The Litvak Legacy

About the Book

Between 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. The questions answered are: Where did they come from? How did they get to where they are? What are some of the lasting values they(we) share the world over? In what way do we differ depending on the countries in which various members of my family have lived? One common response in a course based on this material was “I now know why my family was the way it was.” The book will enable you to better know why you are the way you are and enable your children and grandchildren to understand their background.

It is my thesis that there is a distinctive Litvak cultural heritage that can be traced through the maintenance of that culture through the several generations and the significant impact it has had on the countries in which the immigrants settled.

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 religion. As followers of the Vilna Gaon in the late 18th 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 ‘musar’ movement became widespread within the Lithuanian yeshivot. ‘Orthodox Judaism’ evolved out of traditional Judaism. However, relatively few of the traditionally religious chose to emigrate.

In the late 19th century, particularly centered in Vilna, Lita was a major source of the Jewish responses to modernity such as socialism and the recognition of the Yiddish language as well as modern Hebrew and Zionism. Lita was the ‘greenhouse’ of secularism. 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 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 e 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 19th century and in the 20th century prior to the First World War, but extended through World War II. Even beyond the Holocaust/Shoah, the few survivors continued to bear witness to its memory.

Section One deals with the evolution of the core in Lita from 1840 to its destruction during the Shoah. Focus is on the relationship between the developments following 1880 and the ideas carried by the emigrants to the Diaspora from Lita mainly ending in the 1920s. Section Two deals with those ideas carried to the English speaking world and their subsequent evolution mainly in the United States but also in comparison with the United Kingdom, Canada and South

About the Author

Mark N. Ozer is a descendant of Litvaks. A native of Boston, he trained in modern European history as an undergraduate at Harvard. Since his retirement from a fruitful career as a professor of neurology, living in Washington DC, he has written and lectured extensively on the history of cities throughout the world.