THE GREAT RETURN PROPHECIZED

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

Making an Aliyah means going up;  rising spiritually in your thinking, understanding. To Jews  it means immigrating to Israel to live. Today we really go up, starting in a Jet Plane.    Long ago people braved it in ships.

The "Great Return of Jews" refers to the biblical prophecies, particularly from Isaiah and Ezekiel, that foretold the Jewish people would be regathered from their scattered positions around the world to their ancient homeland, Israel. 

While a previous return occurred after the Babylonian captivity, many interpretations, especially in Christian and Zionist thought, see the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent mass migrations of Jews to the land as the fulfillment of these prophecies, marking the "Great Return". 

Way back in 1121, some 300 Jews went to Palestine from France and England. Life was unbearable for them in France and England. England expelled the Jews in 1290 which lasted for 365 more years till 1656. France has expelled its Jewish population multiple times, with key expulsions occurring in 1182 (under Philip Augustus), 1306 (under Philip IV), and 1394 (under Charles VI). Jews were also targeted during World War II by the Vichy regime and the German occupiers, leading to deportations to concentration and extermination camps.  

In 1267 Nahmanides and Obadiah of Bertinoro in 1488 went to Palestine and were both followed by groups of disciples;  while as a result of the Spanish expulsion in 1492 (when Columbus sailed the ocean blue), many Sephardi Jews,  including an important kabbalistic circle,  entered the country of Palestine.  In 1564 was Joseph Nasi's resettlement attempt which had brought groups from Italy.  

Finally, while in 1700, 1,500 Jews arrived from Eastern Europe in response to Rabbi Judah Hasid's call.  In the latter 18th century, there was a considerable number of both Hasidim and followers of the Vilna Gaon. Approximately 511 disciples of the Vilna Gaon, along with their families, followed him to Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) in the years 1808–1810, a significant aliyah movement that took place a decade after his death. While the Gaon himself promoted immigration to Israel, it was his disciples who made the journey, fulfilling his wish and bolstering the Jewish community in what was then Ottoman Palestine.   

In the 30 years (1850-1880) preceding  the BILU (Bet Yaakov lekhu ve-nelkhah) or "Oh house of Jacob, come ye and let us go.", it is estimated that 20,000-30,000 Jews settled in Palestine.  Organized mainly and influenced by Zionism, this began in 1882. 

This was the 1st Aliyah (1882-1903) which started under the attacks of Russian pogroms and was led by the BILU (It was the first modern Zionist pioneering movement founded at Kharkov by Jewish students reacting against the wave of Russian pogroms). Several branches of BILU numbered 525 members, with only a few actually going to Palestine, for it was a risky scary move.  

The first group was made up of 15 men and women who reached the town of Jaffa in the summer of 1882 an the others, later that year.  They experienced severe hardship.  Some of them settled on the land in different colonies and others went to Jerusalem to master handicrafts.  They came with their visions of social reform.  Guess what!  It antagonized various circles of Hoveve Zion but they received support from Jehiel Michael Pines who urged them to settle the colony of Gedera by 1884.  

So, in 1882, 300 families and additional smaller groups arrived from Russia, 450 pioneers from Romania, and a few dozen from the Yemen.

There was a conference held in 1884 by Hoveve Zion to coordinate immigration which resulted in the KATTOWITZ CONFERNCE.  The Turkish authorities tried to create difficulties for them and an increasing number of AGRICULTURAL SETTLEMENTS were founded  

Persecutions kept happening in Europe  in 1890 which sent thousands of Russian Jews to Palestine.  The number got smaller during the rest of the decade.  About 25,000 Jews immigrated during the 1st Aliyah, but a number subsequently also emigrated.  They had gone from cold Russia to hot hot Palestine with Turkish guards.  

The 2nd Aliyah (1904-1914) ended with WWI's beginning.  Olim from Russia kept coming, especially from Kishinev and Homel pogroms and the failure of the 1905 revolution in Russia.   Many of these newcomers were motivate by socialist idealism.  35,000-40,000 Jews entered during this period, many from eastern Europe and oriental countries.  A number left the country after a time but in 1914  the Jewish population was 90,000, falling to 50,000 by the end of World War I.  

The Balfour Declaration gave the impetus to the 3rd Aliyah (1919-1923) after the war. This had a youthful element that predominated with members of the HE-HALUTZ being prominent.  In 1920, free immigration was permitted to persons with means of subsistence, craftsmen, those joining their families, and Talmud students whose upkeep was assured.    In addition, a quota was fixed for immigrants whose maintenance was guaranteed by the Zionist Organization.  These regulations were modified the following year but the principle remained.  Annual immigration figures for 1920-1923 averaged 8,000 and at the end of the period the country's Jewish population was again about 90,000.  

80,000 more entered during the next period of the 4th Aliyah (1924-1931).  The largest majority came from 1924-1925.  The main source of Jews came from Poland where Jews suffered from fiscal restrictions.  Many of the newcomers were middle-class some being "capitalists", that is...owners of 500 lbs, and later 1,000 lbs. A number left, especially during the 1926 depression, but there were 190,000 Jews in Palestine in 1931.   

The 5th Aliyah that divides into two periods:

(1932-1935).  This was the beginning of the Nazi persecution,  when 144,000 immigrants of which 62,000 came in 1935, followed by economic prosperity.  During this time YOUTH ALIYAH was founded.  

(1936-1940) This coincided with Arab riots and economic depression, when Aliyah was restricted by the mandatory government of Great Britain;  first for economic and later for political reasons.  Nevertheless, in 1936 to 1938 there were 53,000 immigrants.  In 1939, the MacDonald White Paper recommended that only 75,000 more Jews be allowed admission during the next 5 years and then Aliyah would be dependent on Arab agreement.  However, 36,000 immigrants entered during the 2nd phase of the Fifth Aliyah, including 15,000 "illegal" immigrants meaning they lacked government permits in 1939-1940.

The 6th Aliyah (1941-1947) This was a period of struggle against restrictions on immigration.  Many tragic incidents were recorded  and during the latter years many intending immigrants were interned in Cyprus.  85,000 Jews arrived in this time, of whom 28,000 were "illegal immigrants." 

 There were 750,000 Jews in Israel when the state was established in 1948. Free Jewish immigration waas immediatlaey proclaimed and the period of mass Aliyiot was inauagurated.  The survivors of Nazi rule in Central Europe, the internees in Cyprus, the Jewries of countries behind the Iron Curtain, and the communities under Arab rule like Yemen, Iraq, were transferred to Israel under the auspices of the Jewish Agency's Immigration Department.  Jews have continued a steady immigration since that time again reaching large numbers in the early 1970's with my husband and I making Aliyah in 1980 with 20,428 others that year, mostly Russians  and since 1989 with mass Aliyah from the USSR, of course.  Total immigration figures for the period 1948-1990 were running from:

1948=101,819    and  1991=175,000.  Every year in-between was a 5 figured number.                          

                                             

Marco Rubio, Sec of State just gave a great speech about the Jews and their return and how they have lasted while the others who attacked and took the land have not existed till today.  It was an amazing speech !  Found on you tube.  

This was the time talked about in the Bible, the return of the Jews.  "It's a powerful reminder of the Judeo-Christian values that inspired America's Founding Fathers," he wrote, a reference to the site's biblical significance. The excavated road is believed to have been traversed by visitors to Judaism's Second Temple around the time of Jesus Christ.

The Trump administration's 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the subsequent move of the U.S. embassy to the city from Tel Aviv marked a departure from decades of American policy that Jerusalem's status should be determined through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The visit comes ahead of a meeting of world leaders at the United Nations in New York this month where Britain, France, Canada, Australia and Belgium are expected to formally recognize a Palestinian state, which Israel rejects.

Rubio has said that move will only encourage Israel to take its own actions to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state."  He's right.  Netanyahu has said that he will not stand for a Palestinian state next door to Israel.  

Tzvi Hirsch Mileikowsky and Vilna, The Jerusalem, of Lithuania

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

  Zvi Mileikowsky b; 1849 Vilna, Lithuania-d: June 24, 1934 Palestine

 Tzvi//Zvi  Mileikowsky of Belarus, Great grandfather of Benjamin Netanyahu .  It looks like he has blue eyes.  b; 1849 in Vilna Governorate, Lithuania of Russian Empire;  d: June 24, 1934 at age 84-85 in mandatory Palestine, buried in Herzliya, Israel, son of Chaim Halevi Mileikowsky and Pesia, who was born about 1820. Pesia was the daughter of Hirsh Ber and mother of Hirsch Halevi Mileikowsky and Chana Mileikowsky.     He had a daughter, Sarah טייטל (born Mileikowsky), born 1882.  Zvi's wife and mother of Sarah was Liba Gili.  Liba waw born in 1857.  Sarah married דוד טייטל.  They had one daughter: רחל שמרון (born טייטל).             

                 Russians:  small soldiers, stout hearts

The Governorate-General was established in November 1794 when territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania were incorporated into the Russian Empire following the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The core of the Governorate-General was the present-day territory of Lithuania and western Belarus. 

                                              

Russo-Polish War

In 1794–1797, the Governorate-General was composed of two governorates, Vilna Governorate and Slonim Governorate, which were merged into the Lithuania Governorate by Paul I of Russia. After his assassination, the governorate was again divided into Vilna and Grodno Governorates. In 1834, Kovno Governorate was formed from the seven western powiats of the Vilna Governorate.   The Vilna Governorate or Government of Vilnius was a governorate of the Russian Empire created after the Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.   

 Before World War II, Vilnius was one of the largest Jewish centers in Europe. Its Jewish influence has led to its nickname "the Jerusalem of Lithuania". Napoleon called it "the Jerusalem of the North" as he was passing through in 1812. 

The city was called Vilna and Jews lived here since the end of the 15th century but were banished in 1527 by Sigismund I at the request of the burghers.  A number returned but were the victims of a riot in 1592.  The following year, Jews were formally allowed to settle, acquire houses, and lend money.

In 1633, permission was granted to trade in precious stones, meat,, and livestock and to be craftsmen.  An anti-Jewish riot occurred in 1635, while in 1655, those members of the community who had not fled were massacred by the Cossack army.  

              Vilna Gaon:  Elijah ben Solomon b: 1720-d: 1797 

Elijah led the opposition to the Hasidim Jews in Lithuania, ordering their excommunication and the destruction of their literature.  That checked the spread of Hasidism in Lithuania. 

 When he was about 60, Elijah set out unaccompanied for Palestine but, for unexplained reasons, returned before reaching his destination. We know why;  it was most dangerous to travel abroad and especially dangerous to travel alone.  

This rabbi, The Vilna Gaon,  was a halakah expert, meaning he knew the laws of Judaism  very well.  He also opposed Haskalah, a movement that said to conform to Christian society in order to become Emancipated and to become a first class citizen like other people.  It meant radical assimilation and the death of Judaism, which is what is happening to a lot of Jews in the USA today.    

4,000 Jews were among the victims of famine in Vilna in 1709-1710.  From the 18th century, the city became a center of rabinical study, being dubbed the "Lithuanian Jerusalem', with its best-known scholar being Elijah ben Solomon/Zalman who was universally known as the Vilna Gaon.  Many Haskalah leaders also lived there.  Tzvi could possibly have been one of them.  His descendants fit the description.  

An important Hebrew press over several generations was that of the family ROMM, whose edition of the Talmud became standard.

Vilna was a Zionist center and also the birthplace of the BUND, which was the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, a Jewish Socialist Party, created in 1897.  The Jews suffered from famine under German rule in world War I and from a pogrom at the hands of the Polish troops in 1919. YIVO had its headquarters there from 1925 to 1941.  

                                             

Poland and Lithuania both claimed Vilna (Vilnius) after World War I. Polish forces occupied Vilna in 1920, and before the outbreak of World War II, the city of Vilna was part of northeastern Poland.

                                                                 

Old city of Vilnius became a Jewish ghetto during world war II, under German occupation

The Jewish population numbered  140,000 by the end of the 19th century, but by 1941 had dropped to 65,000 while gaining 15,000 refugees from Poland.  Zvi had died in 1934.  

The Germany established 2 ghettos in Vilna and 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941.  The 12,000 remaining were augmented in 1943  by transports from White Russian rural districts.   

Deportation to extermination camps began in August 1943, and there was some resistance.  When the Russians entered Vilna in 1944, they found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers.  Jews from other areas began converging on Vilna after the war.  Jews living in Vilna by 1988 amounted to 13,000.  

In 2009, Vilnius was the European Capital of Culture, together with Linz, Austria. 

In 2021, Vilnius was named among top-25 fDi's Global Cities of the Future – one of the most forward-thinking cities with the greatest potential in the World.               

Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and its largest city, with a population of 589,425 as of 2019. The population of Vilnius's functional urban area, which stretches beyond the city limits, is estimated at 706,832 (as of 2019), while according to the Vilnius territorial health insurance fund, there were 732,421 permanent inhabitants as of October 2020 in Vilnius city and Vilnius district municipalities combined.^[ Vilnius is in southeastern Lithuania and is the second-largest city in the Baltic states. It is the seat of Lithuania's national government and the Vilnius District Municipality.

This capital  of Vilnius is classified as a Gamma global city according to GaWC studies, and is known for the architecture in its Old Town, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.geni.com/people/Hirsch-%D7%A6%D7%91%D7%99-Halevi-Mileikovsky/6000000020213025020

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_Governorate-General

The Academic Wonder: The Gaon of Vilna

Nadene Goldfoot                               

                                                                 

Vilna Gaon, AKA Elijah ben Solomon Zalman 1720-1797
Leader of Mitnaggedim- antagonists of Hasidim 

Elijah ben Solomon Zalman was born in 1720 in Lithuania.  At the age of 20 till he was 25, he traveled among the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany, settling in Vilna, which now the country's capital. Here he taught and founded his own academy.  Since he was known as a Talmudist,  this is what he taught.  Elijah earned early fame for his scholarship, his knowledge about the Tanakh and Talmud. He was said to have a remarkable memory.  He loved science and studied astronomy and mathematics and even studied music.
                                                                         
The Gaon disagreed with other masters such as the Rambam and Rabbi Yosef Caro who wrote the Shulkhan Arukh.  Sometimes he revealed hidden meanings in the decisions of these scholars.  He even corrected the wording of the Jerusalem Talmud where he had found errors. Maybe that's why the Babylonian Talmud was the preferred one.
                                                                     

Vilna 1938 in Jewish ghetto or Jewish (Zydu) Vilna
175,000 Jews lived in Lithuania when WWII started. Russians deported 25,00 from
Lithuania and Latvia in July 1940.  Germans and Lithuanians massacred the rest
by 1943.  

He didn't go along with the prevailing view of when Redemption would take place or even how it would happen.  He felt he was living in the end of the Diaspora and the beginning of  the Messianic era.  This freed their fear of their interference of settling in Palestine or interfering, thinking it would only come about by a miraculous happening. To him, the commandment to settle in Eretz Yisrael was of central importance.  He was ahead of his time.
                                                                 
This famed student refused the rabbinic office and lived in seclusion.  He gained a wide reputation as a saint and a scholar . He was against Shabbetai Tzevi who had lived from 1626 to 1676 and thought himself to be the messiah from Smyrna.  Shabbetai was gaining followers.  He was one attracted to Kabbalah when young when he started showing manic-depressive traits.  These grew as he aged.  He was alive during the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648 and 1649 when he heard a heavenly voice say that he alone would redeem Israel. He got to Palestine only to be excommunicated by the rabbis of Jerusalem. 

Hasidism came about during this period which clashed with his expression of Judaism.  Elijah led an opposition to the Hasidim in Lithuania and ordered their excommunication and the destruction of their literature.   He evidently had the authority to do such a thing.   He viewed their teachings as heretical and that it was an apostasy.  His very obdurate attitude stopped the spread of Hasidism there in Lithuania. Hasidism was founded by the Baal Shem Tov in 1699 that went on till 1761 in Volhynia and Podalia and was an outgrowth of the depressed state of the eastern European Jewry  following the terrible Chmielnicki massacres and the Christian Church driven massacres of Jews and persecutions that were so common during the Crusader days.
                                                                 

"PROPHECY: Vilna Gaon forecast war between Recep Erdogan's Turkey and Vladimir Putin's Russia
 He warned Jews to start preparing for the end of days when Russia captured Crimea shortly before his death in 1797."

By the age of 60, Elijah made an attempt at aliyah alone,  but returned before reaching Palestine.  It was virtually an impossible feat to do in those days.  Palestine was under the Ottoman Empire then and had been since 1517.  This empire would hold onto Palestine until the end of WWI.
                                                                   

Instead, his reputations continued to grow and improve in the field halakhah (the law-the legal part of talmudic and Jewish literature).  His goal was to establish the critical texts of the authoritative rabbinic writings, and used emendations (corrections from errors he had found) .  In this endeavor, he avoid pilpul(something that many rabbinic scholars this type of discipline, saying that it gave a false perspective.  a type of clarification, a sharp and dialectic intellectual distinction used in talmudic study)  and based his views and ruling upon the plain meaning of the text.

He had great respect for the early kabbalistic works, and was most critical of philosophy.  However, secular studies were of great interest to him, especially if they threw light on the Torah, though he was against the Haskalah.(Enlightened ones)  This was a movement of spreading modern European culture among Jews, and was going on from about 1750 to 1880.  They believed that Jewish Emancipation would not come about until they were in intellectual and social conformity with the non-Jewish population and needed to become modern and westernized in their own Jewish religion first along with their customs.
                                                                       

 

One must remember that in this period, Jews were not citizens of any country.  They lived in a country at the whim of the dominating King.  They had been expulsed from Jerusalem in the year 70, European towns in 1096 by German Crusaders, England in 1290, France in 1306, Toledo, Spain in 1355, Hungary in 1349, Austria in 1421, Spain in 1492,  and LITHUANIA in 1495.  It never stopped.  Jews were expulsed from Sicily and Sardinia and also Portugal in 1497, the Island of Rhodes in 1502,  the kingdom of Naples in 1541, and  Russia in 1727 when he was only 7 years old. It continued among other nations with the expulsion of 750,000 Jews from Russia having to re-settle in the Pale of Settlement from 1882 till 1890, of which was land including Lithuania, Latvia,  Poland and Ukraine.   Lithuania had been a part of Russia from 1795 till the end of World War I in 1918. At that time Lithuania was the center of  Haskalah.  It was during WWI that 100,000 Jew were expelled or forced to emigrate to the Russian interior.   At the war's end in 1918 till 1924, when Lithuania became independent,  Jews received national autonomy.  However, Vilna was given to Poland in 1919.   and by 1924, their autonomy was so weakened that it was only about religious matters.
                                                                               

Contains all the descendants

DNA's double helix

I note that this man didn't feel he had to be in agreement with everyone.  He was the original "stiff-necked" person, a man responsible for the correct understanding of our Torah who would remain faithful to it and to our law.  He was a thinker.  He had curiosity and didn't stop studying and learning.  He was humble.  I read that he wasn't impressed with his pedigree of being related to RASHI who had a wonderful family tree leading to King David of Israel. Elijah had a tree leading to RASHI.   He thought we should be spending our time studying Torah, not worrying about a pedigree.  However, Elijah passed away 221 years ago, and today science has advanced beautifully so that we can spend a modicum of time researching our DNA, keeping such a pursuit as a fantastic hobby and still keep everything we do in moderation.  We can make time today for both; studying the Torah and our pedigree, called our family tree.  It's something that binds us to our family and keeps us following the commandment to honor our mother and father.  I'm sure he would understand.  Learning about DNA and how we are put together only makes me more aware of the awesome depth of intelligence that has to be G-d to have created us.  We're at the point now of understanding much of it, and learning about codes being found in the Torah with computer programs.  Perhaps this is the time Elijah was talking about.  He loved astronomy.  Our DNA is as deep to understand as the universe must be.

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Elihahu's Branches by Chai;m Freedman
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/478555/world-war-3-russia-turkey-end-of-world-prophecy-200-years-ago-Vilna-Gaon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Crimean_Wars  Russian Crimea wars.
   1769: A winter raid into New Serbia. Several thousand were captured.^[12]

• 1774: Crimea became a Russian vassal.
• 1783: Crimea annexed by Russia.

                               

Center of Jewish Learning: Vilna, Lithuania

Nadene Goldfoot                                       

Today's Vilna, Lithuania reminds me so much of our own Portland, Oregon.
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania. With 542 932 inhabitants (2011), it is the largest city in the country. It lies at the mouth of the Vilnia in the Neris River in a wooded area just 40 km from the Belarusian border removed.

Jews were able to settle in Vilna, Lithuania at the end of the 15th  century.  By 1527 they were banished by Sigismund I because burghers insisted upon it.  Burghers were "citizens of a town or city, typically a member of the wealthy bourgeoisie."  

Some returned anyway after a spell, only to become victims of a riot in 1592.  This is more commonly known as a pogrom.  The next year, Jews were formally allowed to settle, acquire houses and then they practiced the only job they were allowed; lending money.  

Finally, in 1633, permission was granted to trade in precious stones, meat and livestock and to become craftsmen.  There was another anti-Jewish riot in 1635, a pogrom.  
                                                                   

Cossack on duty (portrayal of 16th-17th century), painting by Józef Brandt

In this same year of 1635, those Jews who had not fled were massacred by the Cossack army, another vicious pogrom.    

Then came the famine of 1709 that lasted through 1710.   4,000 Jews were among the victims of this famine.  
                                                                   

   
It was from the 18th century that Vilna became a center of rabbinical study and was called the Lithuanian Jerusalem.  It's best known scholar was Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, universally known as the VILNA GAON (1720-1797.  Many Haskalah leaders also lived there.  

A gaon was an intellectual leader of his people.  Sometimes, it even meant that they had considerable temporal power during the Babylonian Jewish community in the post-talmudic period from the 6th to 11th centuries.  Usually they were head of their academies, ancient institutions.

This was at the time of the use of the printing press.  Around the late 1430s, a German man named Johann Gutenberg  invented it.  A Hebrew press lasting over several generations belonged to the family of Romm in Vilna.It was Baruch ben Joseph Romm who died in 1841 who established it in Grodno 1789 but brought it to Vilna.    They printed an edition of the Talmud which became standard, called the Vilna Shass.  Family members kept it going and was active until after the outbreak of WWII.  They had printed the magnificent Babylonian Talmud of 1892.  

Vilna was a Zionist center and also the birthplace of the BUND.  This was a political party called the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland , and Russia.  It was the Jewish Socialist Party, founded in 1897, coming out of Russia from the end of the 1880s. 

WWI brought famine to the Jews under German rule and from a pogrom at the hands of the Polish troops in 1919. 

 YIVO was headquartered there from 1925 to 1941.  This was an institute founded in Vilna in 1925 for the scientific study of Jewish life throughout the world but with particular emphasis on the eastern European Jewry and its Yiddish-speaking heir on all continents.  By 1939, they had branches in 30 countries.  

At the end of the 19th century, the Jewish population of Vilna was 140,000.  The 2nd WW by 1941 saw it fall to 65,000 besides taking in 15,000 refugees from Poland.  The Germans created 2 ghettos in Vilna and 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941.  The 12,000 left were augmented in 1943 by transports from White Russian rural districts.  Deportation of taking Jews to extermination camps began in August 1943 but with some resistance.  When the Russians entered Vilna in 1944, they found 600 Jews hiding in the sewers.  Jews came to Vilna from other areas after the war.  

In 1988, Vilna's population reached 13,000.  By contrast, in 2011, Portland, Oregon's Jewish population reached 47,500.  It had doubled from 25,000.  Still, we Jews are only 2% of our USA's total population.  In the world population, Jews are less than 1% of the population.  
"There are about 14 million Jews in the world as of 2010; 6.2 million in Asia (including Israel), 5.5 million in America, two million in Europe and 100,000 in Africa. Out of the world's population of seven billion, the Jews are about 0.2%."
                                                            

My grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus, lived in Telsiai, Lithuania.  That 184 miles from Vilna.  Lazdijai, in Suwalki, Lithuania, was on the southwestern border with Poland and Poland took that town in another of their wars.  Our grandmother, Zlata Jermulowski was from there.  Lazdijai is only 79 miles from Vilna by flight.  

I've traced his Goldfus line back to 1730 in Telsiai, Lithuania finding Ionas (Jonah) Goldfus. 
Lazdey was established by King Zigmunt II August in 1570.  Until 1795 it was part of the Polish Lithuanian Kingdom.  

Telz was one of the oldest towns in Lithuania.  mentioned by Crusaders in 1320.  The latter half of the 15th century brought in merchants and artisans to a royal estate established there.  


Reference:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossacks
Book: Preserving Our Litvak Heritage-history of 31 Jewish communitites in Lithuania by Josef Rosin, Joel Alpert, editor, published by JewishGen,inc.  

A Thousand Years of Jewish Return to Palestine Before WWI

                                                                       

RASHI, Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki (b:1040 in Troyes, France-d: 1105)studied, lived in Rhineland, famous Jewish commentator 

                                                                           

The 10th century marked the Moslem conquest of the Middle East and Palestine.  It was also a time when the Karaite leaders (Jews who did not support the Oral Law-only Mosaic Law who broke off from mainstream in 8th century)  called for aliyah in Jerusalem.

In 1121, 300 Jews went to Palestine from France and England.  Nahmanides went in 1267 and Obadiah of Bertinoro went in 1488.  Both were followed by groups of disciples.  Then in 1492 saw many Sephardi Jews including an important kabbalistic circle moved to Palestine, mainly in Safad (Tzfat).  Joseph Nasi's resettlement attempt in 1564 brought groups from Italy, while in 1700, 1,500 arrived from Eastern Europe in response to Rabbi Judah Hasid's call.  In the end of the 18th century, there was an influx of both Hasidim and followers of the Vilna Gaon.  30 years (1850-1880)  before the Bilu (1st modern Zionist pioneering movement started in 1882 at Kharkov by Jewish students reacting against the wave of Russian pogroms.  , 20,000 to 30,000 Jews settled in Palestine.  That was the start of the 1st Aliyah which then started in 1882 to 1903 which started from going through the Russian pogroms and was led by the Bilu.  300 families and smaller groups came from Russia in 1882.  Also arriving were the 450 pioneers from Romania and a few dozen from Yemen.  The Turkish authorities didn't make it any easier.  More persecutions of Jews in Russia caused more to come in 1890 when thousands more entered.  By 1948, there were 750,000 Jews living in Israel when the state was re-born.

The 1st Bilu was made up of 15 men and women who reached Jaffa in the summer of 1882 and the others later that year.  They were true pioneers in a barren land. They went from cold Russia to hot Palestine.
                                                                         

Crusaders ruled the land and immigration was forbidden.  No Jew could legally or safely enter Palestine during that period.  Testing the waters, Yehuda "Judah Halevi, the greatest Hebrew poet of the exile, called for the Jews to immigrate, and many generations drew inspiration from his teaching.  He was killed soon after arriving in Jerusalem in 1141 by a Crusader whose horse had crushed him to death.  He was born in 1075 in Toledo, Spain, and lived in Cordova, a physician by profession, lived a life of affluence and honor.  .   and died 1141 by the Wall according to legend, or  in Alexandria, Egypt.

The Crusaders' grip on Palestine was over when 300 rabbis from France and England made aliyah in the year 1210 to help the Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Acre and Ramleh.
                                                                 

 
The Mongol invaders arrived a generation later who were the most destructive.  Here they had taken Baghdad.  After Baghdad, the Mongols continued on westward. They conquered Syria from the Ayyubids, with help from the Armenians and neutrality from the Crusaders. In Palestine they reached the extent of their conquests.
                                                                                 
Moses Nachmanides, AKA Ramban,  then made aliyah to Jerusalem and found only 2 Jews, father and son who were dyers.  Nevertheless, Moses had disciples who answered his call and they reestablished the community.  From 1267, he lived in Palestine, where he settled in Acre, reorganized the Jewish settlements and wrote his popular bible commentary with hits characteristic combination of rational interpretation and insistence on kabbalistic implications.  "Ramban became a practicing physician in his native town. However, he was the communal rabbi of Gerona at the same time, and later became the chief rabbi of the entire province of Catalonia.

For many years the Ramban lived in his native town, supporting himself as a physician, and devoting most of his time to the study of the Talmud and Kabalah, and to his literary work, writing commentaries on the Talmud. But in his declining days, when he was nearly seventy years old, his quiet life underwent a sudden change. An apostate Jew, masquerading as a devout Catholic, Paulus Christians, had challenged the Jews to a religious disputation."  He was the 2nd Spanish Jewish doctor who saw the need to return to the Jewish ancient homeland.  

                                                                           

Ship called a Cog in 1304. 

So, from the 12th century onward, Jews came to settle in Palestine.  Europe had become a purgatory for Jews,  This was during the Middle Ages and people were primitive when "Jews were subjected to the whole range of persecutions, from mass degradation to death after torture."  All travel was dangerous.
                   
The 13th, 14th and 15th centuries were very dangerous for Jews in Europe.  To go from Western Europe to Palestine was a heroic undertaking which most often ended in disaster.  Praying for the return to Zion was a dream of heaven.
                                                                       

Pope Nicholas V in 1447-gave Catholics what would become the Vatican Library and the Doctrine of Discovery – the right of Christians to take any non-Christian lands they “discover”. In “Dum diversas” (1452), to get Portugal interested in a crusade against the Turks, he allowed the Portuguese to put non-Christians Africans into “perpetual servitude”.

Popes ordered their followers to stop Jewish travel to Palestine.  In the 15th century, the Italian maritime states denied Jews the use of ships for getting to Palestine.  Jews had to end their project or make the whole journey by a roundabout land route and take on more dangers by going through Germany, Poland and Southern Russia or another route of going through the inhospitable Balkans and Black Sea crossing before reaching Turkey that was semi-safe.

In 1433, right after the ban against Jews traveling was imposed, Yitzhak Tsarefati urged Jews to come by way of Turkey.  Often, the journey took years! This was so the traveler could work at the stopping places to raise money for the next leg of his journey.  If Jews lived there, he would ask rich ones to finance his journey and share vicariously in the mitzvah (good deed) of his aliyah.
                                                                       

                                                                           

Christian pilgrims Siebald Rieter and Johann Tucker visited Jerusalem in 1479 .  They followed the path taken by a German Jew who had set out from Nuremberg and traveled to Posen, Poland (300 miles).  They went from Posen to Lublin, Poland (250 miles), then Lublin to Lvov in Galicia, now in Ukraine (120 miles), then Lvov to Khotin, Bessarabia, now Moldova (150 miles), and from Khotin to Akerman (150 miles) and from Akerman to Samsun, Turkey  (6 days), Samsun to Tokat, Turkey (6-7 days), Tokat to Aleppo, Syria (15 days), Aleppo to Damascus, Syria  (7 days), and finally-Damasuc to Jerusalem, Judah (6 days).  Aleppo came to have a very large Jewish community, larger than Damascus had.  After traveling 970 miles from Germany to get to Turkey, they had to travel another 41 days at least to get to Jerusalem.

How about the Ottoman Empire?  They held the land of Palestine for the past 400 years from about 1517.  They had encouraged Jewish immigration into their dominions.  A stream of immigrants moved to Palestine even though conditions in Europe made it possible for only a few Jews to get up and go before the call.
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Many who heeded the call were refugees from the Spanish Inquisition of 1492  All sorts of skilled Jews came; scholars, artisans and merchants.  The 16th century now had a new pulse into the Jewish life in Palestine.  The Empire wasn't doing so well and life there became harsher.  By the 17th century, rebelling Cossacks in 1648 and 49 started massacring Jews.  Those that could flee went to the nearest refuge which was in Western Europe and from there they made their way to Palestine.

That same generation saw Shabbetai Zevi b: 1626 in Smyrna and affected by Chmielnicki massacres of 1648-49 and was manic-depressive .   a self-appointed Messiah who compiled followers from the East and West.  People saw he wasn't able to take them magically to Palestine so they got there  by sea or by overland through Turkey and Syria.

The Ottoman Empire suffered from anarchy in the local administration, the degradations and exactions, plagues and pestilence and the ruin of the country continued in the 18th and into the 19th centuries.  Jews in Europe were doing worse than ever living in even greater poverty.  Groups massed together and came from Italy, Morocco, and Turkey.   Hasidim, disciples of the Baal Shem-Tov came from  Galicia and Lithuania.  Jews were dying in Palestine faster than immigrants could take their place.
                                                                     

       
By 1810, disciples of the Vilna Gaon had just immigrated and mentioned that "even in Palestine's ruin, there is none to compare with her, even in her desolation she is unequaled, in her silence there is none like her.  Good are her ashes and her stones."  They knew this was HOME.  These poor immigrants suffered from an earthquake, pestilence and murderous onslaught by marauding brigands.  Yet they or their children lived to see the beginnings of the modern restoration of the country.
                                                                     

Sir Moses Montefiore, a Jewish philanthropist from Britain had great plans to resettle Jews in their own homeland.  In 1869, moved a group of 7 Jews in Jerusalem and set up the 1st housing project outside the walls.  Each built a house among the rocks and jackals and it came to be called Nahlat Shiva (Estate of the 7).  Today it is the heart of downtown Jerusalem, bounded by the Jaffa Road between Zion Ssquare and the Bank of Israel.

In 1878 another group came across the mountains of Judea and set up the 1st modern Jewish agricultural settlement at Petah Tikva, which became the mother of the settlements.  8 years earlier, the 1st modern agricultural school in Palestine was opened at Mikveh Yisrael near Jaffa.  Thus the Jews were awakened to return to what had been their ancient home of Israel and Judah, called Palestine for almost 2,000 years since 135 CE by the Romans who had to fight 3 years to take Jerusalem again after taking it in 70 CE.  The Jewish General Bar Kokhba almost had won against the wily Romans.
                                                                             

Meanwhile, the newly formed Catholics thought it was their duty to enforce Jewish dispersion.  They could not stand the idea of Jews returning to their own land.  But, by 464 CE, the Emperor Julian announced his intention of rebuilding the Temple.  What a change of heart.  This was part of his apostasy.  Protestant sects had been forming and they all voiced a new chant of saying it was a Christian act now to help the Jewish people regain its homeland.  Maybe this was because it was in the secure hands of the Ottoman Turks, and there was no way of carrying out this new 180 degree change of objectives towards Jews.
                                                                             

As luck would have it, Christians turned 180 degrees again in the early 19th century.  Napoleon Bonaparte had something to do with it.  He had a plot of conquest of Palestine in 1799 and had promised to restore the country to the Jews!  Somehow he lost the battle and didn't take over Palestine.  He did ring a bell in everyone's minds, though of the idea of restoration of Jews to Palestine.
                                                                         

1865 picture of Lord Lindsay and son Ludovic

Lord Lindsay, Lord Shaftesbury who learned Hebrew, Lord Palmerston, Disraeli, Lord Manchester, George Elliot, Holman Hunt, Sir Charles Warren, Hall Caine, all spoke, wrote, organized support and submitted practical projects of ways Britain might help the return of the Jewish people to Palestine.  Some even wanted the British government to buy Palestine from the Turks to give it to the Jews to rebuild!

     Lord Lindsay wrote: "The Jewish race, so wonderfully preserved, may yet have another stage of national existence opened to them, may one more obtain possession of their native land...
    The soil of "Palestine still enjoys her sabbaths, and only waits for the return of her banished children, and the application of industry, commensurate with her agricultural capabilities, to burst once more into universal luxuriance, and be all that she ever was in the days of Solomon."

1845 and Sir George Gawler called for replenishment of the deserted towns and fields of Palestine with the energetic people whose warmest affections are rooted in the soil (Jews).  How did they know anything?  They didn't have cell phones in those days, or even telephones.  It was in 1839 that the Church of Scotland sent 2 missionaries, Andrew Bonar and Robert Murray M'Cheyne, to report on the conditions of the Jews in their land.  The newspaper, The Times urged the Jews to take possession of the land.  If they needed another Moses, they supposed one would appear.  They were very naive. Many pitched in with more thoughts and ideas.
                                                                   

Benjamin Disraeli, twice voted a British Prime Minister, b: 1804 to Jewish Italian parents, baptized to Christianity in 1817, -d: 1881. 

Along came the Crimean War which pushed all these great ideas back.  1878 saw the Prusso-Turkish War, and the Congress of Berlin tried to find a peaceful solution.  Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin Disraeli) and Lord Salisbury were proposing to declare a protectorate over Syria and Palestine and that Palestine would be restored by the Jews.  The reports were unfounded but the political planners in Britain had this in their minds.  The newspaper, Spectator, on May 10, 1879 criticized Beaconsfield for not having adopted it and wrote:  "If he had freed the Holy Land and restored the Jews, as he might have done instead of pottering about Roumelia  (today southern Bulgaria) and AFGHANISTAN,  he would have died as Dictator."  Roumelia was a historical term describing the area now referred to as the Balkans or the Balkan Peninsula when it was administered by the Ottoman Empire.
                                                                       

How about the Moslems of the Middle East?  In 1831, Palestine was conquered from the Turks by Mehemet Ali, who ruled it from Egypt for the next  9 years.  This was when Sir Moses Montefiore was busy making plans for Palestine and the Jews.  He visited Mehemet Ali in Egypt in 1839 and presented his ideas of large scale Jewish settlement to regenerate Palestine.  MEHEMET ALI ACCEPTED IT.    Right in the middle of getting in the practical details, Ali was forced to leave Palestine and the land returned to Turkish rule.

40 years later the Turks were presented with the same plans of Jewish return.  Laurence Oliphant was the man who worked on these newer plans.  He showed the Turks that this idea was in their own interest as well as in Britain's benefit to restore Jews to Palestine.   He had plans for Gilead to have a settlement and it was Beaconsfield who  presented it.

The Sultan liked the plan, The Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury and even the Prince of Wales (later the King Edward VII)  and the French government as well wanted it to happen.but in  1880, a British election caused Beaconsfield to lose his position and he was replaced by William Ewart Gladstone, who was considered an enemy by the Turks.  Jews settling in Palestine was to become an idea to be shelved.

Jewish groups were then born and a wave of Jewish immigration took place.  The First Aliyah was in 1882, but remember, movements of Jews returning started in 1121.  Theodore Herzl's place in history was still 15 years away when the World Zionist Organization would be developed.  After all this, how did the mandate of Great Britain, given to them on April 24, 1920 at the San Remo Conference, ever get so sidetracked from England's main goal of settling Palestine with Jews once again.  The answer is:  Oil in the Middle East for Britain's use.  They gave away 80% of the Jewish land to Jordan, and then tried to divide the 20% left between  the Palestinian Jews and  Palestinian Arabs to make 2 states.  The Arabs declined.  They didn't want half.  They wanted all of it.  Today many of those Arabs and their descendants live in Jordan.  Abbas and his Palestinian Fatah members (PA), are not negotiating at the present.  They are trying to start the 3rd Intefada.

Resource: BATTLEGROUND, fact and fantasy in Palestine by Samuel Katz, p 100-105.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://lostislamichistory.com/mongols/
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111857/jewish/Ramban.htm
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11097.html
http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/shabbetai-zevi/
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Zvi.html
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Benjamin+disraeli