The Litvaks

The Litvaks PDF Author: Dov Levin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9789653080843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Lithuania was home to the great yeshivot of Jewish learning, as well as nationalistic movements such as Hovevei Zion, the Bund, and the Mizrachi. The 20th century saw the establishment of a modern Hebrew Zionist educational system in the period between the two world wars.This volume includes special features such as a bibliography in seven languages, a lexicon of place names in both official modern transcription and the traditional spelling used by Jewish residents; statistical tables; facsimiles of documents, and unique photographs many of which appear in print for the first time.

The Litvaks

The Litvaks PDF Author: Dov Levin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 9789653080843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Lithuania was home to the great yeshivot of Jewish learning, as well as nationalistic movements such as Hovevei Zion, the Bund, and the Mizrachi. The 20th century saw the establishment of a modern Hebrew Zionist educational system in the period between the two world wars.This volume includes special features such as a bibliography in seven languages, a lexicon of place names in both official modern transcription and the traditional spelling used by Jewish residents; statistical tables; facsimiles of documents, and unique photographs many of which appear in print for the first time.

The Litvak Legacy

The Litvak Legacy PDF Author: Mark N. Ozer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781436367790
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 676

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Book Description
Between the 1880s and the 1920s a million Litvak' Jews migrated throughout the world from Lita,' their home in the western edge of the Russian Empire. This book is the story of the legacy of that migration. The questions answered are: Where did they come from? How did they get to where they are? What are some of the lasting values they(we) share the world over? In what way do we differ depending on the countries in which various members of my family have lived? One common response in a course based on this material was "I now know why my family was the way it was." The book will enable you to better know why you are the way you are and enable your children and grandchildren to understand their background. It is my thesis that there is a distinctive Litvak cultural heritage that can be traced through the maintenance of that culture through the several generations and the significant impact it has had on the countries in which the immigrants settled. The Jewish inhabitants of Lita were called Litvaks' (Litvakes in Yiddish), to distinguish them from non-Jewish Lithuanians as well as from other Jews. In their home, they formed a distinct culture that differed in its variant of their language of Yiddish as well as the character of their religion. As followers of the Vilna Gaon in the late 18th century, in opposition to the spread of Hassidism,' Litvaks' maintained a unique commitment to rabbinical Judaism and intellectual study. They were also unusual in the degree to which arduous and sharp-witted' Talmudic study was widespread. The religious tradition continued to evolve in Lita. In response to the challenges of both Hassidism and the Haskalah (Enlightenment), the ethically oriented musar' movement became widespread within the Lithuanian yeshivot. Orthodox Judaism' evolved out of traditional Judaism. However, relatively few of the traditionally religious chose to emigrate. In the late 19th century, particularly centered in Vilna, Lita was a major source of the Jewish responses to modernity such as socialism and the recognition of the Yiddish language as well as modern Hebrew and Zionism. Lita was the greenhouse' of secularism. The literary and political responses to the breakdown of the Jewish social structure retained the traditional spirit of intensity and sharp-wittedness.' The quest for bringing about a better world via socialism and Zionism partook of the religious impulse while denying it. The language battles between Yiddish and Hebrew were joined to these ideologies. The characteristic Litvak intellectual strand was expressed in the flowering of secular literary and historical studies that partook of the intensity previously devoted to the sacred writings. As the Russian Empire containing Lita was broken up following World War I, its inhabitants found themselves living either in Latvia, Poland, the Russian and Belorussian Republics of the Soviet Union, or in the newly independent Lithuania. The entire area, now divided, had a common cultural entity e that can be called Litvakia.' When the new boundaries were drawn, many of the inhabitants stayed in place and were subject to the Holocaust. The Great Migration from Lita occurred in the period of the latter third of the 19th century and in the 20th century prior to the First World War, but extended through World War II. Even beyond the Holocaust/Shoah, the few survivors continued to bear witness to its memory. Section One deals with the evolution of the core in Lita from 1840 to its destruction during the Shoah. Focus is on the relationship between the developments following 1880 and the ideas carried by the emigrants to the Diaspora from Lita mainly ending in the 1920s. Section Two deals with those ideas carried to the English speaking world and their subsequent evolution mainly in the United States but also in comparison with the United Kingdom, Canada and South

The Litvaks

The Litvaks PDF Author: Dov Levin
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1571812644
Category : Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Discusses some aspects of antisemitism in Lithuania, especially in socioeconomic terms, in the Middle Ages and under the Russian tsars. The 20th-century interwar period saw the introduction of anti-Jewish laws that negatively impacted on Jewish political involvement, economic activity, and physical security, and the situation worsened with a right-wing coup, at which time Nazi influence grew among the German minority. The peak of antisemitism is treated in pt. 4 (pp. 187-247), "World War II, the Holocaust, and the Jewish Survivors". Although Soviet rule in 1940-41 ended many restrictions, it harmed Jews culturally and economically; many were arrested or exiled. The Nazi occupation which followed led to the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry. Even before the arrival of the German army, ca. 10,000 Jews were murdered by Lithuanians. German troops brought the Final Solution, in which Lithuanian collaboration was massive. Discusses ghettos, forced labor, and concentration camps, as well as Jewish partisan resistance. 96% of Lithuanian Jews were killed. Popular antisemitism was revived in postwar Lithuania. The issues of Lithuanian-Nazi collaboration and the Lithuanian association of Jews with communists to justify the massacre of Jews during World War II remained problems in the postwar and even post-communist periods.

The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews

The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews PDF Author: Alvydas Nikžentaitis
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042008502
Category : Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The Lithuanian Jews, Litvaks, played an important and unique role not only within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but in a wider context of Jewish life and culture in Eastern Europe, too. The changing world around them at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first decades of the twentieth had a profound impact not only on the Jewish communities, but also on a parallel world of the "others," that is, those who lived with them side by side. Exploring and demonstrating this development from various angles is one of the themes and objectives of this book. Another is the analysis of the Shoah, which ended the centuries of Jewish culture in Lithuania: a world of its own had vanished within months. This book, therefore, "recalls" that vanished world. In doing so, it sheds new light on what has been lost. The papers presented in this collection were delivered at the international conferences in Nida (1997) and Telsiai (2001), Lithuania. Participants came from Israel, the USA, Great Britain, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Germany, and Lithuania.

We Are Here

We Are Here PDF Author: Ellen Cassedy
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803240228
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Ellen Cassedy’s longing to recover the Yiddish she’d lost with her mother’s death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the “Jerusalem of the North.” As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he’d left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation—how do successor generations, moral beings—overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman’s exploration of Lithuania’s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family’s place in it. Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to “speak to a Jew” before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation—Cassedy finds that it’s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.

Lithuanian Jewish Culture

Lithuanian Jewish Culture PDF Author: Dovid Katz
Publisher: Art Stock Books Limited
ISBN: 9789639776517
Category : Jews
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Dovid Katz's monumental Lithuanian Jewish Culture is the most comprehensive work ever to appear in English on the cultural, linguistic and spiritual worlds of the Litvaks. The Litvaks are the Jews hailing from the lands of the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its successor modern states - Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia, and parts of northern Ukraine and northeastern Poland. This huge folio volume provides an introduction to Jewish history and culture starting with antiquity and leading methodically to the rise of Lithuanian Jewry some seven centuries ago." --Book Jacket.

The Memorial Book for the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania

The Memorial Book for the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania PDF Author: Joel Alpert
Publisher: Jewishgen.Incorporated
ISBN: 9780974126203
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 748

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Book Description
This is the English translation of the Memorial or Yizkor Book of the Jewish Community of Yurburg, Lithuania, originally published in 1991 in Hebrew and Yiddish. It also has an additional new 150-page appendix containing new material collected since the publication of the original book. Contains many new photographs to enhance the original book.

The City in the Moonlight

The City in the Moonlight PDF Author: Dovid Katz
Publisher: Ktav Publishing House
ISBN: 9781602801981
Category : Folk literature, Yiddish
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Zagare

Zagare PDF Author: Sara Manobla
Publisher: Gefen Books
ISBN: 9789652296573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Litvaks and Lithuanians Confront the Past.

The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook

The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook PDF Author: Fania Lewando
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805243283
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Beautifully translated for a new generation of devotees of delicious and healthy eating: a groundbreaking, mouthwatering vegetarian cookbook originally published in Yiddish in pre–World War II Vilna and miraculously rediscovered more than half a century later. In 1938, Fania Lewando, the proprietor of a popular vegetarian restaurant in Vilna, Lithuania, published a Yiddish vegetarian cookbook unlike any that had come before. Its 400 recipes ranged from traditional Jewish dishes (kugel, blintzes, fruit compote, borscht) to vegetarian versions of Jewish holiday staples (cholent, kishke, schnitzel) to appetizers, soups, main courses, and desserts that introduced vegetables and fruits that had not traditionally been part of the repertoire of the Jewish homemaker (Chickpea Cutlets, Jerusalem Artichoke Soup; Leek Frittata; Apple Charlotte with Whole Wheat Breadcrumbs). Also included were impassioned essays by Lewando and by a physician about the benefits of vegetarianism. Accompanying the recipes were lush full-color drawings of vegetables and fruit that had originally appeared on bilingual (Yiddish and English) seed packets. Lewando's cookbook was sold throughout Europe. Lewando and her husband died during World War II, and it was assumed that all but a few family-owned and archival copies of her cookbook vanished along with most of European Jewry. But in 1995 a couple attending an antiquarian book fair in England came upon a copy of Lewando's cookbook. Recognizing its historical value, they purchased it and donated it to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City, the premier repository for books and artifacts relating to prewar European Jewry. Enchanted by the book's contents and by its backstory, YIVO commissioned a translation of the book that will make Lewando's charming, delicious, and practical recipes available to an audience beyond the wildest dreams of the visionary woman who created them. With a foreword by Joan Nathan. Full-color illustrations throughout. Translated from the Yiddish by Eve Jochnowitz.