilna Gaon, with Gaon meaning: genius. Thus, this became a center because of him.
Many Haskalah (Enlightenment Movement) leaders lived here., starting in 1832 with Judah Jeiteles, a movment originating in 1750 to 1880 believing that Jewish Emancipation needed intellectual and social conformity with the non- Jewish population and that the this could be achieved by modernizing and westernizing the Jewish religion and customs including the active literary use of the Hebrew language. It tried to mediate between Orthodoxy and radical assimilation that was happening in Germany. The more German Jewry modernized, the more anti-Semitism grew. Perhaps it was because Germans became more aware of Jews as competition in all things, especially in business. This movement was very challenging to Judaism, but came through a desperation of wanting to be treated humanely, as much as any other people.
Hibath Zion Movement (Love of Zion, Zionist movement starting in Russia in 1882 from an 1881 pogrom-slogan-TO PALESTINE which aroused tremendous enthusiasm and societies were organized in Russia, Poland, Romania and England. Students bought land in Palestine, religious leaders stood aside. Opposition came from assimilated Jews of Russian Jewry and those in Western Europe-notice-they hadn't been present in the many pogroms. One can say that hateful and harmful pogroms of eastern Europe caused the re-population of Jews into Palestine with the 5 different aliyah populations.
An important Hebrew press of over several generations was that of the family ROMM, whose edition of the Talmud became standard, called the Vilna Shass.
Vilna was a Zionist center.
Vilna was the birthplace of the BUND (General Federation of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, a Jewish Socialist Party founded at a conference in Vilna in 1897 a trade union and political party, struggling for better working conditions.
Lithuania itself was known for its GREAT YESHIVA OF SLABODKA.
The smaller towns of Telzh, where our paternal grandfather was from, Ponivezh and Kelem were where hundreds of foreign students studied.
The Salant community where from here that the Musar (Ethics) Movement began and spread from Rabbi Yisrael Salanter (Israel Lipkin 1810-1883), whose principles were based on the idea of intellectual activity and knowledge in order to correct and improve the behavior of the individual. He had set up special houses for the study of ethical literature and published a journal (Tevunah) of the ideas found. The movement spread among the Torah students of Lithuania.
Populating Jews in Lithuania and especially in the city of Vilna all started in the 14th century by the invitation of the Grand Dukes Gediminas and Vytautas (Witold).
In 1388, one year after the Christian-Catholic religion was introduced to Lithuania, the Duke granted the Jews a preferred civil status and incomparable BILLS OF RIGHTS in many different areas such as protecting their bodies and property; freedom to maintain their religious rituals; significant alleviation in the field of commerce, and money lending-being permitted in relation to Christians. There was a particular regulation to protect Jews against blood libels (accusation of using blood of child in the making of matzos) .
Then, in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue-the Spanish Inquisition took place against Jews which affected Jews throughout the whole world.
By 1495, only 3 years later when all Jews were kicked out of Spain unless they converted to Catholicism, the Grand Duke Alexandear expelled all the Jews of Lithuania, then numbering more than 6,000 Jews and even confiscated their hard-earned property. 8 years later he became King of Poland, and he allowed Lithuanian Jews to return to their homes and gave them back part of the property. Most privileges were left as they had been given to the Jews originally, meaning nothing since they hadn't protected them but for a long period they were of some help in preserving the legal, civil and economic status of Jews.
The Christian townspeople of Lithuania were mostly Germans that had moved to this new country. They had organized themselves into merchant and artisan unions and had the MAGDEBURG RIGHTS from Germany and in their eyes,Jews were competitors. They had an edict written up forbidding Jews into Vilna or to trade in this city. For hundreds of years, the townspeople threw insults at Jews including students of theological seminars (Yeshivot). The NW part of Lithuania had been settled by ethnic Lithuanian tribes and had accepted Christianity much later in 1413, so did not react to Jews in this anti-Semitic way.
"Jews and Germans were sometimes competitors in those cities. Jews lived under privileges that they carefully negotiated with the king or emperor. They were not subject to city jurisdiction. These privileges guaranteed that they could maintain communal autonomy, live according to their laws, and be subjected directly to the royal jurisdiction in matters concerning Jews and Christians. One of the provisions granted to Jews was that a Jew could not be made Gewährsmann, that is, he could not be compelled to tell from whom he acquired any object which had been sold or pledged to him and which was found in his possession. Other provisions frequently mentioned were a permission to sell meat to Christians, or employ Christian servants."
These special privileges all came about because of the terrible anti-Semitic treatment Jews suffered in the first place by these new Christians. They realized they couldn't begin to enter a place unless the powers that invited them gave them protection from the anti-Semitic masses.
In looking at it's history, Jews had come to this Vilna at the end of the 15th century, but suffered from banishment in 1527 by Sigismund I at the request of the burghers. Jews expelled went to nearby towns such as Zamut where they found other Jews in the business of CUSTOMS AND COLLECTION for the government. A number of Jews had returned later to Vilna but were the victims of a riot in 1592. The following year, Jews were formally allowed to settle, acquire houses, and lend money since that's about all Jews were allowed to do all over Europe because of Christian prejudice to them entering their closed labor groups.
This was a country of feudalism. Most made their living from farming but Jews were not allowed to own land. Some Jews then became peddlers, or dealt with import and export of agricultural products.
By 1633, permission was granted to trade in precious stones, meat, and livestock and to be craftsmen. An anti-Jewish riot took place in 1635, and while in 1655 those members of the community who had not fled from such anti-Semitism were massacred by the Cossack army.
4,000 Jews were among the victims of famine in Vilna in 1709 to 1710.. This is the century that the city became the great center of rabbinical study, called the Lithuanian Jerusalem.
German rule in Lithuania in World War I caused famine for the Jews as well as the Gentiles. An extra suffering they endured was that of of a pogrom at the hands of the Polish troops in 1919 after the war.
YIVO (YIVO (Yiddish: ייִוואָ, [jiˈvɔ]), established in 1925 in Wilno in the Second Polish Republic (now Vilnius, Lithuania) as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish: ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט,, Yiddish Scientific Institute), is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish." It had its headquarters there from 1925 to 1941, the beginnings of the 2nd World War.
The Jewish population of Lithuania on the eve of the Shoah (Holocaust) was about a quarter of a million including the Vilna region and the refugees from Poland .. This amounted to around 0.9% of world Jewry during the 20 years of Independent Lithuania. It had been recognized for a long time as the specific religious-cultural unit in comparison to neighboring Jewish centers of Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. Today Jews make up only about 0.02% of the world population.
The Jewish population number in Vilna was 140,000 at the end of the 19th century, but by 1941 had dropped to 65,000 which included an additional 15,000 refugees from Poland. The Germans created 2 ghettos in Vilna, where 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941. The 12,000 remaining were augmented in 1943 to transports from White Russian rural districts.
By August of 1943, deportation began and Jews were taken to extermination centers. There was some resistance.
The Russians entered Vilna in 1944 and found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers. Jews from other areas began converging on Vilna after the war and the Jewish population in 1988 had built up to 13,000.
Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Preserving Our Litvak Heritage, a history of 31 Jewish communities in Lithuania by Josef Rosin; Joel Alpert, Editor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/05/center-of-jewish-learning-vilna.html
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-happened-to-lithuanian-jews.html
 |
| Autumn shopping center in the main street of Vilnius, Gediminas Avenue today |
Vilna many years ago, the Jewish cultural and religious center
This is why my paternal grandmother was so proud to have come from Lithuania. It was a center of Jewish learning. She couldn't read or write but wanted us all to know that she was a LITVAK. She came from Lazdijai and her husband, our grandfather, came from Telsiai (Telz) , Lithuania.
It's best-known scholar,Elijah ben Solomon Zalman was universally known as the Vilna Gaon, with Gaon meaning: genius. Thus, this became a center because of him.
Many Haskalah (Enlightenment Movement) leaders lived here., starting in 1832 with Judah Jeiteles, a movment originating in 1750 to 1880 believing that Jewish Emancipation needed intellectual and social conformity with the non- Jewish population and that the this could be achieved by modernizing and westernizing the Jewish religion and customs including the active literary use of the Hebrew language. It tried to mediate between Orthodoxy and radical assimilation that was happening in Germany. The more German Jewry modernized, the more anti-Semitism grew. Perhaps it was because Germans became more aware of Jews as competition in all things, especially in business. This movement was very challenging to Judaism, but came through a desperation of wanting to be treated humanely, as much as any other people.
Hibath Zion Movement (Love of Zion, Zionist movement starting in Russia in 1882 from an 1881 pogrom-slogan-TO PALESTINE which aroused tremendous enthusiasm and societies were organized in Russia, Poland, Romania and England. Students bought land in Palestine, religious leaders stood aside. Opposition came from assimilated Jews of Russian Jewry and those in Western Europe-notice-they hadn't been present in the many pogroms. One can say that hateful and harmful pogroms of eastern Europe caused the re-population of Jews into Palestine with the 5 different aliyah populations.
Vilna was a Zionist center.
 |
| Bund's way of demonstrating a point with their bodies |
Vilna was the birthplace of the BUND (General Federation of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, a Jewish Socialist Party founded at a conference in Vilna in 1897 a trade union and political party, struggling for better working conditions.
Lithuania itself was known for its GREAT YESHIVA OF SLABODKA.
The smaller towns of Telzh, where our paternal grandfather was from, Ponivezh and Kelem were where hundreds of foreign students studied.
The Salant community where from here that the Musar (Ethics) Movement began and spread from Rabbi Yisrael Salanter (Israel Lipkin 1810-1883), whose principles were based on the idea of intellectual activity and knowledge in order to correct and improve the behavior of the individual. He had set up special houses for the study of ethical literature and published a journal (Tevunah) of the ideas found. The movement spread among the Torah students of Lithuania.
In 1388, one year after the Christian-Catholic religion was introduced to Lithuania, the Duke granted the Jews a preferred civil status and incomparable BILLS OF RIGHTS in many different areas such as protecting their bodies and property; freedom to maintain their religious rituals; significant alleviation in the field of commerce, and money lending-being permitted in relation to Christians. There was a particular regulation to protect Jews against blood libels (accusation of using blood of child in the making of matzos) .
Then, in 1492, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue-the Spanish Inquisition took place against Jews which affected Jews throughout the whole world.
 |
| Lithuanian King Vytautas The Great Aleksander (Kiejsturowicz Giedyminowicze) 1350-1430 |
The Christian townspeople of Lithuania were mostly Germans that had moved to this new country. They had organized themselves into merchant and artisan unions and had the MAGDEBURG RIGHTS from Germany and in their eyes,Jews were competitors. They had an edict written up forbidding Jews into Vilna or to trade in this city. For hundreds of years, the townspeople threw insults at Jews including students of theological seminars (Yeshivot). The NW part of Lithuania had been settled by ethnic Lithuanian tribes and had accepted Christianity much later in 1413, so did not react to Jews in this anti-Semitic way.
"Jews and Germans were sometimes competitors in those cities. Jews lived under privileges that they carefully negotiated with the king or emperor. They were not subject to city jurisdiction. These privileges guaranteed that they could maintain communal autonomy, live according to their laws, and be subjected directly to the royal jurisdiction in matters concerning Jews and Christians. One of the provisions granted to Jews was that a Jew could not be made Gewährsmann, that is, he could not be compelled to tell from whom he acquired any object which had been sold or pledged to him and which was found in his possession. Other provisions frequently mentioned were a permission to sell meat to Christians, or employ Christian servants."
These special privileges all came about because of the terrible anti-Semitic treatment Jews suffered in the first place by these new Christians. They realized they couldn't begin to enter a place unless the powers that invited them gave them protection from the anti-Semitic masses.
 |
| Vilna, Jewish quarter, 1900s. |
This was a country of feudalism. Most made their living from farming but Jews were not allowed to own land. Some Jews then became peddlers, or dealt with import and export of agricultural products.
By 1633, permission was granted to trade in precious stones, meat, and livestock and to be craftsmen. An anti-Jewish riot took place in 1635, and while in 1655 those members of the community who had not fled from such anti-Semitism were massacred by the Cossack army.
4,000 Jews were among the victims of famine in Vilna in 1709 to 1710.. This is the century that the city became the great center of rabbinical study, called the Lithuanian Jerusalem.
 |
| Vilna Jewish ghetto |
YIVO (YIVO (Yiddish: ייִוואָ, [jiˈvɔ]), established in 1925 in Wilno in the Second Polish Republic (now Vilnius, Lithuania) as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (Yiddish: ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט,, Yiddish Scientific Institute), is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish." It had its headquarters there from 1925 to 1941, the beginnings of the 2nd World War.
 |
| Nearby Kovno undergoing massacre on June 27, 1941 |
The Jewish population number in Vilna was 140,000 at the end of the 19th century, but by 1941 had dropped to 65,000 which included an additional 15,000 refugees from Poland. The Germans created 2 ghettos in Vilna, where 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941. The 12,000 remaining were augmented in 1943 to transports from White Russian rural districts.
By August of 1943, deportation began and Jews were taken to extermination centers. There was some resistance.
The Russians entered Vilna in 1944 and found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers. Jews from other areas began converging on Vilna after the war and the Jewish population in 1988 had built up to 13,000.
Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Preserving Our Litvak Heritage, a history of 31 Jewish communities in Lithuania by Josef Rosin; Joel Alpert, Editor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdeburg_rights
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2018/05/center-of-jewish-learning-vilna.html
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-happened-to-lithuanian-jews.html
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