Vilna Gaon Research Articles

Protecting the Image: Was Rav Hayyim of Volozhin’s Portrayal of the Vilna Gaon an Altered Image?

Protecting the Image: Was Rav Hayyim of Volozhin’s Portrayal of the Vilna Gaon an Altered Image?

“The People Do Not Understand”: R. Ḥayim Hirschensohn and Political Elitism in Modern Judaism (The Vilna Gaon, Rabbi N.Ts.Y. Berlin, I. B. Levinsohn, and Herzl)

AbstractRabbi Ḥayim (Chaim) Hirschensohn (1857–1935) was one of only a handful of Jewish thinkers to work out a Jewish political theology, and on account of his progressive stances he became a favorite of liberal circles within contemporary Judaism. Therefore, a passage in his book Malki Bakodesh, in which he expresses clear opposition to universal suffrage, “invited” mitigating interpretations. Yet, a survey of Hirschensohn’s various writings reveals that they contain a trend of political elitism. Is this surprising? Hirschensohn’s progressiveness notwithstanding, the article argues that his elitist sentiments are rooted in three major intellectual trends within modern Judaism: Mitnagdism, Haskalah, and Zionism. In the writings of seminal thinkers in each of these movements, we find political elitism and reservations about government “by the people.” Hirschensohn’s personal history positioned him at the confluence of these trends, and so his elitist opinions should be viewed as the outgrowth of these intellectual traditions.

Between Messianism and Zionism—The Religious Proto-Zionists: Transforming from Theurgic-Symbolic Messianism to Zionist Activism

The 19th century, which began with the immigration to Eretz Israel of 511 disciples of the Vilna Gaon (HaGra) and their families from Lithuania for religious reasons between 1808–1811, ended with the arrival of tens of thousands of Hovevei Zion from Russia and Romania for nationalistic motives, beginning in 1882.This article deals with the differences between the doctrine of redemption of the Vilna Gaon’s disciples and the Zionist ideology of Hovevei Zion in light of the thought of the religious proto-Zionists. Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and Rabbi Eliyahu Guttmacher who were the proto-Zionists actually served as transformers from theurgic-symbolic messianic activism to realistic Zionist activism through their combined adoption of all these active approaches and the shift in emphasis from the symbolic to the realistic. Putting them all in the traditional messianic camp or the modern national camp distorts the picture. The great innovation of their doctrine was the transformation of the idea.

Making a Maskil Mainstream: Adapting Haskalah Scholarship for a 19th-Century Rabbinic Audience

Abstract The Passover Cup of Elijah is often explained as an expression of rabbinic uncertainty regarding a fifth cup mandated by some opinions in the Babylonian Talmud. The explanation is based upon other talmudic passages which mention halakhic uncertainties that will be resolved by Elijah when he eventually comes to herald the long anticipated redemption. The explanation is commonly attributed to the Gaon of Vilna; however, no historically reliable source supports this attribution. This explanation was first published by the great maskil, Isaac Ber Levinsohn, and was attributed to the Gaon of Vilna by Eliezer Zweifel. An alternate shift of attribution was to R. Ephraim Zalman Margolioth. Attribution to a great rabbinic authority helped the explanation gain circulation and approval among the general rabbinic audience to the present day.

Interpretations of the Aggadah in the Commentaries of the Maharal of Prague, the Gaon of Vilna and R. Nachman of Bratslav

This article examines three commentaries on the Aggadah story of the Talmudic sage Rabbah bar bar Hana’s incredible journeys: by the Maharal of Prague (16th cent.), the Gaon of Vilna (18th cent.) and Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (end 18th – 19th cent.) While all three authors see the story in an allegorical vein, each one has their own focus and seems to wander away from the text proper and interpret it through the lens of their own set of ideas, be it philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, asceticism or mysticism. So Maharal of Prague sees the Haggadah as kind of philosophical and mystical treatise. He hints to the reader that this Haggadah contains the secrets of metaphysics and Kabbalah. For the Vilna Gaon the story has an ethical message. He sees the crow as talmid haham whose face is black from malnutrition and studying the Torah at night. Rabbi Nachman is the most exalted and ecstatic scholar of all three. He uses the interpretation of Haggadah as part of his mystical lessons. The topic of his lesson is Messianic Deliverance.

TRADITIONAL JEWISH EDUCATION IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE: CONTINUITY AND MODERNIZATION

The article deals with the traditional Jewish education in the Russian Empire of the 19th - early 20th centuries. The author pays great attention to the key Judaic Religious Academy - yeshiva of Volozhin (Belarussia-Lithuania) as it existed from 1802 to 1914. The study is based on the contemporary sources - documents, media articles, memoirs, literary sources, archival materials and the works of foreign historians. The main aim of the article is to present this yeshiva in its social and cultural context. The author pays particular attention to the founder of yeshiva Volozhin Rabbi Hayim of Volozhin (1740-1821). The first objective of the work is to understand the reasons for the foundation of this yeshiva. In this context the author touches upon the relations with Vilna Gaon, his attitude toward the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala), the attitude to Hasidism, secular studies etc. It is this yeshiva that was marked by a novel structure - total independence of local community. In many aspects, it was the model for other Jewish Higher Traditional institutions. The Russian historian pays considerable attention to the Imperial Government policy toward the Jewish traditional education; mutual relations between parents and students of yeshiva, the role of some rectors, teachers and form-masters of yeshiva of Volozhin. The author deals with the every-day life of the yeshivas, traditional holidays, modernization and the reaction to the challenge of the time and especially to the values of traditional Jewish culture in general. The author considers that the closure of the Volozhin yeshiva in 1892 by the tsarist authorities was formal. In fact, the yeshiva continued working. The last students perished in the Holocaust.

Lifnim mišurat ha-din ir derekh erec problema, arba etikos paieškos žydų tradicijoje ir Vilniaus Gaono kranklys

[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba]
 Straipsnyje analizuojama, ar Vilniaus Gaonui egzistavo etikos šaltinis už Toros ir halakhos ribų. Svarstant R. Aharono Lichtensteino keltą klausimą, „Ar judaizme egzistuoja etika anapus halakhos?“, straipsnyje argumentuojama, kad sąvokos lifnim mišurat ha-din ir derekh erec, kurios ne vieno šiuolaikinio judaikos tyrinėtojo siejamos su etiniu impulsu, gal ir galimu kildinti iš kitų šaltinių, Vilniaus Gaono atveju lieka įsišaknijusios Toroje ir halakhoje. Remiamasi tiek legendiniu Vilniaus Gaono įvaizdžiu, tiek jam priskirtomis agados interpretacijomis, per kuriuos išryškėja Vilniaus Gaono besąlygiškas atsidavimas Toros studijavimui, jį iškeliant virš visų kitų galimų vertybinių pasirinkimų, ir jo pamaldumo papročiai, dažnai pranokstantys tai, ko reikalauja halakha, tačiau neturintys nieko bendra su etika ar socialiniu rūpesčiu. Straipsnyje atskirai nagrinėjama gyvūnų tema, kurią kaip argumentą, kad žydų tradicijoje galima rasti pozityvų santykį su etikos šaltiniu už Toros ar halakhos ribų (tarkime, imant pavyzdį iš katės, gaidžio ar skruzdėlės, kaip mokė kai kurie Talmudo išminčiai), pateikia Lichtensteinas. Straipsnyje atskleidžiama, kad gyvūnų pavyzdžiai, kalbant apie deramo elgesio pavyzdžius, yra pernelyg prieštaringi, jei turėsime omenyje platesnį Toros ir Talmudo kontekstą: pirma, jau pačioje Toroje kai kurie gyvūnų pavyzdžiai nurodyti kaip sektini ir todėl neišeina už Toros ribų, antra, tiek Toroje, tiek Talmude santykis su tais gyvūnais (ypač katėmis, taip pat šunimis) gana prieštaringas, trečia, kalbant apie Vilniaus Gaoną, jam gyvūnai buvo tik įvaizdžiai, leidę pabrėžti tam tikras būdo savybes ir elgesio orientyrus, būtinus studijuojant ir praktikuojant Torą, o ne etiniam elgesiui.

Was Professor Saul Lieberman “Orthodox” or “Conservative”?

Was Professor Saul Lieberman “Orthodox” or “Conservative”?1 David Golinkin (bio) Saul Lieberman (1898–1983) is universally regarded by Talmud scholars as the foremost talmudist of his generation, and some regard him as one of the foremost talmudist of all times. Immanuel Low wrote to him in Hebrew in 1938: “In the depth of your articles there are many sparks of the spirit of the Gaon of Vilna.” E. S. Rosenthal wrote in Hebrew in 1963: “... until we can almost say about him: there was no king like him before him, according to his custom and his method.” Jacob Neusner, who later attacked Lieberman after Lieberman had panned Neusner’s Yerushalmi translation, wrote to Lieberman on December 10, 1981: “I am enjoying Hayerushalmi Kifshuto so much, that I wanted to tell you so.... It reminds me of why I have long ago concluded you are the greatest exegete of rabbinic texts of the twentieth century and among the true greats among the ones I have studied and used—of all times.” Yitzḥak Rafael wrote in Hebrew in 1983: “I am not authorized nor do I dare assert that Professor Rabbi Saul Lieberman z”l was the greatest Talmud scholar in recent generations, but it seems that no one would attempt to dispute this assertion.” David Weiss Halivni wrote in 1986: “Professor Lieberman was not only a yaḥid b’doro, unique in his generation, but a yaḥid b’dorotav, unique in all generations.” Elijah Schochet wrote in 1988: “Rabbeinu Eliyahu, the Gaon of Vilna, was born on the first day of [End Page 13] Pesaḥ, 1720. Rabbeinu Shaul, our own Gaon, was laid to rest on the eve of Pesaḥ, 1983. Between them, there was no other like Saul Lieberman.”2 Finally, in 2002, Israel Ta-Shema recounted an amazing story that took place in 1981, in which he asked Professor Lieberman a riddle about the Yerushalmi. Ta-Shema had heard the riddle from Rabbi Shlomo Goren in 1961 and since then had been unable to find the answer. Professor Lieberman spent about three minutes in silence, during which he opened one volume of the Yerushalmi and closed it. Finally he returned to the bookshelf, pulled out Yerushalmi Sotah 2:1, and showed Ta-Shema the correct answer. Lieberman later explained to Ta-Shema that “in my youth, I would have answered immediately that the answer is not in the Yerushalmi at all. But now that I am old, I do not rely on my memory, which is already weakened; and therefore I decided to flip through all the pages of the Yerushalmi in my mind, in order to make certain that it is not found in any place. And when I arrived at chapter 2 of Sotah, I found the place and showed you.” Ta-Shema concluded the story: “I had the merit over the course of the years to be a frequent visitor to the houses of quite a few of the greatest talmidei ḥakhamim [scholars] of the generation and among the beki’im [those who possess encyclopedic knowledge] in their generation ... but [bekiut] of such magnitude I have never seen, not before and not after, and the memory of that Shabbat has not departed from me until today.”3 [End Page 14] In addition to his amazing memory and breadth of knowledge, Lieberman was one of the most prolific Talmud scholars of all times. He published 225 books and articles, for a total of approximately 11,500 pages—devoted, for the most part, to the explication of rabbinic texts.4 Finally, he published books and articles related to almost every area of Jewish studies, including Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, Mishnah, Tosefta, Yerushalmi, Bavli, ancient piyyut, Hellenism, Greek, Latin, and medieval rabbinic literature.5 Therefore, it is not surprising that over eighty books and articles have been devoted to Lieberman and his œuvre between 1948 and 2008.6 Indeed, three entire books have been published about Lieberman since 2002.7 This essay will respond to the most recent monograph, Marc Shapiro’s [End Page 15] Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox.8 Professor Shapiro has shown in his writings that he is adept at archival research.9...

Eliyahu Stern. The Genius: Elijah of Vilna and the Making of Modern Judaism.

In the classic picture of eighteenth-century European Jewry a major place is reserved for the emergence of three new movements: the Haskalah, Hasidism, and the Mitnagdim. The interrelations among the three are usually marked by tension and conflict. Each had a prominent leader who left his imprint on Jewish history: Moses Mendelssohn in Berlin (1729–1786); Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov, in Mezhybozhe (1700?–1760); and Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, the Vilna Gaon (the “Genius” from Vilnius, 1720–1797). While Mendelssohn represented the distinctly modern movement that adopted the values of the Enlightenment and proposed a new agenda for social and cultural integration to the Jews of Central Europe, the leaders of the other two rival movements arose in Eastern Europe and were distinctly conservative, if not reactionary. The Baal Shem Tov, known as a popular healer who engaged in practical Kabbalah, was a source of inspiration for a movement of religious regeneration based on faith in a charismatic religious leader (the Zaddik) and the doctrine of devotion to God and spiritual elevation through prayer. The Vilna Gaon, who led the opposition to Hasidism fearing that it would demean the supreme value of Talmudic study, inspired those Jews whose lives centered on the new type of yeshiva (Talmudic academy) known as the Lithuanian yeshiva.

Litvaks in South Africa: How to Photograph Nelson Mandela?

Lithuanian Jews in South Africa have maintained strong ties with their historical homeland and consciously preserved their cultural identity. They are actively interested in their origins and roots. In this article, I will present part of my PhD research, which focuses on Litvak photographers in South Africa. First, I will briefly introduce the Jewish community and its role in the antiapartheid struggle. I will then define social documentary pho tography, as well as present a short biography of one of the Litvak photographers, Eli Weinberg from Libau. Last, I will discuss my case study of a Nelson Mandela photograph taken by Eli Weinberg, and discuss how this artwork was constructed. Also, I will raise a few other more personal concerns of research method, such as how to avoid the “danger of a single story” (Adichie 2009). Quick Note on the Term Litvak Litvaks are Jews from the territories of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania—present-day Lithuania; parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Latvia; and the northeastern Suwalki region of Poland. Litvaks, as a territorial and linguistic subgroup of Ashkenazi Jews, are carriers of the northeastern, or Lithuanian, dialect of Yiddish. The Yiddish adjective Litvish means “Lithuanian,” and the noun for “Lithuanian Jew” is Litvak. The term Litvak comes from Litwak, the Polish word for “a man from Lithuania”; however, this usage was discontinued in the nineteenth century, and was revived in 1880 in the narrower sense of “a Lithuanian Jew.” The term is sometimes used to refer to all Orthodox Jews who follow a “Lithuanian” (Ashkenazic and non-Hasidic, following the teaching of the Vilna Gaon) style of life and learning, regardless of their location and community of origin. The area where Lithuanian Jews live is often called Lita. I would like to stress that the geography of Jewish origin plays a key role in my research and is not a question of religion.

The Gaon of Vilna and His Messianic Vision. By ArieMorgenstern, Translated by Naftali Greenwood. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2012, Pp. xiii + 446; plates. Cloth, $29.95.

The Gaon of Vilna and His Messianic Vision. By ArieMorgenstern, Translated by Naftali Greenwood. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House, 2012, Pp. xiii + 446; plates. Cloth, $29.95.

Jews in Polish Philosophy

This paper outlines briefly the contribution of philosophers of Jewish origin to Polish philosophy. The author contrasts the phrases "philosophy in Poland" and "Polish philosophy." The former refers to philosophical ideas created in Poland as a territory, but the latter indicates philosophy as a part of the national Polish culture. Since the paper deals with "Polish philosophy," it omits representatives of Jewish philosophy living in Poland, like Isserles (Remu), the Gaon of Vilna, Maimon, or Krochmal. The participation of Jews in Polish academic life was a result of Haskala and began in the second half of the nineteenth century. Various factors, political and social, determined restrictions of activities of Jews in Polish science, including philosophy. The situation improved in 1918–1939, although most Jewish people had no full chance to make successful academic careers. Nevertheless, several Jews played a prominent role in Polish philosophy, particularly in the Lvov-Warsaw School.

Response

Response Peter Cole The rabbis warn that a serious scholar is permitted no more in the way of pride in his work than an eighth of an eighth of its measure. Nor, however, they're quick to add, is he allowed any less. And the same, I think, should hold true for a literary translator, especially the English translator of medieval Hebrew poetry - who is always walking that tightrope stretched between East and West, knowledge and sensation, meaning and music, humility and presumption (each set of poles with its past and present aspects). There is so very much going on in these Arabized Hebrew poems; thinking that one might account for the whole of it is ludicrous. And yet, such is the odd enterprise translation becomes that unless one presumes to be able to get the gist and even the geist of the original composition, one will come away with absolutely nothing of value at all. As though that weren't a sufficiently dizzying proposition, a later commentary on that same rabbinic dictum about scholarly confidence worries that even this one-sixty-fourth measure might be excessive; it interprets the Talmudic figures in question as referring to the eighth verse of the eighth weekly reading from the Torah, which according to one interpretation says: "I have grown small through all the kindnesses" (Genesis 32:11). That, suggests the Vilna Gaon, is cause for gratification. And again, this reaches me through the hedge of translation, for I have, over the course of some twenty-plus years of engagement with the Hebrew poetry of Muslim and Christian Spain, been [End Page 219] made small in the very best -and also sometimes the worst- ways by the kindnesses of scholars distant and near, dead and (most definitely) alive and occasionally kicking. Though of course being small makes it all the easier to be lifted up - first and foremost into the often sublime, gorgeous, intricate, and endlessly compelling regions of the poetry itself. And so it is that I feel myself at once honored and humbled -moved and made uncomfortable- by the gathering here in La corónica, and by the fact that it was convened by Ross Brann, whose marvelously nuanced studies have been a kind of beacon to me from the start of my engagement with the Hebrew poetry of Spain, as their sophistication compels rather than calls into question the possibility of belief in the worth of the literature he is treating. Humbled and honored that a scholar and writer like María Rosa Menocal would pour out an alphabet of brimming associations that cut to the core of what I have been trying to do -and I emphasize the aspiration- in the various modes of my work. María's own ebullient, inventive, and fearless writing has played a vital and catalyzing role in the development of that larger project, and yet so much has happened, so much has been learned and unlearned, that it is hard now to conjure the quality of the shock I felt on first finding on a library shelf her Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage some twenty years ago. I had never heard of either her or that book, but there, flying off the page, was a vision of a transformative order that dovetailed in uncanny ways with my own incipient sense of how best to approach the literatures of Andalus. She was coming at it historically and philologically; I was coming at it aesthetically and prosodically. But the enterprise was, at heart, shared - the desire to bring an occluded literature or dimension of a given literature into the present in vital fashion. María's impassioned tack has been sustained and developed magisterially along the remarkable arc of her career and subsequent publications, which transport readers across borders of language, culture, social register, genre and artistic medium. That my initial encounter with her books has blossomed into a powerfully flowing friendship and ongoing conversation is one of the great joys of my life and it is a central source of nourishment for me. Happy is the poet who is part of her vision. [End Page 220] And happy is he...

Halakhic thinking of Lithuanian rabbis

1. Lithuanian rabbis have been studying halakhic sources as valuable in themselves, and not just, or not so much for the legal practice. There were rather theoretical religious-legal activities of intellect than activity, based on pragmatic purposes, seeking to regulate religious practices and ethical attitudes. 2. Texts of Lithuanian rabbis reveal that ritual matters, even related to the Second Temple period, were most analyzed and even in the beginning of twentieth century in the search both of solving some of the current halakhic problems, as well as simply analyzing problems purely theoretically. Mainly have been used analytical and analogical methods. 3. As is apparent from examples of commentaries to Halakhot Gdolot by R. Zeev Wolf ben Arye Lipkin (end of 18th–19th c.), also commentaries of Vilna Gaon, Lithuanian rabbis analyzed texts of halakhic authorities carefully and critically, comparing them with the Halakha sources (Talmud, Tosefta), indicating even inaccuracies. 4. Lithuanian halakhic thought, influenced by Vilna Gaon, was characterized by a certain devotion to original texts, sources of the Halakha, whose authority surpassed authority of codex’s of subsequent generations, using critical analytical thinking, principle of analogy, by trusting one’s own reason, that originated from a certain religious attitude. 5. In the book of Chaim of Volozhin, on of the main authors for studying contrasts of hassidic and mitnagdic Thought’s in Lithuania, Nefesh ha-Hayim, is seen a mitnagdic attempt to ground superiority of studying of Torah and Halakha without any pragmatic interest, as the central religious practice, even if based on the same mystical Jewish heritage that served hassidim to develop quite different religious attitudes.

We are all here: Facing History In Lithuania

We Are All Here:Facing History in Lithuania Ellen Cassedy (bio) Abstract The author of this essay reports on Holocaust education initiatives in present-day Lithuania. She interviews Lithuanian officials, teachers, and activists who are engaging with the Jewish past in an effort to build tolerance, understand the role of bystanders, honor "righteous gentiles," and foster reconciliation. The essay includes interviews with Irena Veisaite of the Open Society Fund-Lithuania and the House of Memory; Ruta Puisyte and Viktoria Sakaite of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum; staff of the International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes (an organization founded by Lithuania's President Valdas Adamkus); and information about the Tuskulenai "Park of Quiet" in Vilnius. The author also describes her experience as a student at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Click for larger view View full resolution A tfile iz yeder shteyn, a nigun yede vant... Each stone is a prayer; a hymn every wall… MOYSHE KULBAK, in the poem "Vilna" Vilna: before the war, the narrow lanes of this age-old city pulsed with a vibrant Jewish life. Vilna was the Jerusalem of the North, the capital of Yiddishland. It was that bygone world I was after when I enrolled in a summer program in Yiddish in the city now known as Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. I roomed in a flat that was located within [End Page 77] the boundaries of the old Vilna ghetto and filled my eyes with the elegant balconies and the gently curving streets, and over it all, the long summer light of the Baltic sky. In class, the instructors guided us students through the grammatical thickets and the precious texts of mame-loshn, our mother tongue. The last Yiddish speakers of Lithuania—with their memories full of joy and sorrow —came to lead us through the city, pointing out the sites of schools, theaters, and synagogues that flourished here before the destruction. On weekends, I traveled to the countryside. I visited the village of Vilkoliai, where my great-grandmother Asne had raised nine children while simultaneously supervising the production of milk, butter, and cheese on a dairy farm. In the town of Rokiskis, I located the street where my great-grandfather Dovid-Mikhl had spent his days bent over holy books in a wooden studyhouse. It was from this town that my grandfather Jacob had run away to America in 1911 to escape the Czarist draft. I went, too, to the site of the ghetto in Siauliai (the Jews called it Shavl), where my great-uncle Will had survived the Holocaust. As I pursued the sounds and textures of the nearly vanished world of my ancestors, I learned that Lithuania as a nation was engaged in a journey into the past. And when I sought out the leaders of this Lithuanian effort to unearth the truths of the mid-20th century, I learned that the land of my ancestors had something to teach about binding up the wounds of the past and moving forward. Jews arrived in Lithuania in the 14th century. On the brink of World War II, Jews made up one-third of Lithuania's urban population and about half of the residents of every town. During the war, with a swiftness and thoroughness notorious even for that terrible time, more than 90% of Lithuania's 240,000 Jews were killed. While it was usually the German occupiers who issued the orders, in most cases Lithuanians themselves pulled the trigger. Nearly every town has its pit in the forest, not far from the market square, where Jews were assembled, shot, and hastily buried in mass graves. Nor did the war's end bring peace to Lithuania. In 1940, Soviet troops had moved into the country, and now, with Germany's defeat, Lithuania became a part of the USSR. The transition was marked by economic upheaval and a fierce guerrilla struggle. Tens of thousands of Lithuanians were exiled to Siberia. The deportees included Nazi sympathizers who had participated in killing Jews during the war, as well as a wide range of opponents of the Soviet government, including some Jews. Historians...

Reviews of Books:The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image Immanuel Etkes, Jeffrey M. Green

Reviews of Books:The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image Immanuel Etkes, Jeffrey M. Green

Jewish Life in Lithuania: History of Separate Co-Existence

667 Ab Imperio, 4/2003 делений собственной Его Импера- торского Величества канцелярии. Точно так же Н. Н. Янушкевич не был верховным главнокомандую- щим русской армии (с. 549). Лишь короткое время он занимал долж- ность начальника Генштаба. Гене- рал Н. Н. Обручев не мог быть, по определению, близок к “Народной воле” (с. 320). Автор спутал эту организацию с первой “Землей и волей”, к которой действительно в молодые годы принадлежал Об- ручев. Ограниченность объема рецензии не позволяет дать весь перечень ошибок и неточностей работы. Тем не менее, Петровский- Штерн написал яркую и талантли- вую книгу, без которой уже трудно представить себе современную историографию российского ев- рейства. Alla MYZELEV Jewish Life in Lithuania. Exhibition catalogue (The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum; The Lithuanian Institute of History; The Center for Civic Initiatives; The Textbook Research and Information Centre for Baltic Countries; The Verein Gedenkdienst, Vienna/Vilnius; The Anna Frank House, Amsterdam) / Compiled: Rыta Puišytė, Darius Staliūnas. Kaunas, 2001. 222 p. Photographs; in English, Lithuanian. ISBN: 9986-34-090-X. Jewish Life in Lithuania: History of Separate Co-Existence “Jewish Life in Lithuania” is an exhibition that retells the history of Jews in Lithuania from the 14th century to the present day. The exhibition and the catalogue are the results of a joint project of The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum, Vilnius, The Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius, and the Anne Frank House, Amsterdam. As the authors of the catalogue introduction explain, this exhibition was to some extent provoked by an earlier exhibition (1998) organized by the Anne Frank House and Vilna Gaon Museum about the life and death of Anne Frank. The Anne Frank show was exhibited in eight Lithuanian towns and was attended by 12,000 visitors (P. 7). “A disadvantage of the Anne Frank exhibition was that 668 Рецензии/Reviews it did not deal with the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania. Too many students did not make any connection with Lithuanian history or with contemporary issues” (Pp. 7-8). The exhibition at stake then addresses this question. Its main objective is to “inform about Lithuanian Jewry and the influence that Jews have had in Lithuanian society – some of these influences still remain” (P. 9). The exhibition and the catalogue are one of several attempts to construct and convey the history of Lithuanian Jews, their relationship with people who surrounded them, and the process and result of the cultural exchange between the Lithuanians and the Jews.1 The exhibition catalogue, which is the subject of this review, consists of nine chapters. Except for the introduction , all others are arranged in chronological order telling the story of Jews living on the Lithuanian Land. Each chapter consists of several separate sections that concentrate on different aspects of the Jews’ life in the given period; for instance, the introduction consists of Jewish Religion and Traditions, Jewish History, and Jewish Family-Photos from Pre-War Jurbarkas. Each section is defined by black pages and white lettering accompanied by at least a few pages of visual material – photographs, maps, copies of documents , etching, and miniatures from manuscripts which, in contrast, are printed on white pages with black lettering. This wealth of the visuals greatly enhances one’s experience of reading. Especially important are photographs of ordinary people, which accompany memoirs and excerpts from letters found in the text. The only criticism concerns the information accompanying these images: some of them lack dates and only a few list the medium. On a positive note, each image is accompanied by a detailed explanation of what it depicts, which helps viewers understand what they are looking for. Given the context of the exhibition, it is safe to conclude that visual material serves here as historic document rather than aesthetic entity; therefore, social function and background are emphasized, but art historical and aesthetic values are usually downplayed. For instance, among the images, one surprisingly does not find three-dimensional decorative arts objects such as menorahs , Chanukiahs, yads (Torah 1 For more on history of Jews in Lithuania see: Dov Levin. The Litvaks: a Short History of the Jews of Lithuania. New York, 2001; SimonasAlperavicius. Jewish Community of Lithuania. Vilnius, 2001; Yaffa Elicah. There Once Was a World: a Nine-Hundred-Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok. Boston, 1998; Masha Greenbaum. The Jews of Lithuania: a History of a Remarkable Community, 1316-1945. Jerusalem, 1995; Nancy Schoenburg. Lithuanian Jewish Communities. New York, 1991. 669 Ab Imperio, 4/2003 pointers), and spice boxes. Regretfully , perhaps due to the nature of the traveling exhibit, the organizers did not include such objects, either in this catalogue or in the exhibition itself. Such objects would help to present yet another fascinating subject of Jewish culture – its craftsmanship – to the audiences. In general, the layout of the book is highly successful...

Традиционное еврейское образование в Литве

The article gives a description of the traditional system of Jewish religious education in Lithuania. This system is a continuation and further development of the system which was created and shaped in Ashkenaz (the Hebrew name for West, Central and East Europe) from the Middle Ages onward. Lithuania was renowned for its Jewish scholars and educational institutions. The article contains a survey of traditional forms of Jewish education for young children, teenagers and adults, as well as of the opportunities for individuals to enrich and improve their knowledge without attending any specific academic/religious institution. The main feature of traditional Jewish life in Lithuania was that most males were not only literate, but also very well acquainted with Jewish classical texts, because knowledge conferred far more prestige than a high material standard of living. Even women were usually educated, although not to the extent that was usual for men.The article deals specifically with the most renowned form of Jewish education in Lithuania, the yeshiva (religious academy). A number of Lithuanian yeshivas were famous all over the world, especially in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Foremost among these was the famous Volozhin Yeshiva ‘Etz hayim’, founded in 1802 by Rabbi Hayim from Volozhin, a disciple of the Vilna Gaon. This and other Lithuanian yeshivas became a symbol of Lithuanian Jewish scholarship because of their high academic reputation and the authority of their founders and staff; they attracted students not only from Lithuania itself, but also from other countries.

The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture (review)

Book Reviews 121 The Faith of the Mithnagdim: Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture, by Allan Nadler. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. 254 pp. $35.00. Dr. Allan Nadler, director of research at the VIVO, has presented the reader with the fruits ofhis investigations into what he calls "the faith of the mithnagdim." In contrast to the plethora ofstudies about Hasidim, studies in the "faith," in contrast to the history, of the mitnagdim have been slender indeed. While taking up the teachings of the two most noted leaders ofthis movement, the Gaon ofVilna and Hayim ofVolozhin, about whom works have appeared in recent years (e.g., studies ofR. Hayim's masterpiece, Nefesh HaHaim, by Norman Lamb and Immanuel Etkes), Nadler breaks new ground in his exploration of the works of another such figure, namely R. Phinehas ben Judah, the Maggid of Polotsk. Nadler takes up such issues as the mitnagdim and the immanence of God, Kabbalah, ascetism, Halakha, and the centrality ofTorah study, adding considerably to what we have known about the teachings of those who opposed the Hasidim. In regard to the mitnagdim's attack on the lack ofTorah study and the unmannerly form ofprayer of the Hasidim, it has been suggested elsewhere that instead of seeing the Hasidic movement through the eyes of socialist historians as revolt, a rebellion of the masses against rabbinic authority and learning, Hasidism is better understood as restoration, an attempt to balance the scales which had been upset in the course of history-Torah-study over prayer, knowledge over feeling, gloom over joy, intellectuality over simple virtue, asceticism over serving God through the material world. Nor is this a matter of past history alone. Evidence of such distortion is in our face even today: for example, holding a Mishna in one hand and the siddur in the other and flipping between the two while at worship, implying that prayer is only a required interruption from study. Nor is the plague of conversation-filled synagogues much different from what must have prevailed in the time ofthe Besht. (Recall the tale of the Besht's refusal to allow his disciples to pray in a certain synagogue because it was "filled" with prayer, that is, with insincere prayer which congested the room because it did not rise to heaven.) To the perennial question as to the astonishing growth of Hasidism in so short a period oftime-a thousand or so followers at the death of the Besht in 1760 to a third of the Jewry of Eastern Europe fifty years later in 1810-and why it has been reborn once again since the Holocaust, Nadler provides an answer. It is found at the end of Phinehas' central work, Even Bohan, purporting to be a death diary written in the author's youth. It deserves lengthy citation. The contrast to Hasidic joy is startling. . . . Woe to us for the humiliation that is man ... the lowly product of a repugnant drop which twice must pass through the urinary shaft submerged in blood ... Man spends his pubescent years screeching and crying ... Marked by shame, they match him with a wife; she too is a repugnant dribble ... never really more than a container filled with manure ... 122 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 No man enjoys a single hour's respite from his wife ... [who brings him] anguish, worry, pain, sadness and feuding ... Throughout the days of your meaningless life, she will drive you to hoard money ... to forsake your mother and your father and even to desert your Lord, in order to fill your house with silver and gold. She will dissipate your soul and disperse your wealth, so that neither frost nor heat, stormy seas nor deep rivers ... will deter you from heeding her will. And if you do, she will certainly lead you down into Sheol. [Her bearing children] will shorten your days, deny you sleep, and increase the burden ofyour labors. She will bicker and bellow at you from all sides with her screeching voice ... [Further,] evil will beset you ... from your own children, who will damn you. Then you will wonder, "Woe, what have I done?" and will realize that you wasted all your...

The Mystical Path of the Vilna Gaon

The Mystical Path of the Vilna Gaon