The Gaon of Vilne and the Yiddish language

ENIn the 18th century, when the authority of the renowned Gaon of Vilne (whose 200th yortsayt we have gathered here to commemorate) was recognized throughout Eastern Ashkenaz, Vilne was already famous as the crown jewel of a Yiddish speaking culture. The Gaon, eminent though he certainly was, cannot be fully appreciated without realizing that he was not only a gaon, a halakhic luminary, but the Gaon of Vilne, a place in Jewish space that was clearly sui generis. Thus, just as it was a culturally significant center for its substantial Lithuanian, Polish and Belarussian populations, and that just as significant creations of those cultures were produced in and around Vilne in the respective languages of each, so Vilne, as a culturally significant Jewish center was long associated with cultural creativity in Yiddish. In the 18th century, Vilne was literally a crown jewel (and perhaps the crown jewel) of a Yiddish speaking culture. This culture, insofar as Eastern Ashkenaz was concerned, was huge in expanse, massive in numbers and among the most internally diversified and intellectually stimulating branches of world Jewry at that time (and, perhaps, of any time). And, just as Vilne was a / the jewel ofthe crown of Ashkenaz, so was the Gaon a / the Jewel of Vilne. Accordingly, we have all come to honor him today, even those of us who are not Orthodox, not Ashkenazi and not Yiddish speaking, because for all of us he typifies Vilne in some of its most essential dimensions, among them the dimension ofrabbinic culture and the dimension of Yiddish "linguistic culture." [p. 18-19].