Naujos Lietuvos žydų istorijos perspektyvos

LTŠiuolaikinė Lietuvos ir viso Baltijos krašto žydų istorijos istoriografija daugiausia skirta Holokausto laikotarpiui, nutraukusiam kelis intensyvaus žydų gyvenimo šioje teritorijoje šimtmečius. Šis straipsnių rinkinys, apibendrinantis apie dvidešimt žydų istorijos Lietuvoje tyrimo metų, nuo minėtos tendencijos skiriasi dviem esminiais požiūriais: 1. Jame surinkti straipsniai skirti įvairiems Lietuvos žydų ("litvakų") gyvenimo iki Antrojo pasaulinio karo aspektams. Šių straipsnių ypatybė yra ta, kad visi jie pagrįsti istoriniais dokumentais, rastais Lietuvos ir kitų Rytų Europos šalių archyvuose per pastaruosius penkiolika metų, tad skaitytojas gali susidaryti platų ir objektyvų "litvakų" visuomeninio, ekonominio ir religinio gyvenimo vaizdą, nes juose nėra polinkio idealizuoti, būdingo klasikinei žydų istoriografijai po Holokausto. 2. "Litvakų" pasaulis buvo neprieinamas lietuvių skaitytojui, ypač dėl kalbos. Išskyrus nedaugelį bendrų kūrinių, kaip antai Solomono Atamuko, Yves Plasseraud ir Henri Minczeles, Izraelio Lemperto, ir kelis išsamesnius tyrimus, pavyzdžiui, Larisos Lempertienės, Liudo Truskos, Aušrelės Pažėraitės, Vlado Sirutavičiaus, Dariaus Staliūno, Jurgitos Šiaučiūnaitės-Verbickienės bei Remigijaus Civinsko, didžioji dauguma darbų iš Lietuvos žydų istorijos buvo publikuota hebrajų, jidiš, anglų ir rusų kalbomis. Šis tyrimų rinkinys lietuvių kalba skirtas įveikti kalbos perskyrą ir leisti lietuvių skaitytojui geriau pažinti nagrinėjamą temą [Iš Pratarmės].

ENTraditional historiography of the Jewish community of Lithuania was devoted, to a significant extent, to four major subjects: 1) The unique roll Lithuanian Jewry played in the development of the organized Torah study during the nineteenth century; 2) The political aspects of Jewish life in independent Lithuania during the interwar period; 3) History of the Jewish communities in the main urban centers (Vilnius, Kaunas); 4) The mass murder of the LITVAKS during the Holocaust. Thus, a vast spectrum of different social, economic and religious aspects of Jewish lives in this region was almost pushed into oblivion. A considerable change in this tendency took place by the beginning of 1990's, thanks to the free access to original documents and other primary sources which kept in former Soviet Union states' archives. As a result, the historiography of east European Jewry, including that of the LITVAKS, took a new direction, mainly towards the social perspectives of Jewish life in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. A major roll in these research efforts was played by Israeli, British and American historians, and a result the products of their researches were published either in Hebrew or in English and were not accessible to the Lithuanian public, school teachers, researchers and university students. The main purpose of this collection of articles on the History of Lithuanian Jewry is to fill this lack by presenting the above mentioned audiences some of the most updated researches in this field. Most of the chapters in this book, based on twenty years of intensive research and on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, were previously presented in academic conferences and published, in the Hebrew and English languages, in different academic journals and collection of articles.Part I of the book is devoted to three major aspects of the Jewish social life. In the first chapter the author argues that the common perception of Lithuania as a region, in which there was no Chasidic presence, has no historical basis. He supports this argument by analyzing the main characteristics of two confrontations between Chasidim and Mitnagdin, took place in the Jewish communities of Panevėžys and Vydžiai in the 1830's, and by presenting a detailed picture of the Chasidic communities in Lithuania. The second chapter presents the unique welfare system operated by the Vilnius Jewish community during the first half of the nineteenth century. By examining a document which describes a conflict between the community leadership and the local butchers at the beginning of the 1820's, this chapter presents the basic structure of the variety of traditional welfare systems, their financial resources, methods of distribution and the ways they survived times of crisis. Chapter three in this part is devoted to the examination of the social aspects of a typical 19th century Lithuanian Jewish scholar. By analyzing a collection of this scholar's letters, found in a local archive, the author presents a unique contemporary social-religious "partnership" between a local wealthy merchant and a poor scholar. The second part of the book concentrates on various aspects of the 19,h century world of rabbis and Yeshiva scholars in Lithuania. A most common assumption in the historical research was that most Lithuanian rabbis and Talmud scholars were trained in the countryside Yeshivas such as Volozhyn, Mir, Radin etc. In the book's fourth chapter the author proves that a considerable number of these scholars, including many of the most well known and respected rabbis, preferred to spend their formative years in the study halls of the less famous local Shtetl's or town's Yeshivas.Against this finding the author offers a new, more balanced picture of this institute and its roll in the world of 19lh century Lithuanian Jewry. In the following chapter the author examines the world of the Lithuanian communal rabbi, his actual social status and complicated relationships with the local community leadership. The third part of this collection is devoted to the educational and intellectual aspects of the LITVAKS. The main hero of the sixth chapter is a young Maskil (Enlightened Jew) who established a modern school for Jewish girls in 1850's Panevėžys. His educational and literary career serves as a springboard for a comprehensive discussion on the roll of the peripheral Maskilim in the process of enlightening the 19lh century Lithuanian countryside Jews. In the next chapter the author describes the unique phenomenon of a (relatively) high percentage of prominent Jewish intellectuals (Reuven Wunderbar; Isaiah Berlin; Isaiah Leibowich; Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook; Nehama Leibowich, Immanuel Levinas, etc.) who grew up in the north Baltic region. The author indicates to a variety of possible reasons, among them to the north Baltic region as an intersection of traditional Jewish culture, Russian culture and German culture. The eighth chapter of the book is dedicated to the transformations in Jewish education which accompanied the cultural transformation Lithuanian Jewry underwent since mid 19lh century. Here, the author concentrates on the new educational tendencies in interwar Jewish Lithuanian Orthodox society. In the fourth part of the book the author "returns" to the city of Vilnius, known by Jews all over the world as "Jerusalem of Lithuania". The story of 19th century Jewish Vilna is told here via the perspective of three contemporary well known local Jews. The ninth chapter tell the story of the Strashun family, which immigrated to Vilnius from the nearby countryside during the Napoleonic war.