Nesuk į kelią iš takelio : Lietuvos žydų religinės ir filosofinės minties paveldo trajektorijomis
LT"Lietuvos žydų intelektualinis paveldas, apie kurį bus diskutuojama šioje knygoje, ne taip lengvai aprėpiamas. Pradžioje vertėtų apsibrėžti, ką išraiškoje "Lietuvos žydų mintis" nurodo žodžiai "Lietuvos žydų“ ir ką apima žodis "mintis". Pirmu atveju kilmės ir tapatybės klausimas susiduria su tam tikrais sunkumais. Lietuvos žydais (jidiš kalba litvak, dgs. litvakes, hebraiškai litai, Lietuvos, lietuvis, dgs. litaim, lietuviai) laikomi pirmiausia kilę iš Lietuvos žydai, tačiau reikia turėti omenyje, kad šiuo atveju negalime apsiriboti vien tik XX a. pradžioje atkurta Lietuvos valstybe (taip net ir Vilniaus bei Vilniaus krašto žydų tam tikrais laikotarpiais priskyrimą prie Lietuvos žydų padarytume problemišką), bet turėtume orientuotis į istorines Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaikštystės (LDK) žemes. Nors ir šiuo atveju geografinė kilmė ne visada sutampa su tapatybe1. Kita vertus, šiuolaikiniame religiniame kraštovaizdyje chareidi (ultraortodoksiniame) judaizme yra skiriamos chasidų ir lietuvių kongregacijos ir daugybė kitų (sefardų ir aškenazių), kurios dažniausiai neturi aiškios afiliacijos2. Tačiau ir šiuo atveju, jei laikytumės vien pavadinimo, pernelyg išplėstume mus dominantį lauką, nes "lietuviais" (litvakais) šiuo atveju tampa asmenys, susiję su Lietuva tik per religinę afiliaciją, o ne kilmę. [Iš Įvado]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Lietuvos žydai; Intelektualinis paveldas; Judaizmas; Toros interpretacijos; Sakytinė tradicija; Rabiniška tradicija; Vilniaus Gaonas; Maskiliškas sąjūdis; Chasidiškas sąjūdis; Mitnagiškas sąjūdis; Jews of Lithuania; Intellectual heritadge; Judaism; Interpretations of Torah; Spoken tradition; Rabbinical tradition; Vilnius Gaon; Maskil movment; Hasidic movment; Mitnagdic movment.
ENThe Lithuanian Jewish religious thought and its legacy, today still very much entrenched in the identity of Orthodox Judaism, has its roots in the activities, ideas, and teachings of the Vilna Gaon and his disciples. The Jewish emancipation and modernization movements, which began in Europe in the second part of the 18th c. and the principal objectives of which were to enable Jews to become full-fledged citizens in their respective countries, were inextricably associated with a changed approach to the old Jewish religious practices and the general Jewish way of life, viewing them in light of the values and perspectives put forth by the Enlightenment. A modern concept of religion began to take shape during the early modern period - it emphasized the experience of hierophany and the sensuous relationship with it as the foundation of religious sincerity (thus substituting the previously established theological criterion), while the fields of the law, the cult, and the rites began to be suspected as lacking authenticity. This new attitude, together with a stage of religious downfall and a spreading distrust in the traditional interpretations of sacred texts, not only reached the Jewish intellectuals but also became a modern prism for observing and assessing Jewish traditions. As a result of this, we see the emergence of reform Judaism, a Jewish Enlightenment movement (the Haskalah), which transformed the self-identity of Judaism as a religion. This process involved emphasizing the aspects of humanistic ethics and reason, thus pushing the Halakhas traditional imperative into the fringes and attributing to it the category of a ritual.In this context, the intellectual Jewish communities, first during the last decades of the GDL's existence and later having found themselves subject to the Russian Empire, in the wake of modernization and emancipatory opportunities, used other opportunities - and committed themselves to studying the Torah. But to study the Torah in following the Torah lishtnah ideal (stressed by many scholars), one must have fostered the yirat shamayim (fear of the Heavens), a concept present in Lithuanian yeshivot as part of a lineage of succession that begins with the Vilna Gaon and his disciple Chaim of Volozhin. Unlike the popular Musar book Kav haYashar, which is steeped in 18th c. Kabbalistic interpretations and urges its readers to uphold the mitzvoth for metaphysical reasons, the 19th c. Musar thought, as well as the whole late 19th and early 20th c. movement, promotes the study of the Musar so that the disciples may commit themselves to studying the Torah and practicing the mitzvoth to the fullest. An affront to this religious tradition - the writer Chaim Grade's novel My Mothers Sabbath Days, in which the Holocaust (which had, by the way, taken the lifes of both the author's mother and wife) is interpreted based on the dialectics of the theological meanings of the Sabbath and Yom Kippur. This interpretation gives no way to justify the deaths of the innocent and only confirms the author's previous decision to change the Musar morale (concentrated on its own character) into humanistic ethics. The present book contains an analysis of Chaim Grade's novel My Mothers Sabbath Days and passages from the Kav haYashar, one of Rabbi Israel Salanter's homilies. (from his early period), which has no tangible references to Musar thinking but which urges the reader to commit themselves to Torah study. The legacy of the Vilna Gaon deserves separate mention.This book concisely touches upon several aspects of his grammar of the Sacred Language, which serves to show the Gaon's peculiar interpretation; we later see it more developed in Nefesh Hachayim, a book written by the Gaon's disciple Chaim of Volozhin, and in Sefer Yetsira, the book’s commentary written by the Vilna Gaon himself. Their "theory of language" presents a triple structure of language (letters-vowels-pronunciation). This structure defines a correlative link between writing and speaking, the written and the spoken words, a link that prevents the reader from remaining "only with the writing", as if the written word could speak by itself. The written word is addressed, and given voice, by one who vocalizes it. And vocalization, like a form of interpretation, requires another chain of succession, namely tradition. This provides the basis for further asserting a corellation between the Oral Torah and the Written Torah. Explaining rituals from the perspective of religious studies, which constructs the ritual as an action, a sequence of actions, or as a process that is automatic in nature and is more or less strictly defined, does not allow us to view the Halakha or a Halakha-based life, the "religious practice", as a ritual side to Judaism. Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical essays on Judaism are one of some critical responses to the simplified, "humanized", universalized version of Judaism that emerged in the perspective of modern religious studies, with an emphasis that the "ritual" discipline is a path toward loving one's neighbor, and that the holiness strived for in Judaism is not the sacrum of R. Otto or M. Eliade. The first requires intense personal efforts so that the human reality and the relationships between people are changed, and it requires the freedom of the agent to assume responsibility. The second takes hold of the individual and thus restricts their freedom. [From the
