Changing conceptions of leisure among the Jews of Western Belarus at the end of the 19th century

ENThe study of forms of leisure activity is significant for a correct understanding of the essence of changes taking place in a society. “Leisure time” means time not occupied by work, free time, diversion. A contemporary understanding identifies the term with “amusement.” However, for our predecessors leisure time signified not only rest from physical endeavour and celebration. It was a plane on which conflicts were resolved and the demands of aesthetic life were satisfied, the consolidation of society took place, social hierarchies were put into place, the rising generation was educated and ethnic self-awareness was developed. The object of these investigations are the Jews of western Belarus, who operated within the framework of traditional culture, based on the values of Judaism.1 Belarus included the overwhelming majority of the Jews, although in earlier times Jewish Karaites also settled the region. The so-called Jewish “Litvaks” displayed a sharply differentiated style of life, including its religious and mundane features. Their cultural specificity took shape in the time of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whose cultural capital was Wilno, “the Jerusalem of Lithuania.” In the ethnographic and historical literature of the 19th century describing the Jews, the term “Lithuania” included Vilna, Kovno, Grodno and Minsk provinces.2 We are specifically interested in the enclosed world of traditional Jewish culture and the process of its transformation that took place at the end of the 19th century in response to changing socio-economic conditions.