The Litvak legacy

ENBetween 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. What was the character of the culture from which they arose? How did it differ from that of other Jews? What happened to the Jews from Lita and their descendants? What did they contribute to the countries where they went? 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 Judaism. As followers of the Vilna Gaon in the late eighteenth 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 mussar movement became widespread within the Lithuanian yeshivot. Orthodoxy evolved out of traditional Judaism. However, relatively few of those traditionally religious chose to emigrate and the Litvak Diaspora was mainly secular although imbued with religious roots.Lita wa s also the "greenhouse" of secularism. In the late nineteenth century, particularly centered in Vilna, Lita was a major source of the Jewish responses to modernity such as socialism and the recognition of Yiddish as a language in its own right as well as modern Hebrew and Zionism. 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 also 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 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 nineteenth century and in the twentieth century prior to World War I but extended through World War II. Even beyond the Holocaust/Shoah, the few survivors continued to bear witness to its memory. It is my thesis that there is a distinctive Litvak cultural heritage that can be traced through the maintenance of that culture through several generations and the significant impact it has had on the countries in which the immigrants settled.