Demographic and social-professional structure of the Jewish community in Vilnius (based on the census of 1784)

ENIn time, the Jews, who had since the mid-16th century begun to establish themselves on a broader basis in the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (GDL), made up a significant portion of its population and started to play an important role in the city's economic life. In the 18th century, Vilnius became the most important Jewish spiritual and cultural centre within the GDL, and the home and workplace of the celebrated Gaon Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman. Therefore the theme of this paper is of relevance to the history of both the Jewish community of Vilnius and in general, as an introduction to the history of the city of Vilnius. There is no way to speak about any kind of broader historiography re the topic under analysis. Other than S. Bershadski and I. Cohen, historians have not given any serious attention to this question. In their works on the Jewish or general history of the GDL, Poland, or Russia, researchers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (H. Korobkov, L Schiper, A. Janulaitis, S. Atamukas, G. Agranovski, L Guzenberg, S. Samalavičius, T. Korzon, J. Ochmański) have, in a fragmented way, occasionally referred to the population figures and professions of the Jews of the kahal in Vilnius during the second half of the 18th century, i. e. up to 1795. For reasons known to all, Lithuania's archives have not been easily accessible until just very recently to scholars from Israel and the western countries. Therefore their work is based on historiography and earlier published sources, as well as a legacy of collected documents. On the other hand, the work of historians in those countries is also not always accessible to Lithuanian researchers, and there is the additional barrier of Yiddish and Hebrew. This presentation is based on archival documents from the Lithuanian State Historical Archive ("LVIA") [p. 331-333].